Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release Wednesday, 5 November 2014

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au

Barnaby’s agricultural Green Paper fails nation-building test

The “Agricultural Competitiveness Green Paper” released by Minister for Agriculture Barnaby Joyce on 20 October listing 27 possible water infrastructure projects, lacks nation building vision for the future and there’s no guarantee or commitment that any of the projects will be built in any case. So many qualifiers such as “could”, “possible” and “future consideration” pepper the infrastructure proposals that one can conclude the intention is to build as little as possible while bureaucrats spend the next several years writing up feasibility studies, cost-benefit analysis reports and environmental impact studies.

Of the 27 listed water projects, the biggest dam under consideration, the proposed Urannah Dam near Collinsville, Queensland would have a capacity of 1.5 million megalitres. This is a large dam, but would look insignificant alongside Australia’s largest reservoir, Lake Argyle with its massive capacity of 10.7 million megalitres. Or consider the largest reservoir in the Snowy Mountains Scheme, Lake Eucumbene has a capacity of 4.8 million megalitres. Urannah Dam is one of 17 projects in the Green Paper’s category of, wait for it, “Likely to be suitable for further consideration for possible assistance to accelerate feasibility studies, cost benefit analysis or design”. (Emphasis added.) Sir Humphrey Appleby from Yes Minister would be impressed, so don’t hold your breath!

A proposed Nathan Dam on the Dawson River is one of four projects in the Green Paper’s category of “Could warrant future consideration of possible capital investment, but less advanced in stage of development”. Back in 1922, Queensland governor George Nathan announced at the opening of parliament plans to build this dam, but the plan then was to build a three-million-megalitre dam at Nathan Gorge with a 225-metre full supply level. The current proposal is a smaller 888,312-megalitre dam with a 185-metre full supply level.

The Green Paper lists just six projects in the most advanced stage of planning “to allow consideration of possible capital investment within the next 12 months”. Of these projects, five are in Tasmania, the biggest of which, the Circular Head Irrigation Scheme will require $60.7 million of capital investment and will include a small 15,200 megalitre Jims Plain dam. In comparison to the vision of the Tasmanian Hydro-Electric Commission of past decades, today we’re playing in puddles. Lake Gordon and Lake Pedder are connected by a canal and their combined capacity of 11.3 million megalitres even exceeds that of Lake Argyle. Yes, small dams are useful and necessary to benefit local areas, but Australia can only truly prosper with a grand vision.

Contrast this Green Paper’s miserable attempt to talk up dams with China’s commitment to dam-building. China boasts more dams than the rest of the world combined, holding more than half of the world’s roughly 50,000 large dams, defined as having a height of at least 15 metres, or a storage capacity of more than 3,000 megalitres. China boasts the world’s tallest dam, the 305-metre Jinping-I Dam that opened in 2013 and an even taller 312-metre dam now under construction, the Shuangjiangkou Dam on the Dadu River in Sichuan Province is expected to be complete by 2018.

As of this October, China’s central route of its massive South-to-North Water Diversion project is all set to begin operation. It will divert 13 million megalitres of water annually and will supply water for 19 major cities and more than 100 smaller towns in north China. The Three Gorges Dam hydroelectric project, completed as of 4 July 2012, spans China’s Yangtze River and is the world’s largest power station in terms of installed capacity (22,500 MW); its reservoir of 39.3 million megalitres is more than three and a half times the capacity of Australia’s Lake Argyle. The Chinese government has set targets to boost hydroelectric capacity to 284 GW by 2015 and 430 GW by 2020 and is now considering a 38 GW hydroelectric power station on the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra River, half as big again as the Three Gorges Dam, its capacity nearly half as large as the UK’s national grid.

Australia can and must do better. Many of the dams on the Green Paper list, if built, are intended for mining. This is not nation-building—it’s raw materials looting by multinational corporations. Moreover, the proposals are locally focused with no plans for major basin water transfers, which is what made the Snowy Mountains Scheme so successful. In 2002, the CEC issued the special report, “The Infrastructure Road to Recovery”, which contained 18 major water projects. These projects would open up the entire nation and help change our climate and green the deserts.

For example, the Green Paper’s Mole River Dam proposal in northeast NSW is insignificant without building the Clarence River Scheme as designed by the late Professor Lance Endersbee. The Mole River flows into the Dumaresq River and dams on the west side of the Great Dividing Range are crying out for more water east of the Divide. The Bradfield Scheme in Queensland, diverting tropical rainfall to the dry inland also did not rate a mention in the Green Paper.

With a title of “Agricultural Competitiveness”, the Green Paper is a fraud from conception. Competition monetarist theory and bankers’ arithmetic is killing Australia’s economy. We need a national bank to finance visionary projects. Join the CEC to fight for true nation-building.

Click here for a free copy of the CEC’s 2002 New Citizen Special Report, “The Infrastructure Road to Recovery”, which details 18 large-scale water projects that would transform Australia into a food bowl for the world.

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