Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I thank senator O'Sullivan for his question. He is absolutely right that the government are committed to creating jobs in Northern Australia and that we intend to do so by using the abundant water resources we have in Northern Australia. Northern Australia accounts for around 40 per cent of our land mass, but more than 60 per cent of our rainfall occurs there. We have abundant water resources there, but they have not been as developed as those of, say, the Murray-Darling, where we are today. So there is great potential to get on with the job and create jobs by using water in those regions.

We have on the table right now $130 million to build the Rookwood Weir. That could be started tomorrow. It has approval from both state and federal governments and it could create 2,100 jobs. It could double agricultural production in the Fitzroy region and also drought-proof the towns of Rockhampton and Gladstone in Central Queensland. We could start tomorrow, but the state government has held it up. They are doing another study and another business case, and they are telling us to come back later this year and see if we can do it then. They are pushing ahead with the Cross River Rail in Brisbane, but they are not building a dam in Central Queensland, creating 2,100 jobs where they are needed.

But we are not stopping there. We also have a $440 million water infrastructure development fund, of which $200 million will be invested in the North. To support those investments we will create a $2 billion low concessional loan facility for state and territory governments to help co-fund their parts of the water infrastructure. There is a fund that will be there to help the state government to do it when they finally come round to making a decision. We have also funded 39 water feasibility studies under the national water infrastructure fund, and 15 of these are in Northern Australia, and we are specifically looking at three basins across the North. The CSIRO are doing excellent work on the Fitzroy River Basin in Western Australia, the Mitchell River in Queensland and in the Darwin region in the Northern Territory. There is so much opportunity out there and we are focused on creating jobs in Northern Australia.