Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House:

(1)

notes that:

(a)

the Queensland Government will soon deliver an environmental impact assessment of its proposed Traveston Crossing Dam to the Federal Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, the Honourable Peter Garrett MP, under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999;

(b)

the Traveston Crossing Dam is an expensive, inefficient, unreliable and environmentally destructive option for delivering water to Brisbane;

(c)

the Traveston Crossing Dam will displace hundreds of Mary Valley families, inundate some of the finest farm land in south east Queensland, and destroy at least $1 billion of infrastructure;

(d)

the Traveston Crossing Dam will decimate the habitat and threaten the survival of the rare or endangered Mary River turtle, the Australian lung fish, the Mary River cod and a range of other species; and

(e)

the Traveston Crossing Dam will significantly reduce water flows into the Great Sandy Straits Ramsar listed wetlands, threatening fish breeding, Dugong feeding areas and the waters of Hervey Bay and World Heritage listed Fraser Island; and

(2)

calls on the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, the Honourable Peter Garrett MP to exercise his powers under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 to reject the Traveston Crossing Dam absolutely.

Two years ago, on the eve of Anzac Day, the Beattie Labor government announced it would build what it described as a megadam on the Mary River at Traveston Crossing. The announcement shocked and devastated the people of the valley. There have been proposals to build a dam at Traveston Crossing in the past but they have always been rejected because this is a woeful site for a dam. State Labor ministers have subsequently admitted that several other dam site options were recommended more highly than Traveston, but Labor chose this project, presumably because it was in an electorate Labor could not win. Labor just does not care when it floods farmers and country towns and destroys the livelihoods of people who live in regional communities.

The Traveston Crossing dam decision follows decades of monumental incompetence by state Labor governments. Premiers like Goss, Beattie and Bligh boasted every week about the number of people migrating from southern states to Queensland; yet, after the defeat of the former coalition government, nothing was spent on infrastructure and services to meet the needs of the growing population.

When a drought came to Brisbane, the city faced a water crisis. Labor’s neglect was starting to hurt. A range of commendable water-saving initiatives were implemented. The government even embraced effluent recycling—a project championed for decades by farmers in the Lockyer Valley and on the Darling Downs but never supported by Labor. Suddenly the government had a change of heart and decided to proceed with recycling but not for the food producers—they commandeered the water and will feed treated sewerage into Brisbane’s water supply.

In an even more audacious initiative, they announced a new south-east Queensland water grid to steal water from fast-growing areas on the Gold and Sunshine coasts and pipe it to Brisbane. The councils and people of the Gold and Sunshine coasts had provided and paid for their future water needs, but their water infrastructure—including the Gold Coast’s desalination plant—was hijacked by the state government and their water is to go to Brisbane.

The Traveston Crossing dam is not needed to meet Brisbane’s water needs. The state government has at long last released a 50-year water plan for south-east Queensland. Their plan includes more recycling, storm water harvesting and six desalination plants. It would take only one more desalination plant to provide the water which Labor plans to harvest from the proposed new dam. A desalination plant would provide water to Brisbane more cheaply, more quickly, more reliably and with much less environmental impact.

A study by the University of Technology Sydney, Cardno and the Institute for Sustainable Futures has identified at least 25 cheaper options to provide water for Brisbane than this dam. The Traveston Crossing dam would be an environmental disaster. It would be a very shallow dam with a large surface area and an evaporation rate above 1.5 metres a year. It will be a large, wasteful evaporation pond. It will be a smelly swamp, emitting huge quantities of greenhouse gases from rotting vegetation every time the dam fills and empties. The dam floods more than 600 properties, including many retirement homes, some of the state’s best dairy and farming country, parts of the town of Kandanga, including its sporting fields and cemetery, and areas in Imbil. At least $1 billion of infrastructure will be destroyed, including 11 kilometres of the national highway.

The impact on the local community has been devastating, destroying the hopes and aspirations of a generation. They cannot believe such a project could be even contemplated. They are repeatedly lied to by the project proponents, they are scoffed at by the Queensland Premier and their tragedy is ignored by the capital city media. Surveys of the half a million people living from the Sunshine Coast to Hervey Bay show that more than 90 per cent oppose this dam. But Labor will not listen.

Apart from an outbreak of common sense or the defeat of the Bligh Labor government, the people of the Mary Valley have one remaining hope to stop this dam—that is, that the federal Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts will use his powers under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to stop the project. The Traveston Crossing dam was declared by the former coalition government’s minister for environment, Ian Campbell, to be a controlled action under the EPBC Act. The new minister will soon receive the environmental impact assessment and the project, therefore, cannot proceed without his consent.

