Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the words just said, but I'll go on to another issue because life moves on.

It was a number of years ago when I first came to parliament that we fought for the extension of Chaffey Dam. They said there was no point to it. They said we couldn't get the environmental approvals through. But we managed to fight for it and deliver it, and it went from 60,000 megs to 103,000 megs. If we hadn't done that, the city of Tamworth would have run out of water. Since that we've done the extension of Quipolly Dam, the Dungowan pipeline, the Wildcroft storage and the Tenterfield augmentation plant in Urbenville.

Going back to the city of Tamworth, a fast-growing city: I was told the other day we have a new subdivision of 2,300 houses—that's a further 10,000 people moving into the city of Tamworth. We need more water. We had the fantasia of costings put forward by the Labor government—that it was going to cost $1.3 billion to extend Dungowan Dam. We never got it tabulated as to exactly how they came up with that money, but now we have no solution whatsoever. They've left us high and dry. They talk about recycling water. That leaves saline brine. Where on earth are we going to put that? They talk about buying water licences. What's the point when there's a drought? Keep it. It runs out. They've got to grasp the nettle and make sure that the city of Tamworth gets a future water supply.