Michelle Landry (Capricornia, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources. Will the Deputy Prime Minister advise the House what steps the government has taken to deliver critical water infrastructure across Australia? Is the minister aware of any threats to construction of water infrastructure, particularly in my electorate of Capricornia?

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her question. I understand the frustration she must feel with the Labor Party's inertia, incompetence and excuses in anything to do with water infrastructure. Every day we are working harder to make sure we deliver on water infrastructure.

Just this morning I and the Minister for Water from Western Australia, Minister Mia Davies, signed off a further $6.3 million funding for seven feasibility studies across the state of Western Australia. We talked about projects such as the Myalup-Wellington infrastructure and water-use improvement project which, when constructed, will provide a further 9,000 hectares of irrigation and create 1,500 jobs. We talked about the Southern Forests project, which would involve the construction of a 15 gigalitre dam and create a further 225 jobs. We discussed also the expansion of the Ord River, which would double the capacity of water, taking irrigation and jobs all the way from Western Australia back into the Northern Territory.

What we have also done is to make sure that we continue to work and strive for the further development of Queensland. However, we are getting no support from Queensland. Even though we put $19.8 million on the table for 14 feasibility studies, not one of these have been started. And even though we put $130 million on the table for Rookwood Weir, we have had neither sight nor sound of the Queensland Government wishing to start this. Just to show you the inertia we are up against, the former Premier of Queensland, Premier Peter Beattie, announced in 2006 that Rookwood Weir would be completed by 2011. He even announced the funding to accelerate its construction. In 2006, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was also elected, and so she was elected on the promise to build a dam which she still has not even started. Ten years later and the ironically-named body Building Queensland have said they will have to wait for another year before they get the business case done. This is ridiculous inertia—hopeless incompetence! It absolutely epitomises the Labor Party, whether it is their inability to keep the lights on in South Australia or to build a dam in Queensland.

However, there was one dam they built: they built Cotter Dam in the ACT. It started off at a contract price of $120 million. But that is when the CFMEU got involved. By the time they had finished, it cost $409 million. In fact, in 2012, the CFMEU blockaded the site. This is the same CFMEU which donated more than $2.3 million over five years—$2.14 million to the Labor Party. And everybody asks, 'Where did the rest of the money go?' Well, to their coalition colleagues, the Greens! And what did we get for that? What we got for that was 112 CFMEU representatives before the courts, and 1,129 breaches of the law, and an absolute train-wreck— (Time expired)