James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I start, I want to thank all those who are in Queensland and New South Wales and other parts of Australia, but particularly Queensland, helping to protect us from the fires. In particular, I've been in touch with my lower house colleagues, and Keith Pitt and Michelle Landry are out talking to people on the ground.

There's one of the regions impacted by the fires today that I want to focus on, and that's Bundaberg and the Wide Bay Burnett region, a part of Queensland that is known for its produce but is also about to become known for having the country's greatest—I use that word advisedly—infrastructure fail, and that is the failure of Paradise Dam. It is a massive and serious infrastructure fail, where a 14-year-old dam is being emptied, in KGB-esque secrecy. There are very serious concerns held by the community, because the Queensland Labor government is refusing to explain to local farmers, landholders, families and businesses why it is flushing 105,000 megalitres of water—this liquid gold, in the middle of a drought—from the Paradise Dam out to sea.

The silence coming from the Palaszczuk Labor government is deafening. They won't say why they're reducing this dam's capacity to just 42 per cent. So, in Queensland, we have a Labor government who are not only not building dams; they are emptying dams. They won't specify what safety issues they've identified with the dam which have led to the sudden release of water. They won't say whether they've explored any other options for the use of the water that was released into the Burnett River and wasted, flushed out to sea—water that could have been used to fight the fires that are impacting upon the region as we sit in this chamber or that could have been used to help ameliorate the drought. They won't say if the dam will ever be restored to its previous capacity. They won't say whether any flood modelling has been done in relation to the decision. They won't say anything.

This is the greatest infrastructure fail ever in Australia—a dam that was built only 14 years ago, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars, is now about as useful as a chocolate teapot. There are secrets hidden in the Kremlin that have a greater chance of being exposed than state Labor telling us the truth about this infrastructure fail. The Queensland Labor minister responsible, Anthony Lynham, has managed only to say that the release of water is due to an 'unspecified safety issue'. For a government to simply float a suggestion of a safety issue with a dam amongst a community that endured significant flood events just a few years ago is irresponsible at best and ignorant at worst.

I join my federal colleagues Keith Pitt and Ken O'Dowd in supporting Deb Frecklington and local state MPs Steven Bennet, Col Boyce, Ted Sorenson and David Batt, along with the Bundaberg mayor, Jack Dempsey, and the LNP in Queensland in their call for a parliamentary inquiry into Paradise Dam. With the drought continuing, bushfires burning and summer around the corner, there simply cannot be any more secrets. The community deserves to know what is wrong with this dam, when it will be fixed, why the secrecy, what Labor have to hide and what the dam plan is in the meantime. These are basic questions that any government should be willing and able to answer. Queenslanders are instead being fed a diet of silence interspersed with Labor yibber-yabbering talking points.

Palaszczuk, when she was elected Premier, promised to be open, transparent and accountable, and it is time the Premier stopped hiding the bureaucrats, put an end to the secrecy and delivered the answers this community deserves. A massive infrastructure fail like Paradise Dam cannot be hidden forever under the sofa in the Premier's office. Instead of state Labor pulling the plug on this dam, Queensland needs to pull the plug on this state Labor government, who have given Queensland the nation's biggest infrastructure fail.