Like humans, Dams are bad . Good on the Libs for playing Labor and the Greens at a game they love - categories of evil; pedantic simple word games ! Dams like harvesting, are sins and there is no doubt in church about that .
So do the conservatives know what kind of dams they want , or more importantaly, do they know what types of dams they can justify? .No, they want votes but STILL fail to earn them . Its all very well for Tim of The Wentworth group ( of that rare breed of conservationsit) to say "this and this" but somebody only last year let people build on floodplains in every State - despite all the Care and concern of Greens about real world conservation, the right advice was not even on the radar screen. Green labor are as everyone except them knows, too heavenly minded to be of almost any earthly use . The missing ingredients are a tiny minority of experts called geomorphologists production ecologists and soil water plant use planners
Not that I think the Libs know exactly what they are doing when they talk about dams. They may well just be wanting to support the growing number of engineers to find work out there in infrastructure land. One hopes that, like having Tim from the concerned sceintists groups on The drum last night that all the shallow splashing by the religiuosleft is soon demolished by a bomb from real experts ( makes for a nice change)No the pwoer groups arre still too big to move just because on one chat on the ABC .
The real probem is that engineers on their own can't sort out the broken filters of sound judgement at a local and basic preplanning level . State governments have created all these " high level planning groups"like CMAS ( which put out pontif type edicts ) only to find that local governemnet can't manage without decent independant advicee on geomorphoogy and landscape and ecosystem protection. Even the most well heeled engineering orgs with a strong rate base in my youth ( like the State Rivers and Water supply commission and water authorities ) didn't do ecostuff at all well. ( they won't still unless you make them . Engineers will survive the green onslaught, but scientists who think bigger than the trite green popular plitics of our day have been and will remain the most endangered species for decades to come as well .Why? Because the GEOM rather than engineers directly define excatly which type of dam and infrastructure is environmentally sound Abrave me he be if he thinks he can unseat the power of a engineer or an accountant . .
A small group of experts hold the key to better decsion making and credibility of dams ( I am not going to wet the powder too far out from election by elaborating on detail here )
The election will be held without considering the key ingredients again , but LOCAL GOVERNMENT INEPTNESS, now that's an election and reform issue just waiting to blow up .
Does the new legislation address the festering sores of planning and LG role i it ? - don't make me laugh.
