It would be remiss if the Shadow Minister for Water did not talk about water in one of the nation’s biggest floods in history. A flood area approximately the size of NSW covers Queensland. As I speak I am looking out the window at around about 300,000 mega litres a day moving down the Balonne River. To give you some idea Lake Burley Griffin holds approximately 33 000 ml, so at the peak of this flood the water passing the front of my house would fill Lake Burley Griffin ten times a day. This water is beyond beneficial, it’s causing massive damage, destroying crops, shops and people’s homes. This is the second time it has happened in a year.
In the Fitzroy water catchment system directly to the north of the Murray Darling Basin, even more water is going through the towns of Emerald, Theodore, Rockhampton and many others unfortunately. The Burnett River and Bundaberg has also been equally affected by the floods.
When you have floods like this, whole sections of our economy come to a grinding halt. What is as frustrating as the floods is the fact that we have a pathological abhorrence to say the word ‘dam’, as opposed to the terms ‘school halls’ or ‘ceiling insulation’. Dams are the mechanism for which you can store water to create massive cash flows in later years as well as mitigate the effects of floods. The reason Brisbane is not flooding at the moment is because of the massive dam that now sits at the headwaters of the Brisbane River, built by the much maligned, but as far as infrastructure goes quite visionary, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. When he built Wivenhoe Dam he was ridiculed for being excessive and other land that was bought for another site for Wolfdene Dam was promptly sold off at the change of government.
During the last drought however it appeared that Sir Joh Bjelke-Peterson had not built enough dams so Wyaralong dam was constructed as well as a multi billion dollar piping grid to move water around South East Queensland.
In a couple of years time there will be another drought and once more there will be a solution like the current Draft Guide to the Murray Darling Basin Plan. We will be told to close sections of the economy that produce the food and generate income for our nation. In the process we will shut down the towns that are supported by this economy. The good citizens of Canberra will be placed back on permanent water restrictions and told that it is evil to water your garden and that washing your car is an anathema.
Why don’t we build more water storages? Why don’t we create the mechanism to move water more prudently from where and when it is in abundance to where and when it is needed?
In the policy I took to the election for the water portfolio I put aside $500 million as seed capital for the construction of water infrastructure or investment in other processes that leads to the conservation and better use of water such as plant genetics for major crops, so they are less water reliant. I also put together the infrastructure partnerships scheme as a mechanism to attract private savings into nation building infrastructure. This would be done by a 10% reduction of the relevant tax paid from the profits of this infrastructure. For example if a super fund built a dam and sold the water the profits of that sale would be taxed at five cents in the dollar.
Most recently, whilst on the flooded Murrumbidgee, I announced that on election of a Coalition government a panel of engineers would be tasked to investigate the most water efficient and cost efficient sites for the construction of storages.
I will now sit back and wait for the barrage of scepticism and criticism that will follow this announcement. They come in 3 main forms:
1. Dams are evil, in fact we are evil. Gardens, clean cars and food are especially evil.
2. Why didn’t the Coalition do it before? The ‘why didn’t you do it before argument’ taken to its absurd extremities would mean that in the history of humanity nothing would have been built.
3. There are no sites left for dams and Australia is too dry. Part one is absurd in a country the size of Western Europe and part two is patently wrong, refer to your television tonight to confirm this.