Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

It is a state which lives on hydro power and yet, when you talk about hydro power in any other state, suddenly it is bad, it is wrong and you cannot have it. You can have it in Tasmania but not anywhere else. Perhaps one of the Greens senators might tell me why it is good in Tasmania but not good in Queensland.

Fortunately, a new government in Queensland is seriously looking at hydro power. The Burdekin Dam has been up for some time—an initiative of the Fraser Liberal government—and now there is considerable money being spent on putting a small hydro-electricity power plant on it. There are opportunities to raise the dam wall and to increase the power supply from doing so. There was also a community meeting, just a couple of weeks ago up in Ravenshoe, at which the Tully-Millstream Koombooloomba Dam extension was discussed at length. Quite a bit of work has been done on that.