Originally Posted by GarryP

I'm not actually sure that there are any tight oil deposits in Australia that are really suitable for fracking - time will tell but if they're not, they're not. People tend to think it's just a case of identify deposits and go - but there's a reason you get maps like this, geology is the make or break.

http://juanvelascoblog.files.wordpre...plains-map.jpg

I'd tend to say that energy is obviously more valuable than water - since if you have energy you can desalinate yourself as much water as you want.

I agree that Australia should have hardened the f**k up and built itself a suite of nuclear stations - it has the ideal circumstances to do so, large tracts of coastline with nobody anywhere near them. However, as has previously been mentioned, australian politicians are not the best or most insightful of the breed - and the breed only has a 4 year time horizon.

As for massive population increase - the question is 'why'? Historically the larger the population, the better your economy runs due to economies of scale. However it's far from certain that that rings true going forward. With automation and globalisation it may well be that the benefits of a small, integrated, and intelligent population win out, using discardable slave labour for the grunt work (the Dubai model). High quality immigration is already almost there (ahem), but most of the rest needed for that model is lacking.

Oh, and australia could really do with investing research money in fast, efficient solar powered desal plants. A nice world leading, patented, technology in that area would not only win big for domestic usage, but also for overseas sales.

Originally Posted by OzTennis

Victoria has a $5.7 bill desalination plant which we got the French to build at massively over budget cost.

Originally Posted by OzTennis

Low cost coal and natural gas reserves have always been the argument against nuclear.

Originally Posted by OzTennis

Howard Government proposed nuclear plants but they were defeated in the election and Labour opposes. Perhaps Tony will put it back on the agenda?

Originally Posted by OzTennis

Traditionally less than 50% of the Australian population favours nuclear power.

Originally Posted by OzTennis

How about elections every 20 years to get some long term planning for things like this?

Originally Posted by GarryP

I know, an elementary mistake.

In an era of climate change, that no longer holds. Also Oz has lots of Uranium - a good reactor design and it could have as much power as it needs, guaranteed out at least 100 years, something you can't say for FF.

Doubt it. We need rid of the whole lot of them - wastes of space.

Sell the sizzle - low cost power, etc.

How about doing away with representative 'democracy' as formulated in the era of horse and cart, and going for real democracy?