George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

People living in the North Queensland city of Townsville are currently facing two major issues. One is the need for water security; the other is the need for more local jobs. More local jobs can be created by government investment in infrastructure projects, especially projects that create or expand an industry. Two water projects in North Queensland, the Hells Gate dam and the Urannah dam, will do just that. The latter is a bit further away from Townsville, but technical studies on Urannah are being completed and a draft preliminary business case is due in February. Work already done shows the dam can facilitate 20 new resource projects and 16 existing mines, generate more than 1,000 megawatts of renewable energy and open up more than 40,000 hectares of prime agriculture land for irrigation.

Closer to Townsville, the Big Rocks weir project is just about shovel ready at stage 1 of Hells Gate. It will not only create almost 400 jobs but create them quickly and create them for Townsville jobseekers. That alone would restore 80 per cent of the jobs that were lost at Queensland Nickel. Big Rocks weir, as I said, is stage 1 of the overall Hells Gate dam project. The Hells Gate dam project will create about 12,000 direct jobs. If that project is realised, we'll go from Townsville having an unemployment problem to Townsville having a labour shortage problem, which is a pretty good problem for locals to have. That's why I'm strongly supporting the need for federal funding for Big Rocks weir and Hells Gate dam. That's why I'm also bewildered by the negativity towards the project from Labor. They've, sadly, tried to pit the project against the need for an urban water pipeline from the Clare pump station to the Haughton channel area. I'm advised that pipeline would cost approximately $200 million to build, and the fact is that the LNP candidate for Herbert, Mr Phillip Thompson OAM, and I are strongly supportive of urban water security for Townsville and also of the hundreds and thousands of local jobs that would be created through the Hells Gate project and Big Rocks weir.

Currently, the only immediately available funding for new projects in Townsville is the remaining funds from the $150 million rail project, the TEARC project, that was vetoed by the state Labor government. We've already earmarked $75 million of those TEARC funds to widen the Townsville port access channel, creating hundreds of local jobs right now. The remaining TEARC funds are $75 million and, while I know finances aren't Labor's strong suit, I would've thought they would recognise that $75 million cannot build a $200 million pipeline. Then again, maybe I shouldn't make such assumptions, because, after all, they've promised—for what that's worth—$100 million to build this $200 million pipeline, and I'm not so sure that Townsville's water security, which is a very, very big need for that community, is going to be fixed with a pipeline to a paddock that's 70 kilometres short of Townsville city.