VISION IMPAIRED

Ando’s (TB 16/7) It is fortunate that our politicians of the past were not cut from the cloth of today’s election cycle, media driven, risk adverse party captives or we would still be drawing our water from wells and creeks. Today’s donothing procrastinators, hamstring water infrastructure projects with cost benefit regimes demanding ridiculous short term and narrow scoped ‘investment returns’ while feigning support with endless studies and reviews. Compare this to the visionaries of colonial, nation building politicians.

In 1894, a mere four years after becoming a self-governing colony and having a population of less than 100,000, Western Australia undertook visionary water supply infrastructure project. Borrowing £2.5M (today equivalent to $40B), built two dams, four pumping stations and more than 500kms of pipeline to the goldfields. One hundred and twenty years later, this infrastructure is still delivering water while the Kalgoorlie region is still producing great mineral wealth. Australia, now with a population of over 25million and a GDP of $1.5Tillion, our politicians are incapable even imagining such water infrastructure let alone delivering it.

Former Member for Herbert, Ewen Jones now adds a new dimension to do-nothing governments, proposing that selfinterested commercial interests and foreign governments have free access to Australian water resources as an incentive to build water infrastructure that it refuses to invest in. This would have to be the pinnacle of governments and politicians abrogating all responsibility for wealth creating and nation building.

Bill Bates, Kewarra Beach