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Confronting our water challenge

By Malcolm Turnbull - posted Friday, 11 August 2006


South East Queensland is gripped with drought and new dams are planned, as are desalination plants and massive recycling schemes. But we are not hearing a discussion of sharing water across the border.

Mr Beattie is prepared to spend $2 million on a study to examine piping water 1,200 kilometres from the Burdekin to Brisbane, an endeavour he acknowledges in advance is uneconomic, at least for the foreseeable future. But one asks what is being done to consider water sharing opportunities closer to hand in Northern NSW whose Northern Rivers enjoy greater catchments and stream flows than the rivers which run through South East Queensland's catchments.

I have raised this matter with the Queensland and NSW water ministers, not as an advocate of either State, but simply as an Australian. We should solve our water problems together. The solutions to South East Queensland's water crisis should not stop at the state border.

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Let us put all the possible solutions on the table. Nothing should be taboo, least of all stepping across thin black lines, heavy with meaning on a map or in a law report, but a pointless hindrance when it comes to water, and mountains and rivers.

After all there is more than a little potential for water sharing in both directions across the Queensland and NSW state borders? Are we prepared to look openly at our water needs and solve them as Australians, bound together as we face this challenge and with a single destiny to overcome it?

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Malcolm Turnbull addressed The Brisbane Institute on July 25, 2006. First published in the Brisbane Line on the Brisbane Institute website on August 3, 2006.



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About the Author

Malcolm Turnbull is is the federal Leader of the Opposition and member for Wentworth. You can see his web site here: www.malcolmturnbull.com.au

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