Proposed water theft
I can't believe it! Less than a week after I expressed relief that Rockhampton was too far away for practical water theft by Brisbane, I hear a news report that plans are afoot for piping water to Brisbane from as far north as Mackay (which is 300km north of Rocky).
What is wrong with our elected representatives? A desalination plant would be cheaper than stealing water, and regional water supplies might be heaps for the regions they supply but a monster like Brisbane will deplete them quickly.
Listen up, genius leaders: desalination plants don't run out. You can't empty the Pacific Ocean. Get your greedy hands off the regional watersheds and build desalination plants. Build them right now. If you don't have time to build big desalination plants (almost certainly the case) then build small ones. Get them online and supplying water to give you time to build more small ones.
Piping from the north will not be popular. You may well find the locals will defend themselves from the appetites of the south. As soon as they realise their reserves are plummeting they'll wreck the pipe. I'm sure of this because it's what I'd do in their shoes. There are farm sheds full of nitropril and diesel all the way from Brisbane to Mackay, most of them in the hands of people with no respect for city slickers. Means, motivation and opportunity. It's a doddle.
I hope our famously interfering government refrains from sending the army to guard the pipe. For starters, it's not practical. Brisbane to Mackay is about a thousand kilometres. To put a man every 100m and allowing for 8/8/8 shifts (eight hours on, eight hours off, eight hours personal admin) and supply chain overheads, you would need about 30,000 soldiers which is the entire army on continuous active duty. Also, that whole area already has secessionist tendencies. Any attempt at force will trigger Australia's first civil war - and just like the American civil war and much later Viet Nam, it will be a conventional force versus entrenched guerilla forces with no command or supply lines to disrupt. You got guns, they got guns, food, water and lots of places to hide.
The smart thing to do is mobilise the army to build emergency desal plants. We are about to run out of water. This will cause untold damage to the economy and threaten public health on a grand scale. If that's not a national emergency on the same scale as a declared war then I don't know what is. What are you waiting for, the first outbreak of cholera or the collapse of industry?