Does Australia need USA?

There's huge scope for population expansion, and irrigation of vast areas inland, but only if water and cheap energy are sorted out. It's not about a lack of rainfall or water. Australia doesnt lack either ; but we just don't capture, harvest and redirect anywhere near enough of the stuff from where it falls, to where it is doesn't .

Water being harvested and redirected to our main river systems so that they were always fully charged is ( forgive the pun) not a pipe dream. It just requires a lot of money being spent. Money which modern era politicians are loathe to spend because of the time projects take to deliver and the cost. There are no votes in them is the bottom line. They are afraid of being criticised for the spending, and it takes years for any material outcomes to be delivered. Its why you really need massive recessions or events like COVID before you see politicians being "brave" so to speak. China's increasingly bullying behavior can also serve to unite voters behind the expense of such nation building necessities...if Morrison has the bottle to push on. IF
It's literally a once in a century opportunity to reshape the country . Early 20th century ideas such as the Bradfield Plan could easily be expanded/improved upon to deliver a drought proof interior that would allow Australia to have significantly greater food production capabilities, a significantly larger population, and most importantly that population would be diversified outside the east coast cities. If China had the opportunity it would just crack on and build things to convert Australia into a food growing and energy producing utopia.

Cheap energy is easy - in spite of all the political fighting for a decade, its really quite simple. We have all the wind and sun in the world if we want to tap into it and the technology exists already. It is just a question of will. Existing coal base load can be retained. Getting big into renewables doesn't require getting out of fossils. It just requires that people ( especially people on the right of the coalition and employed by Rupert) can comprehend that 3 sources ( 2 of which are far less polluting) of energy are better than 1. Mental giants leading our coalition here in Australia seem unable to distinguish that.

Then - add high speed rail and you are really cooking with gas....

Plentiful water and plentiful cheap energy provides huge opportunities for local food and energy industries to expand, for value add manufacturing to come back onshore, for a much larger and spread out population base , which in turn leads to a significantly larger larger tax base, which pays for a much larger military , etc etc etc... It would take 30-40 years ...but you either decide to start or you do not. Otherwise, 30-40 years from now G'day might be ni hao

 

Interesting thread.

I guess I'm in the camp that says that if we must have overlords, I would prefer the devil I know (USA) compared to the one that I cannot really know properly yet (China) due to the control of media and all information (but; with what we DO know of what has escaped from China into the public eye with regards to human rights issues far more problematic than even the USA's poorest and most neglected parts; such as the Uiegar concentration camps and torture; lack of religious freedom due to CCP's view that religion = risk of revolt; um and also a place that was once an independent country - Tibet - and once a place that when the Brits gave it back, was entirely automously democratically run - Hong Kong...)

I think I would take the US and their flawed but "sorta-free..." overlording of us than China's basically "Orwellian-trajectory" overlording, any day.

The US has done a lot of damage in the world but also on balance; a lot of good. I'm yet to see China achieve any genuine good in the world. All I see from them are places such as Cambodia and Vanuatu which, are where Chinese mass 'investment and development' has failed to help the local/indigenous peoples of these countries. In fact Id argue that the locals in these countries get pushed fuether into poverty and neglect yet the rich Chinese nationals arriving/living there, get their private beaches, casinos, and lush-lifestyle all laid out for them. Privatizing almost all of Cambodia's small coastline which shuts out local Cambodian fisherman and locals from enjoying the beach, that is horrible. The pollution of and redirection of rivers throughout SEA based largely on Chinese 'investment' is horrible. And poor old little Nepal, wedged in the middle and receiving so much investment from China seemingly doesn't stand a chance. I saw so much of that when I was travelling all over Nepal. It's awful.

This is very different to say US' impact on say Hawaii, Guam, Peurto Rico or other US territories whereby US presence/control has helped both locals and rich Americans alike; flourish and flounder.

Pls folks don't misinterpret my post as anti-China; I am not. Rather; I'm answering the specific question of if we must have overlords either US or China, give me US any day of the week.

 

Ah yep, true.

 

That's very interesting, to think how Australia would be if its population was say, 50 million or 60 million. There would be more regional centres, more holiday spots, better connectivity/roads and there will be more to do.

Yeah I think the key point here is that the governments needs to have the required courage to invest in something that is going to have a return many decades into the future (beyond their lifetime)..

