Larvatus Prodeo

Even if you’re not a local, you might have noticed that it’s been raining in Brisbane a lot recently. Anna Bligh’s taken advantage of fuller dams to execute a backflip on recycled water and to delay the Traveston Dam. These were two issues that the LNP had been making some running on lately, in the first instance aided and abetted by a quite disgraceful campaign about the supposed dangers of water recycling in the pages of, you guessed it, The Australian.

I think the first is bad policy – and it doesn’t give us much hope that Bligh is capable of either holding her nerve in the face of political shenanigans or of practising what she preaches about infrastructure and long term planning. It’s certainly not difficult to envisage the dam levels dropping back down in a few years time, and the whole point of this plan was to ensure continuity of water supply in such an eventuality. The work that has already been done has effectively been wasted.

Traveston is a different kettle of fish. In my view, it was always ill thought out and I’ve long thought it was mainly there to serve as a wedge between Brisbane voters and the Nationals before the 2006 election. I was surprised that Beattie ever went ahead with it after it had played its political purpose. In theory, the change to the scheduling of environmental mitigation measures is a good thing, but environmental concerns as well as its dubious contribution to water supply should actually have seen it canned rather than delayed.

Writing in Crikey today, Richard Farmer appears to think Bligh has executed a cunning political maneouvre. I can’t see it. Continue reading ‘Bligh’s big water backdown’