The water in Lake Albert now is somewhere between 5000 and 6000 EC units (a measure of salinity) which would kill your lawn. It is definitely not drinking material for dairy cows.

Kenneth Davidson has been writing a series of articles about how Melbourne will improve its water supply.
Melbourne has been in drought for 15 years and the water storages are at 27% capacity,
trees in parks and streets are dying from lack of water,
the plans to recycle sewerage are blocked,
the north south pipeline is under construction and will only take water from the Goulbourn River in 2010 - there will be no more without rain
the arguements over the desal plant continues
Today's article summarises the position http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/truth-lost-in-waves-of-obfuscation-20090708-ddcu.html

gary, the focus on northern valley water has us perplexed too. We've known all along that these purchases would do nothing for the Murray river, let alone the lakes. Politically buying water out of cotton areas is probably an easy decision, but wasn't this supposed to be about the Coorong initially and then the lakes?
I'm not familiar with the Lachlan valley, but the Gwydir wetlands already had a substantial environmental allocation which is rarely used, despite availability, largely because only 36%("normal" year) of the valleys water flow is used for irrigation. Much less than the Murray in general.

Nan, the lakes would be 35,000 EC or so now if it weren't for human intervention. 5-6000 is not so bad if EC is the measure of importance.

rojo,
there sure is a lot of spin around all this to cover up the inaction. it is as if they are paralyzed about the transformations that are taking place across the basin.

Billie,
thanks for the link. Davidson makes some good points about the Brumby Government's water policies. First,

Holding's argument that the Government couldn't go ahead with recycling water from the Carrum water treatment plant because it was too expensive compared with the Wonthaggi desal alternative is simply unbelievable.Carrum cleans up 42 per cent of Melbourne's waste water and pumps it out into the ocean at Gunnamatta.The "waste" water is already clean enough for recycling for industrial uses and parks and gardens. It could even be made fully potable if mixed with potable dam water and cleaned by natural processes.

The plan developed by Melbourne Water in 2002 was to pump part of this water to Yallourn where it could replace 100 gigalitres of potable water used in the production of electricity at Yallourn and also supply irrigators and wetlands along the 140-kilometre route. This would free up 100 gigalitres of potable water for Melbourne, adding about 25 per cent to the city's water supply and removing any need for desalination of sea water.

Secondly,

The north-south pipeline removes 75 gigalitres from Goulburn irrigators. Meanwhile, 100 gigalitres of higher quality water from Carrum will be pumped out to sea. This is the equivalent of destroying $900 million of farm gate revenue a year, increasing the price of Melbourne's food when world food prices are already rising due to climate change.

As Davidson points out the strategy of the Brumby Government is kill the Carrum water recycling project.

Why?

Gary, the biggest shame is that money for water savings is only on the table now. While it is likely to be more expensive per ML returned to the river it would have promoted jobs, or retained jobs at the least. My understanding is that the gov't has bought about 20% of the water entitlements in the Gwydir. Whilst the drought has curbed production and jobs to the extent that there will be no real short term effect, it is a blow to local business hanging on for better times. Now there is less to hang on for.