The minister has an obligation to act to protect the environmental values of the Mary Valley. This valley has extraordinarily rich biodiversity. The Australian lungfish lives naturally only in the Mary River and adjacent Burnett River, and the natural environment of the Burnett is already heavily modified. This is an ancient and remarkable species—the only fish in Australia with a lung and one of only three in the world. The Australian lungfish is regarded as the longest surviving vertebrate species in the world and is listed as vulnerable under the EPBC Act. The draft environmental impact study admits that ‘it is not known whether lungfish breed in dams’.

The Mary River is also the home of the unique Mary River turtle—a turtle with gills. The Mary River cod comes only from this river. It was only identified as a separate species in 1993 and is listed as endangered under the EPBC Act. The draft environmental impact study admits that it is not known if the cod can use fishways, but we do know that fishways constructed in the Paradise Dam have been a failure. The tusked frog, the southern barred frog, the elk skink and the challenger skink will all have their habitat destroyed or degraded.

The dam will reduce flows in the river system, with potentially devastating impacts on fish breeding in the rivers of the Great Sandy Strait Ramsar-listed wetlands. The sea grasses in Hervey Bay, an important dugong feeding area, are also threatened. The draft environmental impact study admits that the new dam will be colonised by weed species including the noxious salvinia and water hyacinth. These weeds already cause problems in the Mary River, and it is only the flood flows that clear the river. Damming will reduce the flood flows and leave the river permanently clogged, wiping out other species and making this beautiful waterway unusable for recreation or navigation. Residents in the lower Mary are also concerned that the loss of flood flows will lead to increased siltation and possibly eventually the closure of the river mouth. In the words of nationally known water engineer and kayaker Steve Posselt, who recently paddled the whole river, ‘Don’t Murray the Mary!’

The draft environmental impact study was a farce. Premier Anna Bligh, who released the draft EIS, must think the people of Mary Valley are fools to swallow the nonsense that was passed off as a scientific study. The 1,600-page document and its associated propaganda claim that the Mary Valley will be $244 million a year richer, there will be 778 more people employed permanently—700 people to run a dam?—and the lungfish and the turtle will be better off. And international cricket teams will base themselves at Kandanga! I understand that this glossy EIS has now been withdrawn and a new document is being prepared. I hope it more honestly addresses the real environmental concerns.

The challenge will soon be with the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts. He must have the courage to say no to his Labor colleagues in Queensland. I know Labor blood runs thick, but the case for our unique and precious environment must rise above political allegiances. I am concerned that the minister’s position has already been compromised. There are frequent reports that the Queensland Premier and other ministers will happily tell anyone who asks that they have a ‘wink and a nod’ from the Prime Minister and the former Labor spokesperson on the environment, Mr Albanese, that the federal government will grant an EPBC Act approval. Queensland Treasurer Andrew Fraser told state parliament recently that the government has already spent $500 million on this dam project—all without even submitting an environmental impact statement.

Before the autumn break, I stood at this dispatch box and invited the environment minister to come to the Mary Valley and see the dam site for himself. He said he would and he did, even if he did not tell me as the local member that he was coming. But he spent his day with Mr Graham Newton of Queensland Water Infrastructure, the project proponents. Only a very small group of local residents were even allowed to meet the minister and then only briefly at a truncated meeting before he was whisked away by Mr Newton.

Last year Mr Albanese also visited the site—he said alone. But now it is known that the former Labor shadow minister was also accompanied by Mr Newton. How can local people be confident that the minister will fairly assess the issues of concern when he has so aligned himself with the project’s proponents? No Labor identity, either state or federal, seems to be prepared to even listen to the people whose lives are being destroyed by this dam and those who are prepared to stand up for the precious environment of the Mary Valley.

I appeal to the minister in assessing the EIS to have the courage, the guts, to stand up for the environment and put an end to this disgraceful project. (Time expired)

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Alex Somlyay (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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)

Alex Somlyay (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was interested to hear the comments of the member for Oxley, because they give the member for Wide Bay the grand opportunity to make sure that every person in the Mary Valley gets a copy of that speech on behalf of the federal Labor Party and the Labor Party of Queensland. The member for Wide Bay and I share a common electorate boundary. Areas in the Mary Valley have moved between our various electorates over the past 20 years, so I know the area very well. I share with those people who live in the Mary Valley the heartache that they have been through in this process for the last two or three years.

