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

As I said the other day in this chamber, there are enormous water resources in northern Australia, but we haven't appropriately captured and used those at this stage. Last year, we had the CSIRO look at a variety of catchments across northern Australia, one of which was the Darwin catchment. It's got enormous potential. Some of our best scientists from the CSIRO looked at this and identified a range of off-stream storages on the Mary and Adelaide rivers that could be built in the Darwin region. The CEO of Northern Territory Farmers, Greg Owens, said about this work, 'It is a very comprehensive and detailed report which provides the information that our growers need to make decisions in northern Australia.' We are following up on that report. A few months ago I was with Senator McMahon in Darwin announcing further funding for the Adelaide River Offstream Water Storage project. It could create up to 1,400 jobs and increase farming activity in Darwin and the Northern Territory.