Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

Wilcannia is a town in the Parkes electorate. It's on the banks of the Darling River and it's a town with a wonderful heritage. The people of Wilcannia have been promised a weir to improve the reliability of their water supply and also the amenity of the town. For river towns like Wilcannia, when there's water adjacent to the town the community is in a much better space.

Some years ago, David Littleproud, the member for Maranoa, myself and the then New South Wales water minister, Noel Blair, announced the funding for this weir in Wilcannia on the banks of the river. Over a period of time, the New South Wales government liaised and consulted with the community and came up with a proposal to build a weir that would raise the water by an additional metre to what the old weir did. After, I guess, the confusion of the change of government in New South Wales, the bureaucracy changed that to having a weir that will only raise the level to the same as the original one. The people of Wilcannia feel dudded. The lands council, the flood plain graziers and the local shire council are unified in wanting this weir built to the original proposal, and they don't want to be short-changed.

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