Senator TROOD (Queensland) (11.55 a.m.)—I want to take the opportunity to make a few remarks on this particular issue because it is one of great interest to my constituents. It is a matter about which I have addressed the Senate at some length in the past. It is a matter which is very close to my heart, as it is of course, more so, to the people of the Mary River valley. I will not canvass in full detail the shortcomings of this particular proposal with regard to the Traveston Crossing dam; Senator Joyce and Senator Bartlett have rightly articulated those with some force. This is a fundamentally ill-conceived proposal. It is bad on environmental grounds most particularly. It is bad economically. It is bad socially for the region. In fact, what is mystifying about it is that there seems to be almost nothing that can be said in support of this particular proposal.

I am not one of those people who think we should not be building dams. Indeed, I think there is a place for dams in the context of addressing the wide range of issues which confront the Australian community right across the country in relation to the provision of water. Desalination, dams, recycling, conservation and other methods should all be considered. I am certainly of the view that dams ought to be part of that mix in trying to address this very serious problem.

What is surprising is that this particular proposal has only one proponent. There is only one advocate for this particular proposal—that is, the Queensland government. It strikes me as peculiar in the context of infrastructure developments around the country, where often there is a need for a community or an individual to yield to wider community and public interest. There are those who recognise that their own particular interests might be affected and those in a community who are prepared to say, ‘I know you’re going to be affected, I know your particular concerns are at risk, but there is a wider community interest.’

What is interesting about this particular proposal is that there is only one advocate for it. I have waited, breathlessly almost, to find someone else who would support the proposition of the Beattie government that this dam ought to be built in this particular place, and no-one has come forward. Indeed, all the professional studies that have been prepared by those who are anxious about this proposition make the point that there are better ways to address the needs of south-east Queensland’s water requirements than building this particular dam.

So it is absolutely mystifying to me that the Beattie government presses this matter with a kind of ideological passion when, as Senator Joyce has rightly pointed out, there is an alternative not far away. What is particularly peculiar about this as a matter of public policy is that the Beattie government seems entirely reluctant to consider alternatives, if not determined not to consider alternatives—for example, the Borumba proposal that Senator Joyce has rightly mentioned to the chamber this morning. Why is that? Why is it that there is such an obsession? Frankly, I cannot provide an answer. It is one of the things about this particular issue that I find most vexing indeed.

This particular motion seeks to refer the matter to a Senate committee. Standing in my name and in the names of Senators Boswell and Joyce is a proposal that was put on the Notice Paper yesterday in relation to a similar topic. The people of the Mary River need an opportunity to ventilate their concerns. They have largely been shut out of any sensible, rational opportunity to communicate their concerns about this particular proposal to the Queensland government. They have been frustrated that the process so far has been so fundamentally dishonest—it has so fundamentally misrepresented its intentions to the point where we have yet to find a likely location for the dam wall. I think we are up to proposal 3 or 4 so far. We still do not have a place where this dam wall might be constructed.

This is creating an enormous amount of uncertainty and anxiety in the community. I, like Senator Joyce, have addressed public meetings in the area. It has been in some respects a very traumatic process, with people weeping about the consequences and the way in which this has been handled. This is no way to run a public policy railway. The Beattie government ought to do better. I have made it clear, as Senators Bartlett and Joyce have mentioned, that this inquiry will not take the place of the procedures that have been put in place under the Environmental Protection Act; what it will do is give them an opportunity, which they have hitherto been denied, to put their views and express their opinions to the Senate in relation to this proposal.

I would particularly encourage the Senate to look at the proposal in the notice of motion yesterday as in fact a wider proposal than the one that Senator Siewert moved this morning. Ours seeks to look more generally at the water requirements of south-east Queensland and it seeks to explore why it is that these needs have not been met—why it is that the water needs of south-east Queensland have been so fundamentally mismanaged by the Beattie government.

We ought to in that context pay some attention to the complicity of the new opposition leader of the federal Labor Party, Mr Rudd. As a bureaucrat in the former Goss Labor government in Queensland, it would seem he was directly responsible for ensuring that a particular dam proposal, which might well have addressed some of the water needs of Queensland and might well have provided precisely the kind of infrastructure that was needed and perhaps might not have placed us in this crisis, was terminated. We might find out why it was that he apparently terminated that proposal and did not proceed with it. That is something that ought to be of interest to the committee. Indeed, Mr Rudd needs to explain his party’s view on this particular proposal. I think I am right in saying that he has yet to declare his position on this matter

Senator Joyce—He doesn’t know where it is.

Senator TROOD—That may be right, Senator Joyce. He is still struggling to identify the possible location of the Traveston Crossing dam. The virtue of the motion we put on the Notice Paper yesterday is that the proposal would look more broadly at the requirements of water in North Queensland and south-east Queensland. It would be to the benefit of Queenslanders more generally, certainly to those who live in the south-east. It would give the people of the Mary River, who have been so disadvantaged by this process and who have been so profoundly affected by the way in which it has been conducted, an opportunity to ventilate and articulate their concerns. We would get some facts about this which have hitherto been precluded from public view.

In closing my remarks, may I acknowledge, as Senator Joyce has generously acknowledged others, his particular contribution to dealing with this matter amongst the community, and indeed Senator Bartlett’s, but also the contributions of my Liberal colleagues in Queensland—Senators Brandis, Mason and Ian Macdonald—who have all been concerned about the direction of this proposal. We all believe it needs close scrutiny. None of us is convinced that it has merit. The Senate inquiry will expose the limitations of this proposal for what it is—basically, a public policy sham and an attempt by the Beattie government to cobble together a solution to a matter prior to an election in relation to which they had given absolutely no policy thought. It was an attempt prior to the last state election in Queensland to put something on the table. It did not receive the detailed assessment and examination that it deserved. We will perhaps be able to provide that in the course of the Senate inquiry.