HUGE AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE PLAN

Wanganui Chronicle, 16 February 1949, Page 5

HUGE AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE PLAN

Water Power And Remote Industries

CANBERRA, Feb 15—A vast new Australian defence plan, involving the creation in the Australian Alps, in New South Wales, of a production area which will be protected against atom bomb attacks, became ' known soon after a conference of Federal, New South Wales, and Victorian Ministers had agreed on a plan for the diversion of the Snowy River. The Federal Minister of Works, Mr N. Lemmon, said that in eight years this division would double the water available for the Murrumbidgee irrigaton area, and that soon afterwards a very large amount of cheap electric power would be available.

The conference came to a quick decision on the project when Mr. Lemmon explained how it was linked up with a great defence plan. Ministers were told that Australia would be the British arsenal of the Pacific, and that the Snowy River scheme would be a vital link in the defence chain. New munition factories and associated industries would be built in selected areas, some possibly underground.

Industries of vital importance in defence would be transferred from Britain. Scientific defence research work, including atomic energy experiments, for which power supplies were necessary, would be possible when the national university was fully established in Canberra, which would become a major world research centre. The conference was told that the work was urgent, because most of Australia’s key industries and munition factories had previously been established close to the coast, as they needed jJbwer which came from coal. They were thus exposed to possible enemy attack. 1,500,000 K.W. OF WATER POWER. The plan envisages the expenditure of at least £166,000,000 in construction work alone, over 25 years. The first stage will be the construction of a huge dam at Adaminaby to divert an upper tributary of the Snowy River into the Tumut River. The Commonwealth and Victorian Governments propose that an independent Commonwealth commission, similar to the Tennessee Valley Authority in the United States, should control the project. The discussions are continuing in the face of some New South Wales opposition. The complete plan includes three proposals, as follows: (1) To divert some water from the upper reaches of the Snowy, Murrumbidgee and Murray Rivers into the Tumut River; (2) to divert some Snowy River water into the Murray, upstream from the Hume reservoir; and (3) to divert the remaining water of the Snowy River into cither the Murray or Murrumbidgee. The first two proposals have been adopted. If the Murrumbidgee plan in the third proposal is accepted the total cost will rise to £185,000,000. The 20 hydro-electric stations proposed to be built will have a total power output of 1,500,000 kilowatts, which nearly equals the totdl generating capacity of all the present Australian power stations. They will save about 3,530,000 tons of New South Wales black coal a year. The Adaminaby dam will store 1 000,000 acre-feet of water, and will be connected to the Tumut River by 14 miles of tunnel. Another tunenl will bring water five miles to Tumut. from the Tooma River, which is a tributary of the Murray. Further down the Tumut River a third line of water will enter after coming 11 miles by tunnel from the upper Murrumbidgee-