Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator, I do not have nine staff. Be very careful what you say, particularly outside. I initiated the inquiry and I am very proud to have done so with my colleague Barnaby Joyce. I saw a crossing on the Traveston as a travesty of justice for the people in the Mary Valley and, after I spent a number of days at Senate inquiries, I found my worst fears were justified. I cannot believe that there could be a worse place to construct a dam. After listening to five, six, seven or eight days of the Senate inquiry, I noted the evidence became stronger that this was the last place that we should put a dam.

There are parallels between this dam and the amalgamations of councils: find a National Party seat and then just dump on it. That is what happened with this proposal to put the dam forward. I was given some hope after seeing a report put out by Anna Bligh, the Deputy Premier, in which she said that they will have another look at it—that maybe there should be further inquiries and even an option of no dam at all—but when I went on the media she said, no, they were going to bulldoze ahead with it.

There are a number of reasons why this dam should not go ahead. Firstly, it will be a shallow mud hole. It will have evaporation and seepage problems. It is built on an alluvial floodplain. Whether there is an adequate catchment is another thing. Once the Mary River used to be able to take warships up to Maryborough but, already, where the Mary River flows into the Great Sandy Strait it is now about a metre deep at the mouth. Putting a dam across it will exacerbate the shallowness further.

The dam is just not feasible and is just stupid. When answering questions, the public servants said they had built the dam on a GHD report that had 35 pages in it, 15 of which were maps and six were blanks. There were no engineering studies or feasibility studies. There were no economic statements. They were just going to build a dam there. The reasoning seemed to be: ‘We have a water problem and people are getting worried about it. Let’s do something about it,’ and they thought they would find somewhere to do it. The embarrassment of the public servants was overwhelming. When I asked them: ‘Do you normally go in Queensland and build a $1.7 billion structure on a 35-page report, which is about 15 to 20 pages of fact done on a desk top?’ they were very embarrassed. They were put in an unbelievably embarrassing position.

My colleagues—Senators Russell Trood, Barnaby Joyce and Ian Macdonald—and I have added some comments. We believe that no work should be undertaken on the construction of the Traveston Crossing Dam without alternatives being properly and fully investigated. We said that you should investigate increasing the capacity of the Borumba Dam and have additional desalination plants, and I believe that is the future for Queensland’s water, yet the desalination report was hidden and required the Courier-Mail, under freedom of information, to bring it out. Now, of course, we are reaching the stage where, in Queensland, the state government is stealing water from the North Coast, putting pressure on the aquifers on Stradbroke Island. Everyone will be interconnected to feed the needs of Brisbane. This should never have happened. When Mr Rudd was responsible for the state government, he was responsible for closing down a dam around Beenleigh that would have provided adequate water supplies to Queensland. This he removed when he was the coordinator-general.

A dam should not go in at Traveston. It is a fill-gap position and should not be there. It has caused tremendous inconvenience and worry to the people in the Mary Valley. I hope that, after seeing this report, which is supported by the Labor Party, and our additional comments, Anna Bligh will have a change of heart for the people of the Mary Valley. I hope she will show some sympathy to those people.