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A future without Adani

By Everald Compton - posted Friday, 23 February 2018


In a million years, its coal will have matured enough to be worth mining.

For now, there is huge potential to expand production at every one the existing mines in the Bowen Basin, as well as to open thermal coal mines in the Surat Basin, which are already fully planned, but killed by governments. Both basins will create more jobs than Adani ever dreamed of.

The added bonus of the Surat is that it will use the Port of Gladstone which is at the bottom end of the Great Barrier Reef and has huge unused capacity so that no new investment is needed.

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So much for Adani.

Lets look at agriculture as its main alternative.

From Richmond and Hughenden in the north, down through Winton and Longreach and into the Channel Country, there lies some of the best black soil agricultural land in the world. It simply lacks water and investment. It could become the bowl for the food that billions of Asians want.

The water needed to open up the black soil country for agriculture can easily be diverted from the tropical rivers of the north at an affordable cost and in sufficient quantity to be able to progressively move the cotton industry to the North and take huge water pressure off the Murray Darling Basin.

The missing element, and a huge one, is a considerable lack of fast efficient low cost transport. This malady has been the scourge of the bush for 200 years of European settlement and a massive indictment of many governments who have done absolutely nothing about it.

An extensive upgrade of existing railways and a reopening of discarded ones will be vital, plus the opening of new ones to Gulf ports.

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The economic impact of all of this will be enormous.

Some country towns will become regional cities with all the social infrastructure that those cities will need. They will become the powerhouses of new value added industries using a wide range of rural products.

All of this opens up the potential to develop Cape York Peninsula, the most neglected part of the Australian Continent. It can become the mecca for new industries of tropical orientation based on the experience of the nations of the tropics world wide. The neglect of the Cape has been an enormous disgrace.

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This article was first published on Everald Compton.



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About the Author

Everald Compton is Chairman of The Longevity Forum, a not for profit entity which is implementing The Blueprint for an Ageing Australia. He was a Founding Director of National Seniors Australia and served as its Chairman for 25 years. Subsequently , he was Chairman for three years of the Federal Government's Advisory Panel on Positive Ageing.

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