Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hughenden is at the centre of the most drought-prone area in Australia. It gets 15 inches of rain, but in one year it got 65 inches—it doesn't leave much for the average. It needs over two inches of rain to simply seal the foot-deep cracks before it actually provides enrichment for grass, yet it has the most nutritional soils in Australia and some of the best in the world. Hughenden is on the Flinders River—6.5 million megalitres—Australia's sixth biggest river. HIPCO, Hughenden Irrigation Project Corporation, will take 360,000 megalitres at most in the irrigation proposal, or around five per cent of the flow of the river. The Flinders is not a river, however. It is a flood for a few months at the start of the year and for the bulk of the year it is a series of waterholes. All that occurs, as far as the environment goes, is that the floods may go over the bridge at Normanton by 20 feet each year to 21 foot each year. Since the underground aquifers—the water and sand bed—will be full all year round, there is an argument that the weirs will actually increase the flows in the river.

In the town, thanks to the free-marketeers the wool industry has gone, the railways have gone and Telstra and electricity workers have half gone—all thanks to privatisation and deregulation. Some 500 jobs have gone from this tiny little town. This proposal will create some 70 farms and an income for an estimated 150 families. Since around 100,000— (Time expired)