Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am glad to be speaking on this motion. After hearing the ramblings and babblings of the member for Wide Bay, I can see that he has learnt nothing from his experiences in government and he is going to learn nothing from his experience in opposition. It is a real turn-up for the books, I have got to say, to hear this former minister talking about turtles and lungfish and biodiversity and the environment, in this place. He sounds like a greenie, like he has just woken up to the fact that there is an environment, when there is no dam that he has come across in his life that he has not supported.

Let me just give the member for Wide Bay and a number of other people some facts. Queensland has actually been in and out of drought for many decades, and the reality is that few governments have had the courage to make the hard decisions that need to be made. Well, the Queensland government are making those tough decisions, and they are doing that in a proper way, through a proper process. The Nationals would have no idea what I am talking about. I am talking about a real process, using environmental impact assessments, going through the proper motions in terms of what needs to be done to assess the viability of this essential water infrastructure. But again the Nationals would have no idea; they are more used to the ‘regional rorts’ program where you just tick something off if it is a mate’s project but do not make any assessment as to its viability.

Queensland is going through the biggest water infrastructure reforms in its history. Right now, the Queensland state government is investing billions of dollars in making sure that all Queenslanders have a water future—not just a few Queenslanders in a few National Party seats. If you listened to the member for Wide Bay, that was what he was talking about. It is not about Queensland. He has divvied up Queensland into a few family farms and he makes all his decisions and the Nationals do all their decision making based on an issue’s impact on a few family farms, but they forget about all other Queenslanders. Queenslanders expect a lot more than that. They expect some courage and they expect something to be done, which is exactly what is happening right now. Billions of dollars are being invested in water recycling, something that the member for Wide Bay still opposes, using the old rhetoric, the old speak. He still does not agree with it. He still goes out there and uses emotional language, talking about sewage going back into drinking water. If he were serious about water recycling, serious about a water future, he would not be using that sort of language.

It is Labor that is doing the desalination plants. It is Labor that is building the dams. It is Labor that is putting in the water-recycling pipes. It is Labor that is taking the issue of water recycling in Queensland seriously—something that the Nationals never took seriously when they had the opportunity. This debate is just typical of them. They are loud, tough and strong in opposition when they cannot do anything but, when they are in government, they are meek and mild and quiet because their masters, the Liberals, tell them not to say anything at all.

So I am very happy to be following the member for Wide Bay in talking about his motion, because Queenslanders do understand the very important and serious nature of this subject, of what this motion should actually be about. No amount of grandstanding and preaching by this former minister will do anything to save either himself or his party from where they are at at the moment. Nor does anyone take seriously their feigned concern about wetlands, turtles and lungfish. If it came from somebody else, you might take it seriously, but no-one believes it coming from the Nationals. No-one actually believes it. This is the irony of the debate before us. There is no way that a trumped-up Liberal in gumboots is going to prove to anybody out there that they are actually concerned about lungfish or turtles. They are just concerned about the family farm, which would be fair enough if they were actually going to do something about it that meant something.

The reality is that Queensland is facing the most dire position in terms of water security that it has ever faced. If you left it up to the Nationals, you would never get anything done. There is no courage. There is no plan for the future. There is nothing at all. They cannot even figure out a plan to save themselves; how are they going to save the rest of Queensland? The reality is that this motion is more about cheap political point scoring than anything else. It is an ineffective, inefficient motion. It is clumsy, it is hypocritical and it is an attempt by the Nationals to try to look relevant for just one more bleak moment, because that is all that is left to these guys. They will do anything and say anything when it comes to scoring cheap political points.

On a more technical note, if this was a serious motion, it would not be before us right now, because right now the Queensland Labor government is actually going through a proper environmental impact assessment, where the merits of this project, this infrastructure, will be judged against something that the Nationals just do not understand and do not comprehend. They have gone off just a little bit too early, just a little bit half-cocked—coming into this place, trying to convince people that somehow this is all a done deal. We will see if it is a done deal. If it is, at least it will be based on a merit process, at least it will have gone through the motions, at least there will be proper compensation and at least we will have done this right and gone through the processes.

The member for Wide Bay shakes his head, because when they were in power they would not have even done that; they would have just made whatever decision they liked—good, bad or indifferent. They would have asked no-one, consulted with no-one and not gone through any process. That is what would have taken place. We will go through the proper process. We will assess through a fair dinkum process what the merits of this critical bit of infrastructure are. It is not just about the divide that the member for Wide Bay talked about. He used the emotive language of ‘stealing water’ from the Gold Coast. No-one is stealing water from anyone else. The water does not belong to just one group of people; it belongs to all Queenslanders. We have to share the resource. We have to use the resource as best we can. That is the reality and that is something that the Nationals just never understand. It is all about a one-sided debate, a one-sided argument, where it all lands back to their vested interests.

The member for Wide Bay mentioned inviting the minister up to have a look at the site. There is a lot more involved in a multi-billion-dollar piece of infrastructure going through a full assessment process than just having a couple of Liberals in gumboots turning up in a four-wheel drive one Sunday afternoon, putting on the hard hats, donning the protective reflective vests, pointing to a few hills and a few gullies, having a bit of a chat amongst themselves, then retiring back to the local pub for a counter meal and talking about it all. There is a lot more to assessing a multi-billion-dollar project than that. Through his own admission, that is what the member for Wide Bay just said. He has made an assessment on a multi-billion-dollar project on the basis that he turned up on site, stood somewhere in the middle of a gully, I assume, pointed to the hills and looked around—what a nice day it was. On that basis he made his decision. That was the old days of the Nationals; that is how they used to make decisions. Let me tell you: now there is a new process called environmental impact assessment. In this case that has not been completed. There are laws, there are acts of parliament, that govern how this is done. So let the process go through and let that be done properly before you make your own assessment.

It will be interesting to compare assessments. I am sure there will be a voluminous collection of research, documents and consultations. It will be interesting to read through that document and see what that says—compared to turning up on site in a four-wheel drive one Sunday afternoon, sniffing the breeze a little bit and saying, ‘Well, I think we might be able to make some political capital out of this,’ because, in the end, that is what we are talking about. If these guys were actually serious about water, they would be doing a little bit more than just sniffing the wind. I suggest they wait until this process is completed.

I will turn briefly to the technical nature of this motion. I want to raise a couple of issues that are written in there. This is typical of the Nationals: when all the tough decisions have to be made, they walk the other way. This is the same guy who protested about one dam but was happy to support the Franklin Dam in Tasmania. They will protest about one dam but they are happy to support any other dam. There is a pattern building here and the pattern is simple: they will support any dam so long as it is their idea, but they will not support a dam if it is Labor’s idea or if it is being done while Labor is in government. I do not think that is a good way to make a judgement or assessment on the way that this critical bit of infrastructure needs to be provided.

The member for Wide Bay says in his motion that the Traveston Crossing dam is expensive. That is pretty good—you must have used the same mathematics that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition used when she said that $40 million was expensive compared to $8 billion. The reality is that all dams are expensive but they are an essential piece of infrastructure. He says it is ‘inefficient, unreliable and environmentally destructive’. How does he know that? He does not know that. Turning up on site does not give you that sort of assessment. He talks about the dam displacing hundreds of Mary Valley families and inundating some of the finest farming land in south-east Queensland. The reality is that it will displace some families, and those families will be more than amply compensated for that displacement. The reality is that there is actually a very generous and fair compensation package in process, in train. (Time expired)

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