The Australian Dream Has Died, Housing Too Expensive

Soooooo - you believe that we have the ability to desalinate a river’s worth of water?

Question - who pays?

 

Might be you could ask the Israelis how they supply 85% of their population with desalination water...I don't know what rivers have to do with anything ---I was talking about areas near the Outbacks coast....

I imagine the same government that pays for your Healthcare. Or Water department? Or you could look at a private and government collaboration. Access to water opens up opportunities for the private and public sector. It should be considered an investment.

 

Israel is much much much smaller



THIS is how much water can flow down the Diamantina (aka the channel country)


That area of the continent becomes an “inland sea” bur between soaking into the land and evaporation it lasts only a couple of months.
This is what the channel country looks dry



An area larger than many us states

 

Right....and AGAIN...I'm not talking about the inland. Coastal areas right by the sea. Desalination plant designed for a community...ONE community along a tourist potential area. You have beautiful beaches near grasslands.

You start little steps. Nothing is conquered in a day.

 

But we do not have an issue with water supply on the coast and again do you not think we haven’t thought about this? Brisbane went through a 10 year drought and built a desalination plant which is now rusting

 

Ok. Well I was reading info on your outback beaches and read about several remote beaches that did not have water available. Didn't see population centers around a good swath of outback coastal region. Wonder why their is no development if water isn't an issue.

Perplexing to me because here in US...a beach and beautiful landscapes tend to draw the facilities for visitors and the resources for residents.

 

Again - who pays? I wish I knew what part of Aus you are talking about - the Nullarbor? The Spencer Gulf? The Kimberley? Again who pays?

 

North and South coastal outback seashore. Lots of remote seashore acreage but when you Google information...you are told to load up your own water. I already brought up ideas on "who pays" in a previous post. Not rewriting it.

Look...obviously, with all the obstacles your posts are focused on, the "can do" spirit doesn't rock and roll over there. Which why I'm thinking there is no motivation to develop land - even land that can be great investment. And that's fine. It's your country.

 

Why do people think we haven’t looked into this?
https://www.csiro.au/en/research/natural-environment/water/northern-rivers-and-dams
https://www.graincentral.com/news/six-new-dam-sites-identified-for-northern-australia/
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-30/giant-dams-report-northern-australia/10181682
There is also the issue of Native Title, which is very much a consideration

Now you suggest that “the government” pays - that is actually me. It would be coming out of MY pocket. And yes we might see a return on investment but then again we might end up with a years long environmental disaster.
Look at the Ord River scheme

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ord_River

It is the very remoteness that is often an issue - no sod wants to move to a place where the nearest hospital is a long plane flight away.

 

It is more a matter of Math and Dollars than anything else.

For Desalination to work there needs to be POWER which means building a Solar energy and battery storage system large enough to run the Desalination plant plus all of the surrounding infrastructure for agriculture to be effective.

As BB pointed out a great deal of the land itself is UNSUITED to agriculture and that requires another INVESTMENT in something like a BioChar plant to provide the necessary resources to enable the soil to RETAIN water and nutrients.

Then there is the cost of the Desalination plant itself.

On top of that you still NEED to be able to TRANSPORT your Agricultural goods from the Outback to the markets which gets EXPENSIVE given that they PERISH quickly.

Add up the costs of all of the above and then divide that by the PROFITS derived from the Agriculture.

How many tomatoes will it take to BREAK EVEN?

By itself Agriculture does NOT provide sufficient INCOME to justify the INVESTMENT needed.

Is this something that the OZ government should be doing? According to BB they tried and failed, perhaps they forgot the BioChar plant. OR, does it just does NOT pay for itself even in the Long Term.

Large scale projects can be successful but sometimes a sow's ear is just a sow's ear and it will take some other disruptive technology before it becomes effective. When I learned about BioChar this morning those arid wastelands of the Outback seems like a feasible option but there are other challenges that would need to be factored in. The Biomass itself would need to be imported prior to it being sourced as a byproduct of the Agriculture.

The concept is fine, the devil is in the details and I suspect our technology is not sufficiently advanced yet. In another decade this might be realistic.

 

My posts said nothing about agriculture...

 

It prolly would happen again if they tried to create another inland sea. But the goal is not to try to create another inland sea, just provide water for drinking and resource production. Pipelines are easy, they get built all the time. Energy is the only missing ingredient, and apparently Australia would rather have less carbon emissions than more affordable housing. If they're happy with that, who am I to argue. ...but it doesn't appear they are enjoying their low-carbon high-rent cramped housing situation...

 

there are a few wave powered plants out there but the real issue again is the high upfront cost of building infrastructure. That has been some of the problem with the Ord river - no sod wants to live that far away from, well, everything

 

Oh! Dear Gods! Seems I have been wasting my time!

BTW Lake Eyre/Kata Thanda is a SALT LAKE. And a lot of the area has a high saline content which irrigation can make worse

https://ourenvironment.ac.nz/2019/06/07/dryland-salinity-in-australia/

 

If it is just a nice beach you want we have a TON of those. Me? My “bucket list” includes going through the horizontal waterfalls in the Kimberley

 

Well, either that or there is some other factor that is worldwide.

Mass immigration, perhaps? Just a speculative stab in the dark...

I'm sure there do exist some other countries with Airbnb that have not been experiencing that second factor which I mentioned, where we could take a look to see if your theory holds any validity.

 

I am pretty sure I have already posted this - be nice if you didn’t keep dragging up the same stuff again and again

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09...-rentals-housing-crisis-regulations/102810804
And this one

https://www.forbes.com/sites/garyba...b-effect-on-housing-and-rent/?sh=62f99bdb2226
Oh! And you haven’t factored in ****ing climate change!

https://theconversation.com/austral...er-regulations-ease-the-housing-crisis-200347

 

I don't doubt that. But correlation does not imply causation, as they say.

A more likely explanation is that Airbnb and tourists often concentrate in big popular trendy destination cities, the same sorts of places lots of the population wants to live.

This would probably mostly only affect the core of the city, or the city itself, not so much the outlying areas just outside the city.


If you look at some graphs, the amount of annual immigration to Australia really began to pick up after 2003 (remember that is cumulative, adds up), while the number of Airbnb listings in the country began rapidly increasing after July 2015.
Rent prices began to rapidly increase after July 2020.

Melbourne and Sydney combined have about 32,000 Airbnb listings.

 

I have bookmarked that gem. Thank you!

 

What? You have never heard of holidaying in the country? We have a huge industry now catering for “farmstay”

 

Not much to add here other than to say there have been plans for yonks ('ages' in Australian vernacular) for a fast rail between Sydney and Melbourne and the building up of satellite cities along the rail line. But the political will isn't there, and frankly, people don't want to live in country towns; they prefer to live in cities - and the nice bits as well - hence the supply & demand problem.

Nevertheless, due to housing pressures in the city, country towns such as Orange & Dubbo, New South Wales and other ones are experiencing an influx and increased rental prices. I imagine soon the abandoned ghost towns of the Gold Rush era will begin a second boom.

 

Dear @kazenatsu this might interest you:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/23/japan-immigration-policy-xenophobia-migration/

 

Maybe even Mary Kathleen??





Been there done that! Standing on the edge of an abandoned uranium mine is BRAGGING RIGHTS!

 

I do notice that people seem to want to live in already established cities that were built at least 120 years ago.

It seems that they are not building, or are unable to build new cities the same way that the old cities were built.

 

Or maybe just maybe the good spots are taken - ever wondered WHY big cities grew where they did?