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

I secured $48 million, when I had a bit of a balance of power, to draw up an updated engineering plan with costings for Hells Gates Dam. The LNP gave this money—mine—$48 million, to Townsville Enterprise. They drew up not the Hells Gates but their Hells Gates, and there is one hell of a difference between that and the Hells Gates agreed to and designed by Dr JC Bradfield himself and agreed to by Malcolm Fraser, Prime Minister; by Premier Jo Bjelke-Petersen; by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd; by Premier Peter Beattie; and by Sir Leo Hielscher, one of the greatest citizens of our worthy nation—that was the Hells Gates. But they dreamed up a little, a Lilliputian, LNP Hells Gates.

What it does is to destroy the dream of the Australian people to irrigate inland outback Australia—to take a little bit of water from where it rains all the time and put it out there where there are droughts all the time, in heartbreak country. The scheme protected Ingham from the double flood which would have put the whole town under 30 feet of water, delivered the cheapest and most adequate water supply of any city in Australia in Townsville and delivered to Ayr 100,000 hectares of irrigation. All of that was destroyed by— (Time expired)