Bloody labor couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery .. Look at the billions wasted on desalinations plants 100 bucks on everyone's bill ...

THE consumer bill for the nation’s largest desalination plant is set to rise to more than $2 billion, as heavy rain and soaring dam levels make redundant tremendously expensive facilities across the eastern seaboard.

New figures obtained by The Weekend Australian show the Victorian desalination plant, southeast of Melbourne, will have cost water users $1.2bn by the November 29 state election, rising to $2bn by the end of the next financial year.

The cost has soared, despite no water having been drawn from the facility since its opening in 2012 and dams being more than 80 per cent full.

The full cost of building, running and maintaining the plant is forecast to climb markedly in the next three decades.

The Victorian experience has been replicated across Australia’s east and south. Plants in Victoria, NSW, Adelaide and on the Gold Coast cost more than $10bn to build but their operations have been effectively mothballed.

Sydney’s plant is dismissed as a white elephant, with no water produced since 2012, despite costing consumers almost $200 million a year, or about $100 a year for every water user.

In Queensland, the Gold Coast desalination plant built by the previous Labor government at Tugun cost $1.2bn but has been effectively mothballed for the past few years.

In Adelaide, the 100-gigalitre-capacity desalination plant cost $2.2bn to build and was finished in December 2012 but the plant, publicly owned but operated by private contractors AdelaideAqua, will be mothballed from January 15 next year after a two-year “proving period”.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/billions-in-desalination-costs-for-not-a-drop-of-water/story-e6frgczx-1227094416376

Pete

Problem with you blokes, is that you don't look to the future.  The costs of these plants may be large but they are there for the future, should we have problems with the levels of that stuff that is ESSENTIAL to LIFE, called WATER.

Mind you the costs are nothing when compared to the $100+billion NBN disaster, aye, Pete.

Back to GAS, a friend of mine in WA has cut off his gas because of the exorbitant ADMINISTRATION costs...... five (5) separate costs.  He has found that it costs the same if his HWS is electric because he only pays one lot of administration costs and he doesn't have to worry about two bills or two different systems.  Besides, the electricity is still govt owned and therefore cheaper and better than in the Eastern States and the gas is CORPORATISED and therefore has to add private profit requirements and he states the gas company has bad service and charges huge fees for anything done that is outside of simply gas supply!!

I don't think he could understand that Geo. You have to make it real simple.

Thanks Abby

I knew there was one about somewhere. I would not consider it a rehash as the federal and state govts have been twiddling their thumbs and the article shows there is no imperative for us to pay parity price. Parity price and some more which amounts to a rort. There should be a domestic price as there was before the scramble to export.

Well done, Abby! 

geomac, agree, still important to be aware of these corporatisations and the effects on OUR pockets.  

We also pay dearly to supply water and energy to mega foreign MINING corporations, who simply TAKE our resources and profits from those resources overseas.... putting very little back in the form of taxes and royalties and these days don't even have to employ Australian workers or use Australian contract companies.

You can't beat "cooking with gas"

Love coal it has brought so many out of poverty..

Great American invention the Weber.

Bbq's and Roasts . You can even make a pizza in it

Can you do cave drawings ...Must be  hell fighting those Sabre tooth tigers And bogans with the Euraka star on their Utes..

Whats a euraka star and whats a Sabre tooth tiger doing in the same century as utes ?

Full moon ?

All the same bogans ....

IDEOLOGUES anticipating an imminent “green energy revolution’’ and the demise of Australia’s “dying’’ coal industry need a reality check. In the long term, as technology advances, renewables will provide the energy of the future.

At this stage, however, the timescale of when renewables will be able to generate sufficient power for domestic and industrial users at a cost-effective price is unclear. As Paul Kelly wrote on Saturday, the International Energy Agency predicts that by 2035 fossil fuels will meet 76 per cent of world energy demand and renewables will meet 18 per cent. Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Brendan Pearson notes the growth of coal in the past decade has been seven times the combined growth of wind and solar. Last year, China added three times more new coal-based electricity than wind and solar combined. More than 1.3 billion people around the world have no access to energy, and fossil fuels will be pivotal in filling that gap as poorer nations industrialise and achieve better living standards. Despite a global glut of coal, miners exported a record 158.5 million tonnes from Queensland from January to September.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/editorials/throwing-light-on-energy-use/story-e6frg71x-1227095467658

Probably like the car manufacturing industry out high production cost and high taxes to blame.

Also cost to market

Rubbish economics. Another way to increase debt and dampen economic growth.

You loonies never learn.

And that makes it right does it ?

Shows a lack of leadership, buying votes perhaps, keeping the masses quiet, tossing crumbs comes to mind

Oh how easy it is to please the ignorant.

Problem with htese policies is that there is an opportunity cost, and economic sacrifice where the short term benefits outweigh the long term gains

Short termism or immediate gratification at the expense of long term prosperity

You also have plenty of gas coming out of your ass. Do us a favor and light a match.