Alan, you talk about a water network. Have you seriously thought about it? To do anything more than some recycling and desal you are really talking about an impossible task.
All the "excess" water that flows into the ocean does so enormous distances from the Murray and what is a critical but overlooked fact is that it does so only for a few weeks at a time and not every year. Realistically you can only harvest water during those brief flood periods. You can't build an enormous dam and destroy OUR environment and take all the water and do the same to our rivers as you did to the Snowy. That's a pathetic excuse for a river.
To get the sort of water you need we would need to measure it in Syd Harbs. How big must the pipes and pumps be to move the volume of water in The Harbour every couple of days? You can't just put a piddling pipe in and pump water 52 weeks a year. Our rivers can't supply it.
I only know two rivers which can be relied on to have many Syd Harbs of water to flow out to sea every year: The Ord and the Burdekin. If you built Stage II of the Burdekin Dam and diverted water inland, it would need a few hundred kilometers of pipe to get it into the headwaters of the Warrego. What percentage of that water will actually get to the Coorong? Bugger all, methinks. Most would simply evaporate.
Thought should instead be about reducing water use in the south by moving thirsty agriculture and industry to the water. There is a big stretch of land from Townsville to south of Ayr which would support a big agri/industrial complex and an NBN would help make that possible. Would you in the south agree to have have whole industries move interstate? No? Then you must solve your problems without our water and without grabbing all the money.
