Desal a knee-jerk reaction by Bligh

The Sunshine Coast Daily (Australia) runs a story about a characteristic incident -- short term thinkers, thwarted on one front, instantly latch onto another ill-considered scheme: Mary Valley residents have hit out at Anna Bligh’s new solution to securing the state’s water supply, claiming her threat of desalination plants is nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction. The residents were yesterday still celebrating Peter Garrett’s decision to quash the Traveston Crossing Dam plan but said they were “horrified” by Ms Bligh’s latest stand.

Her “dramatic announcement” of more desalination plants without community consultation or strategic environmental impact assessment showed she hadn’t learnt a single lesson from the financial and social debacle of Traveston, according to Save The Mary River Coordinating Group president, Glenda Pickersgill.

“It’s like she’s reeled off the ropes from the Traveston blow and is making exactly the same mistakes all over again,” she said. “There are many lessons to be learnt from Traveston. It will surely go down in history as how not to embark on major infrastructure projects.

“A prudent Queensland government would have commissioned some independent assessments, not only of the impacts but also of the chances of gaining federal approval and saved Queenslanders around $1billion….

Charles Laughton in Mutiny on the Bounty, from 1935