Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to speak again tonight briefly about the dams that have been proposed by the Beattie Labor government in Queensland, my home state, and indeed in the south-east corner where I reside. These are known as the Traveston dam on the Mary River, just south of Gympie, and the other dam is proposed for Rathdowney, usually called the Tilley’s Bridge dam, on the Logan River near Beaudesert, south of Brisbane.

I very genuinely call on the Beattie government to recognise that these proposals, particularly with regard to the Traveston dam, are absolutely and undoubtedly doomed to fail. I believe very strongly that it will save the people of that region an enormous amount of anguish, suffering and angst if Mr Beattie and his government recognise now that that proposed dam is completely untenable, would be immensely expensive and completely inefficient, and is simply not going to work. And that is before you look at the environmental impacts—the impacts on the severely endangered species of that region.

I note that the local federal member for that region, the member for Fairfax, Mr Somlyay, and indeed the member for Wide Bay, Mr Truss, have both expressed concerns based on slightly different issues—from my reading of them, anyway—about that particular dam. I am surprised, I must say, that I have not heard similar concerns expressed by the relevant federal member, the Liberal member for Forde, Mrs Kay Elson.

There are different factors with regard to the Rathdowney dam, although there are also similar issues, particularly the unlikelihood of the dam producing anywhere near the amount of water that is proposed. I very strongly suggest that the proposal to put a dam on the Mary River is simply never going to happen, but whilst this battle continues—and it has the potential to continue literally for years—the people living in that area will continue to suffer enormously from uncertainty and fear about what the future holds for them. Given that there are so many clear and logical arguments as to why this dam is completely untenable, it would be far better for the people of that region if the government simply acknowledged this up-front rather than putting everybody through that trauma over such a long time, continuing to waste significant amounts of taxpayers’ money in the process.

We have seen this again just in the last couple of days with the state minister responsible for water, Mr Palaszczuk, acknowledging that the dam wall in the Traveston area will have to be realigned after initial drilling failed to hit bedrock at the proposed location. From all that I have heard, such bedrock as has been found is far deeper than was anticipated. Trying to put a dam wall in place at a very great depth will add further to the expense and affect a whole range of other issues with regard to the viability of the dam. If I were a betting person, which on most occasions I am not, I think there would be a lot of money to be made from starting a book on precisely what date the announcement will be made that the decision has been made not to go ahead with this dam.

I think the arguments against this dam are so comprehensive that it is almost beyond belief that it will be built, and the only possible reason it would be built would be out of sheer, intransigent bloody-mindedness. It would not be the first time that completely crazy decisions have been continued with at massive public expense purely because of a government’s inability to admit that it was wrong. One thing that most people do acknowledge about Mr Beattie, whatever else their views of him might be, is that he is pretty good, as far as premiers or leaders of governments go, at admitting that he is wrong. He actually does it quite often. He apologises a lot and he usually gets away with it. So I call on him to use that great skill of his, acknowledge that he has got this one wrong, back down now, save everybody a lot of anguish, save the taxpayers of Queensland a lot of money and look at other options. What he called, astonishingly, the ‘Armageddon option’ of recycling waste water that has been purified back into the drinking system is something that I believe should be put at the top of the priority list rather than left in some bizarre political wasteland called the ‘Armageddon option’. Once we hear that from the Beattie government, I will start to believe that we are finally seeing some sanity in Queensland’s water policy.