Self-serving rather than stupid
At work we were discussing the whole water thing and in particular I was defending my views, which unsurprisingly are often regarded as unusual.
I wondered out loud why the powers-that-be continue to fail to take simple and obviously necessary steps. It was suggested to me that these are expensive undertakings and if the current government does them then it will get blamed for the bill. There will then be a change of government and the other party will get the credit for sorting things out.
So there are two paths, both of which involve them sitting tight for the present. If there is a change of government at the next election, then the incoming government will be obliged to do the works and cop the blame for the expense. If there isn't a change of government then they keep sitting on their hands until the doom and gloom of no water actually materialises. This will give them a mandate to do whatever it takes, and they will take the opportunity to slip through all sorts of things that would otherwise be poisonous.
So there you have it: self-serving rather than stupid.
More of a worry is that rather than solving the underpinning problem, they'll build a pipe to the Sunshine Coast water supply and steal resources from there, providing the semblance of a solution without all the expense. Not actually solving the problem means that in a couple of years you get another bite of the cherry - another opportunity to slip through, on the coattails of the obviously necessary and urgent, all those little items that would otherwise never be tolerated. You watch, all through the proceedings not one of these twits will ever say "the problem isn't not-enough-water, it's too-many-people, maybe we should discourage further immigration".
Oh no, growth is good. You get bigger numbers in the budget. And with overcrowding comes endless opportunity for pyramid-building. You can build power stations, tunnels and bridges, not to mention hospital wings, and name them after your party members and major contributors.
If we get rain in the interim, we'll never get them to do the right thing.
You know we could save a lot of money at the next election. We can simplify the voting options to "twit" (Beatty and co) and "twat" (opposition).