Costly misdirection

Letter to the Editor # 6, The Advertiser (Adelaide) 15th September 2009
(206 words) ; by Allan Taylor of Hove.

Business SA CEO, Peter Vaughan, says that narrow minded thinking and an inflated bureaucracy are holding SA back. How true it is.

The Rann Labor Government is to blame for a costly misdirection of the economy.
For example, water management: the commitment to building a desalination plant costing $1.8 billion when the emphasis should have been on storm water capture and recycling in order to reduce the draw on the River Murray.

The wastage of potable water on non-potable use is horrendous. Aquifer supply of potable water needs further exploration. Even the Greens advocate this approach.

Mike Rann’s religious promoting of renewable energy will continue to push our electricity costs sky high.

It is madness to build wind farms which are uneconomic at the best of times and only serve to destabilize the national grid with their intermittent and variable dribble of electricity.
SA would be better off if all present wind farms were demolished.

The zero attention to the future role of nuclear power industry in SA shows how out of touch with reality is Mike Rann. The planned expansion of the Olympic Dam uranium mine is estimated to require another 650 MW of power, plus now we have to power a desalination plant costing $75 million per year to run.