Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the weekend I was able to travel back home and there, in Rockhampton, I went and inspected the $1 billion water pipeline that is being built from the Fitzroy River to Gladstone. This pipeline was to deliver 30,000 megalitres of freshwater from the Fitzroy Basin. We'd burn it, or Fortescue and others would burn it, turn it into hydrogen and export it to North Asia. I always thought it was a crazy idea to export freshwater from the world's driest continent. But, be that as it may, that's what the government pumped millions of dollars into. In the end, thankfully, that project is not going ahead.

But I went out there to have a look at how much has been wasted. It is wasted; it is a massive project. A few weeks ago I went and looked at the Gladstone end, which is its own story. At the Rockhampton end of this project there are massive sheds and a huge amount of equipment onsite costing, as I said, $1 billion. From the conversations I've had with people locally, they forgot to put a substation in. So they don't power the water pumps from the grid; they're using diesel pumps. This was notionally for a green hydrogen project, but they were using diesel pumps. Fortunately, that's not going ahead, but, unfortunately, 90 people lost their jobs in Gladstone because of the government's missteps here. On this, they made promises to us all that they would create these jobs.

They've done nothing but waste billions of dollars of government money, taxpayers' money, and they're set to do more. The government is still pushing ahead with more than $10 billion of hydrogen programs as we speak, even though all of this is not working. Even Annastacia Palaszczuk, the former Queensland government premier, said hydrogen is not ready. Isn't it about time we stop wasting money and focus on things that can actually create jobs in this country?