"Labor’s method to pay the bill for the floods basically involves a three stage approach.

"One, kick out the dud lemons that were never going to financially fly, those projects that they were desperately looking for an excuse to strangle, such as the cash for clunkers.

"Two, bang a tax on everybody as some sort of final mechanism to extinguish the sense of goodwill and generosity that has been shown so far by people who have been willingly donating their own private funds.

"Three, go to the seats where they made large promises but never won, such as Dawson, and cut money for such things as flood proofing the Bruce Highway."

"It just doesn’t work when they tell people they need to pay a levy whilst they bung the coins through the NBN poker machine. Don’t cadge charity if you haven’t proven that you can straighten your own affairs up even though you are quite capable of doing so.

"Can the Labor party please explain to all Australians why they are cutting money to flood mitigation projects in the seat of Dawson to raise money to assist in floods? Is it just us or is this logic just slightly perverse?

“It is just plain stupid to dump these two projects that are all about flood-proofing the highway,” Mr Christensen said.

“On the one hand, Ms Gillard is making spending cuts and raising taxes to sort out flood relief efforts and on the other she’s ensuring North Queensland is pretty much kept flood prone.

“There are many other projects that could have been looked at, for instance the multi-billion dollar NBN white elephant.

“I mean what’s more important – downloading movies on the information superhighway or being able to get food supplies through the national highway?

“Ms Gillard’s priorities are all wrong.”

Mr Christensen also said many families in Dawson, particularly those involved in the mining industry, would be subject to the proposed flood tax and would have to pay hundreds of dollars a year to the government.