Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to take note of document No. 3, the National Water Commission report. In doing so, I want to highlight again to listeners and readers of these very enthralling debates the Australian government’s water fund, which involves some $2 billion that the Australian government will be investing in water infrastructure to improve water management and practices in the stewardship of the country’s scarce water resources—a very creditable initiative of the Howard government, another initiative which will not only help in saving that scarce commodity but also be very important to Australia’s continued growth, particularly in rural and regional parts of Australia.

During the week, I had the opportunity of meeting with a delegation from the Hughenden area of Northern Queensland. For those senators who are not familiar with the geography of Queensland, Hughenden is roughly halfway between Townsville and Mount Isa. It is important cattle-producing country—it also produces goats and sheep—and could produce a great deal of agriculture were water permanently and readily available. The Hughenden council and the community there have had an application in for a water storage facility for many years now, but they simply cannot get through the red tape of the Queensland government’s water allocation management plan. These management plans have been under consideration now for years. I cannot recall how long they have been going but it is many years, and nothing seems to happen within Queensland. It is pretty much the same as the health situation in Queensland, only not quite as dangerous to human life. But it is one of these things where inertia just seems to set into the Queensland government. They are incapable of making any sort of decision. This proposal by the Hughenden council—and there has been a similar one by the Richmond Shire Council a bit further west for the same thing—has been held up by the inability of the Queensland government to make a decision on this or indeed, as I say, anything else.

Those communities do have carefully thought through plans for water storage—plans that would result in a real backing for the industries in those areas and for the communities that are supported by those particular industries. These communities would like to be part of the federal government’s National Water Initiative. They would dearly like to access some of the funds that might be available. But they cannot get past first base, because of the Queensland government. I would urge the Queensland government to start making some decisions.

The only decision the Queensland government has made up in that part of the world as it relates to water is to absolutely ban any activity on a lot of the rivers that run into the gulf—rivers that for most of the wet season are absolutely chock-a-block with water. The Queensland government has passed wild rivers legislation in an attempt to garner the second preferences of the latte greenies in Brisbane’s leafy suburbs. They have introduced and passed this legislation that affects only those people right up in the gulf. It will have a disastrous effect on those people. But there are only a couple of hundred that it affects and it is out of sight, out of mind for the George Street, Brisbane government that we have in Queensland, a government that is interested only in the politics of any situation and not interested in the lives of those people who live in more remote parts of the state whose wealth and economic future depend upon sensible management of our natural resources. I would certainly urge the Queensland government to start making some serious decisions on their water management plans so that communities like Hughenden, Richmond and many others in the north can actually get going and get to work on the very sensible and sustainable water management proposals they have in hand.