Stu's Stories as at 2024

69 | P a g e Here, especially in WA, we should be looking at what will happen to our State after the mining fades out - and it will; perhaps not in our generation or even that of our children, but future generations will suffer. Instead of the money taken by the Federal Goverment from the mining being used to prop up the eastern states (who will do nothing for themselves as long as they can bleed WA), the money should be channelled back into developing Western Australia for the time when resources either fade out, or their value becomes unviable. The obvious solution to this is to bring water from the north down through the centre of WA, opening up the country to agriculture. I don’t believe this would require piping other than, perhaps, in short bursts through hilly areas. I would suggest investigating the possibility of open-cut following the contours of the country and utilising the many, enormous, disused open-cut mines as storage areas along the way for when the seasonal water may not be running. Western Australia could have its own equivalent of New South Wales’ Darling River, with towns developing along its length that would, in themselves, generate more employment and absorb immigrants. Ernie Bridges idea of piping it down the coast may have been a fine idea in his early days, but the development of desalination makes this unnecessary. Desalination can cater for the coastal areas but is not really viable for the centre. Western Australia has a vast area of land that, with water added, is ideal for farming and has the potential to be the food bowl for South East Asia. They said the Sydney Harbour Bridge couldn’t be done; they said the Snowy River Scheme couldn’t be done - but they were! I have argued for years that we should be putting migrants to work in developing this waterway in the same way as migrants were the main labour force in building the Snowy River Scheme. The same would happen here as happened in the Snowy area where many of those migrants stayed and expanded and developed the towns into vibrant hubs. All we need is some leading politicians who have the calibre of Lang, Chifley, Curtin, Menzies, who are prepared to say “it will be done!”. I hope to live long enough to see these two dreams come true.