When Peter Beattie first announced the building of this dam, I was absolutely horrified, and I was not horrified on environmental grounds. The grounds that I was horrified on were that the Mary Valley is some of the best agricultural country in Queensland, something that is becoming a very rare commodity with the urban sprawl that is happening in our region. The member for Wide Bay, as the minister in charge of roads at one stage, was, together with me, involved in a process where the state government had to determine the route of the new Bruce Highway. There was a road being planned from Cooroy to Curra, and there were five alternative routes. There was a lot of heartache for people because their land was threatened with resumption, and the member for Wide Bay stepped in and said, ‘No, we will have the highway following the alignment of the current, existing Bruce Highway to minimise the impact on residents.’ I applauded the member for Wide Bay, the minister at the time, for that, and so did the people of the Mary Valley. Imagine our shock and horror—my shock and horror—at the fact that, when we and the Department of Main Roads had finally determined this route, we had the situation where a state minister was determining the route of the new Bruce Highway and a state minister in a room next door was planning to flood it. At the same time as the minister was planning to build the road, the other minister was planning to flood it. That was my first concern.

My second concern was that the state government deregulated the dairy industry. The dairy industry in the Mary Valley was one of the best and most efficient in Queensland in its time. A lot of money was put into the Mary Valley—again, through the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, the member for Wide Bay—under the Dairy Regional Assistance Program to restructure some of those industries and farms and give them the opportunity to build bigger and better dairy farms. All that—I think it was over $100 million—would have been flooded and wasted, and all the Commonwealth money that was put into the Mary Valley and those dairy farms was wasted.

It was only then that we had the first protest meeting in Gympie about the dam, which I went to. The member for Wide Bay could not be at that very first one, but I was there and I told the crowd at Gympie—there were over 1,000 people; that was an initial reaction to this dam—that the Commonwealth could only intervene on the basis of the environment. We cannot intervene on the basis of land use. Land use is purely a responsibility of the states. I told them that a case would have to be put up on environmental grounds if the Commonwealth were to stop this dam.

The state Labor member for Noosa had the guts to come out and oppose this dam. She resigned from the Labor Party over it, and it cost her her seat. I can guarantee you that the people of the Noosa area and the people in the Mary Valley will never vote Labor again because of the way they have been treated over the Traveston Crossing dam. It is an absolute travesty that the work of four, five or six generations has just disappeared, that their livelihood has been taken from them and that their way of life is gone. (Time expired)

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This motion by the member for Wide Bay is said to be about the survival of the rare or endangered Mary River turtle, the rare or endangered Australian lungfish, the Mary River cod and a range of other species. The only survival that the member for Wide Bay is concerned with is the survival of his rare and endangered party, the National Party. That is what lies behind this motion; that is what lies behind the support that has been given to this motion by the member for Fairfax.

It is striking that this motion by the member for Wide Bay comes from a member of this House who loves dams. The member for Wide Bay has supported dams for his entire time in this parliament. He opposed the draining of Lake Pedder. He supported the construction of the Franklin dam in Tasmania. He supported the construction of the Todd River dam outside Alice Springs. The only thing different about this dam is that it is in the state of Queensland, which is governed by the Australian Labor Party. That is why there is opposition to this dam by the member for Wide Bay. This is an attack on the state government, consistent with what National Party and Liberal Party members are doing repeatedly in this place, which is attacking state governments. It is an attack on the state government of Queensland because the coalition is bereft of ideas for the government of the nation. If there were any ideas for the government of the nation, we would expect to see motions being put forward on national issues in this place by the member for Wide Bay and the Leader of the National Party, not this sort of attack on state governments.

Let us just bear in mind a bit of the history about this. This dam was proposed some years ago. It has been under attack by the member for Wide Bay since 2006, while he was a senior minister of the government and in a position to do something about it. The call that he is now making on the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts is not a call that he made on the minister for the environment in the previous government. He is now calling for a complete abuse of the processes under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act of the Commonwealth, an act passed by the previous government which sets up a very clear procedure as to how environmental assessment of major projects of this nature is to be conducted. It sets up a process where big projects which can be regarded as having a major environmental effect on matters of national environmental significance are declared to be actions which warrant an appropriate assessment. That assessment is now underway. It has been underway since the referral took place in November 2006.

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Who was in government then?

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was when the present opposition was in government, and we did not hear from the member for Wide Bay at that time the call that is now being made in this motion, which is for the minister for the environment not to wait until the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act processes are finished but rather to jump in straightaway and take an action that is well outside the scheme of the act. When in government the National Party and the Liberal Party did not pay much attention to proper processes, and perhaps it should be no surprise that now, in opposition, they seem to have thrown proper processes out the window altogether. It is probably with good reason that they did not approach the former minister for the environment, given his track record in not following proper processes. We could refer to the conduct of the former minister for the environment, the member for Wentworth, in ignoring the advice of his department to invest only $2 million— (Time expired)

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.