Can we (AU) learn from other countries who have done what you describe (e.g. irrigate in regional areas, build up the infrastructure/resources and so on? Would USA be an example, given it has 50 states across all of its wide area?

 

Get water and cheaper energy sorted, then add high speed rail and and you can drive significant population to regionals

Sydney almost ran out of captured/ stored water... while 97% of the rainfall on our continent washed out to sea....and continues to. This is why an improved/superior version of the Bradfield Plan , which would capture some of that 97% and send it where it is in short supply, would form such an important part of any ability to grow a bigger population , economy, tax base and defence.


Water harvesting. Renewables. High Speed interconnecting rail and massively improved interstate highways - All very expensive stuff- but it becomes a choice. Can we/should we do these things and accept the cost, in order to not need Uncle Sam, or should we continue to be bullied by an increasingly aggressive China? I say we should do it. I accept others think not.

But it certainly isnt a question of whether we CAN do it...

 

Do we need USA,
1) Economically we don't do that much trade with the USA - Short narrative NO.
2) Military alliance with USA - we share alot of the western values - Short narrative YES.

 

If we simply double the population (without adding resources and infrastructure to support this), sure there would be more congestion and pressure to a lot more with less. What I’m suggesting is if the government did have some courage to implement the groundwork needed - I agree this is unlikely.

re: cities vs regional centres, wouldn’t this be determined by government policy - if we look historically absolutely there is evidence that all of the Main population is in the cities.... but if we did implement the infrastructure to develop new regional centres, wouldn’t it make some sense to ‘spread out’ the population to prevent the road/traffic congestion you mentioned?

 

Where are the champion - Build them and they will come theory?

 

The world's changing, the US has been king for a long time but now it's on the way out, just in the last 3 years influence and respect has evaporated.
The demise of the US dollar will be the final step.

 

Has any one visited any of the tin pot nations in the last few years.
Fiji, Vanuatu, PNG, Most of the South to Central African Nations.
When relaxing with locals their concern is that their nation is being transformed by China with vast amounts of money given to the government for roads, bridges, hospitals, ports Followed by the inevitable push of immigration from China for migration to their country where businesses are established employing non locals to compete against locals. Local unemployment rises to 50% but general unemployment remains the same, the economy improves for the wealthy with new ventures bringing in new money, but the uneducated locals become third class citizens in their own countries.
Much like the English have done to the indigenous of Australia.
This is a familiar pattern that is starting to emerge, but is unseen by the general traveller to these nations who enjoys the many new facilities, hotels, ports, airports, malls, restaurants and resorts and is steered to the cleaned up view of what this Country used to be.
It has happened once before, are they all there to be recolonised.
Yet my favourite country to visit is “outback” China, there are no tours that take you there. The people love you and will crowd you. The prices are amazingly cheap. No one speaks English. They assume you are poor because you are not visiting the big smoke. They rob you blindly. We paid $40 for a motel room. When we met some locals they couldn’t believe it. They said the going rate was $20 for Chinese. But the best times with wonderful fun people many of whom had rarely if ever seen a white person. (Maybe a larger chubby bald white person who looked like the living happy Buddha)

 

That's why I said...

 

USA represents 20B. Pa

 

Hi euro73
I note from your posts that you are a fan of nation-building water security projects (like myself).
I agree that for a nation rich in potential but poor in vision we are totally backward in not striving to become the foodbasket for Asia. It seems a no-brainer, but yes it appears that the vast majority of both LNP and ALP members plus their advisors do in fact have no brains at all.
Anyway, at the risk of taking this thread off-topic, may I suggest you do a bit of googling sometime on "The Great Man-made River" (GMMR) for some interesting reading. Although it has had it's share of issues, this is basically an initiative of the Libyan government controlled for many years by the late Col Gadaffi, shifting water around a dry country to places that can use it for irrigation. The worlds biggest iggigation scheme. See what you think.
It just shows anything is possible if the will is there. Wouldn't mind if Scomo learnt a bit from these guys. Cheers.

 

the chance of Scotty from marketing looking beyond tonight’s dinner menu is remote at best . Sadly, until the country suffers a deep and catastrophic recession the political appetite and ability required to do anything substantive about nation building is almost zero

 

Yep.

 

This is why I believe that we will see some good come out of this current covid health predicament

 

I think we just saw the likelihood of that with yesterdays Cormann and Frydenberg show.... zero vision for the future. Focused only on bean counting