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This thing still faces some major obstacles before it can ever get built and given Sydney's record, its an up hill battle. I do expect local interest groups will be against this, everything from its a misuse of water resources, to planning objections, environmental issues, traffic problem, misuse of government land (yes, read the article, its on leased government land). Its the typical nature of Sydney, you can't build anything here that might benefit the greater community anymore. Whilst the proposal is there, that's all it is. Hasn't been submitted for development approval, no environmental impact assessment and no local community opinion sought. Local Iconic names mean little in Sydney either. A classic example of Sydney's local interest groups overriding popular opinion is the whole debacle of the rebuild of Luna Park. Dreamworld only has the Cyclone Coaster because Nth Sydney residents lobbied the government for its removal because it was too noisy and obstructed their view. The fact that Luna Park was there before their apartments were built was irrelevant. Another great example was the Sydney airport noise levy, which added about $3 to every ticket for planes that landed at Sydney airport. Why was it there, so that it could fund reverse cycle air conditioning, insulation and double glazed windows for all the residents around the airport. When they introduced it, the airport had been there for 70 years, longer than most of the residents have been. Don't know if its still added to tickets, but it lasted for atleast 10 years. Wonderland's failure in the end had less to do with aging infrastructure and bad management and more to do with the fact, once again, local interest groups were against the park and stopped its redevelopment and expansion plans, that and the land that it was sitting on was too valuable, in the end a property development group bought it, leveled it and redeveloped it. A key difference with many Australian parks to most others around the world is that they sit on large lots of land. With Wonderland, the park only used about 10% of the land that the company owned. Dreamworld was the same, though I'm sure Macquaire Bank fixed that issue. I really do hope this happens, it would be great to have something more than the pitiful state that Luna Park has descended to, now effectively a convention center with some rides, to go to, but its got a serious uphill battle to get there, which will take a lot more than some nice artwork to win.

I'll believe that this is going to happen when they actually break ground on the site and start construction. Honestly, I hope it happens, but have serious doubts that it will. First problem here is the development application has not been tabled (as mentioned in the article). The current government is about to go to an election, and will almost certianly get thrown out of offce because they are unpopular, incompetent, corrupt and completely useless. The only other political party are complete tools too, but they are they don't have the universal unpopularity problem the current government does. Given this, by the time the development application gets tabled, we will have a new state government, and they are likely to reject it just because it wasn't their idea, and its in an electorate that they never get any votes in anyway. Its the age old political problem, you don't vote for us, we won't do anything in your area. Second problem, Sydney has a sad history of failed themeparks of all nature, there was even a waterpark located less than 10 miles down the road (http://www.ask.com/wiki/Mt_Druitt_Waterworks) that failed. Sydney, for whatever reason, despite being the biggest city in the country, just can't seem to support them. There has been everything from the small crappy parks to big investments, even Sega couldn't make a go of it and they were located in CBD. I seroiusly do hope I am completely wrong and this goes ahead and is successful. On the positive side, it will be run by the effective Australian monopoly themepark operator, so atleast they have a successful history.