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

We know at length what this will provide to the people of Central Queensland, because it's been talked about for so long. More than 10 years ago the former Premier of Queensland Peter Beattie said that he was going to build the Rookwood Weir by 2011, and we're still waiting in Central Queensland for it. We know from the studies that have been done on this that if we were to build the real Rookwood Weir it would deliver 2,100 jobs, it would double agricultural production in the Fitzroy Basin and it would massively expand the food opportunities for Rockhampton and Central Queensland. We're already the beef capital of Australia in Rockhampton. We'd like to be the food capital as well, but the Labor Party in Queensland are trying to deny that future to the people of Central Queensland, because they've run out of money and they don't prioritise our farmers in Queensland. In fact, today we learned that the Queensland government have enough money to spend $1.65 million on a virtual reality centre for the Cross River Rail project—something that doesn't even exist—while they won't build dams.