It took a long time for politicians, senior public servants and rarely-accountable heads of key agencies — from electricity power stations to water bureaucracies — to face up to the severity of the crisis in Southeast Queensland. For a while it looked like they would contemplate some sustainable initiatives, including what appeared to be genuine encouragement for the mass installation of water tanks. Had they been quicker to realise the severity of the issue, it would have been more sensible to suggest that households install 10 000 to 20 000 litres to get a rebate, and it is not too late for policy change to happen,

Instead, the Queensland Water Commission, in its latest Draft SEQ Water Strategy, released in April 2007, has in effect given up on rainwater tanks by suggesting that they can only provide 7 per cent of the region’s needs by 2256. The Commission suggests, instead, another six desal plants up and down the coast, all located in the region’s diminishing open space, including two of its sand islands. Yet most of coastal SEQ has, and is predicted to continue to have, a reasonable rainfall (The Draft Strategy is available at www.qwc.qld.gov.au).

The documentation on this public-policy failure is primarily to be found on the web in endless numbers of documents carefully re-phrased by wordsmiths to avoid later attribution or retribution. Senior public servants have become remarkably risk-averse in a political climate where governments hide behind FOI legislation and where speaking your mind is not encouraged. A number of university water-research centres get funding from firms who stand to make millions of dollars out of desalination infrastructure.

In this melange of public-policy obfuscation, a few brave acts have happened. Beattie cleverly abandoned his proposed referendum on recycling in January 2007 and the hapless Liberal/National Party coalition was unable to turn it into a telling political issue. Much less edifying is the rush to build desal plants with little attempt to inform the public about the high carbon emissions and high running costs of such installations. I wonder whether the Gold Coast desal plant, tucked away at the back of the Coolangatta airport, will be quietly decommissioned within a decade on both environmental and cost grounds, assuming an aeroplane overshooting the runway doesn’t collect it first.

When you reach the eightieth floor of the Q1 observation deck, the world’s highest apartment block, you look across at the scenic rim, the Lamington National Park and Mt Warning. In the middle ground you see the Gold Coast airport and the mammoth structure housing the desal plant, a monument to the worst case of coastal overdevelopment in Australia. Perhaps the new slogan for Southeast Queensland could be: ‘Head for the 200 kilometre city — carbon emission heaven’.