Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources. Is the minister aware that Australia north of a line drawn from Rockhampton to Karratha contains around 40 per cent of our arable land and three-quarters of our water while containing, except for a very narrow coastal strip, only one per cent of our population and agricultural production? Would the minister not agree, in the light of the overtaxing of water resources in southern Australia, that successive governments have miserably failed to achieve any balanced national development? Finally, could he assure the House that water development will take place in Northern Australia, particularly the ‘self-funding’, ‘fully researched’ projects such as Richmond Dam, and that these projects will not, for the nth time, be studied but will this time actually be built?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. The honourable member is correct in saying that the bulk of Australia’s water resources are in Northern Australia and that it has only a very tiny fraction of our population and a tiny fraction of our agriculture. Water planning in Australia has been bedevilled, particularly in the last three decades or so, by a lack of long-term vision and long-term planning. There has been a tendency to make very short term political decisions in order to seek a particular electoral result on a particular occasion and to deny the type of long-term vision that the country needs.

Nobody is more experienced at this sort of short-term thinking and the consequences of it than the Leader of the Opposition. Of course, it was the Leader of the Opposition who decided, together with his then boss, Mr Goss, who was then the new Premier of Queensland, not to build the Wolffdene Dam in 1989. That was a classic case of the problem of short-termism you see right around Australia. There was a long-term problem. The honourable member talks about the long-term challenge of agricultural development in Northern Australia. It has to be met with a long-term response. South-east Queensland had the long-term challenge of water shortage and a growing population. It had to be met with a long-term response. But, when put to the test, the member for Griffith failed dismally. He made a short-term political decision and condemned his neighbours, the community in which he lives, to the devastating drought which they are experiencing.

The contrast between the short-term thinking of the Leader of the Opposition and the long-term thinking of the Prime Minister and this government could not be more stark. The National Plan for Water Security looks decades into the future—not a few years but the rest of this century. We are endeavouring to set up the most efficient use of Australia’s water over many decades to come. We have established a Northern Australia task force whose task it is to examine the potential for further land and water development in Northern Australia. This is a long-term job. The reality is that water projects are always controversial. They always take a long time to build. The environmental issues are always complex and take a long time to examine. But you have to start somewhere. The member for Griffith would know the great Chinese saying, ‘The journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step.’ The problem the member for Griffith has demonstrated is that he does not have the character to begin the first step. Without that type of leadership he has no capacity to be the Prime Minister of this country.