Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. I thank him because, when we are talking about Hell's Gate and if someone were going to open the gates of hell, it would have to be the member for Kennedy.

I note that that is also a proposition that is well supported by those in Townsville where the business enterprises also want to see an expansion of the water infrastructure in that area.

I can assure the member for Kennedy that, on this side of the chamber, we are doing everything in our power to progress the water infrastructure program. In fact, we expect that, by the middle of March, all proposals will be in and we can hopefully start assessments by the end of March.

There are already a number of proposals underway in the north that we are looking at—the Ord; Nullinga Dam; on the Mitchell, which I think is in the member's electorate; and Darwin. These areas are all under investigation as we speak. There is a further $25 million on top of that for investigative purposes, and we have had well over 50 applications come in for that.

I know that the member for Kennedy is a person who is absolutely proactive in making sure that we get things built: that we do not just have the discussion, that we do not just have engineering reports but that we actually start rolling things out. The member for Kennedy is only too right to say: 'Show us the evidence that you're actually doing things.' I am happy to inform the member for Kennedy that we expect that Chaffey Dam will be complete by April. That was one of the first dams of the project, and we will be looking forward very quickly. The start of it was actually when I went up there and made the final announcement, and we finally got the money through the selection process.

Mr Fitzgibbon interjecting—

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