Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

That comment has been made before, Senator Mason. It is indeed moving at a snail's pace; you are absolutely right. But with the new one-stop shops that the government has implemented, we have signed an agreement with Queensland. Unfortunately the Labor Party do not want to see dams built; they do not want to see a streamlined environmental approvals process. We have not got the legislation through this place, but there should be some benefit through that one-stop shop that Minister Hunt has put in place. That dam will be used for agriculture and is very important for the cotton industry in Central Queensland, around Emerald. It could really increase the efficiencies and scale of that industry.

Two other sites I want to mention tonight are Eden Bann and Rookwood. Eden Bann is already a weir, but we can expand that weir, and Rookwood would be a new weir. All up they would store around 200,000 megalitres—pretty large. And they principally would be used for local agriculture in the Rockhampton region, largely horticulture, and also to supply Gladstone with water for its industrial needs, which are getting to be pretty scare at the moment.

All in all, there are plenty of very good sites in this region. It is an untapped resource that I hope the government will now focus on. The Minister for Agriculture, Barnaby Joyce, released a green paper last week in which he says he wants to build dams. All these sites are listed among those 27, so I hope we can see them come to fruition—and so do the people of Emerald and Moranbah; they want these dams to come to fruition as well. Firstly, they will be great construction projects to provide jobs in this region—jobs that are sorely needed given the slowdown in the mining sector and the coalmining sector in Central Queensland. More importantly, these projects will provide reliable, consistent and affordable supplies of water for these towns and communities. In Moranbah they rely on mining companies to provide them with water. It is not a very secure position for them to be in, and, as I said, with these new mine developments water is becoming scarce for those industries. And Emerald, while its water will not benefit directly from these dams, is at risk. If we cannot find new sources of water these new mines will come to Fairbairn Dam near Emerald and seek to take the water from there, and that will mean lower agricultural production in the Emerald region, and fewer jobs. And it will not be expanding our agriculture or our food bowl but detracting from it, and I do not want to see that.

I think we have outlined an agenda as a government to build dams, and we need to try to see these come to fruition now. Dams are hard things for the private sector to do alone, because they are very large projects that pay off over many years and they are exposed to great regulatory risks from government, both around the quantity of water that is provided and around the pricing of that water over time. That is all regulated by governments. There is therefore a need for the public sector to take some of those risks, to share those risks with the private sector to ensure that these viable projects which are going to provide great community benefits in terms of jobs, in terms of food and in terms of better water security go ahead.