Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator McDonald for her question and know about her passion for supporting the development of North Queensland. You need to have reliable and affordable energy to develop any part of the country. As I know Senator McDonald would know well, in North Queensland there is not a reliable base load form of power supply. The last northern-most power station of that kind is west of where I live, which is in Rockhampton, and where Susan lives, which is up in Townsville. There's nothing in between or, indeed, further north of Townsville, so it's very exciting that the government was able to announce a couple of weeks ago that the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility had approved a loan of $610 million for a proposed power station to be built in an old gold mine.

Genex Power's Kidston pumped hydro project would provide reliable and affordable power for North Queenslanders to protect jobs in North Queensland, to help families in North Queensland and to bring down electricity prices in North Queensland, and it would also have benefits across Queensland given electricity prices are averaged for households across the state. The project itself would also, of course, have a lot of direct benefits. Five hundred and ten people are expected to be employed in its construction in an ongoing fashion, and there will be 30 full-time jobs. Overall, Deloitte estimates that it will provide a $235 million economic benefit to the Queensland economy, and part of those benefits include electricity price savings of around $500 million from this project alone.

These investments and other investments that the government is making are directly helping to bring down power prices, because the way we bring down power prices is to invest in more power supply. If we have more power supply, that will help take the pressure off power prices, and that's why we support all types of power generation. That's why we support the ambition of North Queenslanders to have the same types of reliable power supply that the rest of the country has, and that's why this investment from the NAIF is such a game changer for North Queensland.