The controversy surrounding a Queensland dam proposal is having an effect at federal level.

The $1.7 billion Traveston Crossing dam, proposed for the sleepy Mary River Valley near Gympie in rural Queensland, is about 1300 kilometres from Canberra. But the controversy surrounding it has seeped into the federal political debate in the lead-up to this year's poll. And neither major party seems sure about how to get out of the mire.

The dam dilemma was at the centre of a heated debate at a recent private meeting of coalition senators, who eventually decided to take the unusual course of setting up a Senate inquiry into the state government's planning decision.

For the Nationals, the politics of the dam are clear. Nationals minister Warren Truss is the local member and Nationals senators Ron Boswell and Barnaby Joyce have also taken up arms with the odd alliance of environmentalists, farmers and local residents who are implacably opposed to the project.

For them, the Senate inquiry will provide a spotlit stage from which to champion the cause.
"We'll lay out the facts and raise the political heat on the state government," Joyce says.

Stand by for lots more front-page stories in The Gympie Times.

But for the Liberal Party, the politics are as muddy as its opponents say the shallow-water dam is going to be. It is defending at least five marginal seats around Brisbane that are being targeted by federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd, and where the voters have been told the dam is an essential part of Queensland Premier Peter Beattie's $8 billion plan to make sure their taps don't run dry.

Being seen as anti-dam may woo some green preferences and please the Nationals colleagues, but it could backfire in the city. And the Nationals anti-dam campaign may raise expectations that the federal government has the power and political intention to stop the project.

In fact, federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull can block the dam under the Environment Protection and
Biodiversity Conservation Act and is awaiting an assessment of the possible harm it may pose to three endangered species (a cod, tortoise and lungfish). But his ability to intervene is limited. And politicising that process can come at a cost, as former environment minister Ian Campbell found when he blocked a Victorian wind farm to "save" a parrot.

And being against the dam runs directly counter to Prime Minister John Howard's strategy of painting Rudd as the bloke who has no practical water solutions, in contrast to the Prime Minister's $10 billion plan. The coalition's speaking notes this parliamentary session appear to include an attack on Rudd because he was an adviser to former Queensland premier Wayne Goss in 1989 when he decided not to build the Wolffdene Dam - a fact mentioned by at least four coalition MPs in the past fortnight.

This is the connection that enabled Turnbull to blame Rudd personally for the pulled muscles and cracked backs being suffered by Brisbane pensioners, "lugging buckets to water . . . their dry and desiccated lawns and their dead roses".

It was also the connection made by Turnbull's Parliamentary Secretary, Greg Hunt, in even more purple prose.

"Let the words - the Wolffdene Dam - hang like a talisman of shame around the neck of the Leader of the Opposition, because that is the dam that, the last time the Leader of the Opposition had his hands anywhere near power in Australia, he destroyed," he says.

But it will be much harder to make the case for Rudd to wear this "talisman of shame" if the coalition appears to be blocking a current proposal to provide water to Brisbane's desiccated lawns and dead roses.

Truss is at pains to emphasise that he is against this particular dam, not against dams altogether or even against other dams proposed in his electorate. But these types of nuances can get lost in the heat of campaigning.

The issue is not problem-free for Rudd either. He has to balance Labor's desire to win green preferences against the dangers of alienating Brisbane gardeners or of contradicting his comrade, Beattie. So far he's keeping his distance, saying only that he isn't fully briefed and is happy to see all the facts.

But maintaining such distance will be more difficult for the coalition with the Nationals joined in a loud Franklin-style campaign against the dam.

This is exactly why senior Liberal senators argued long and hard in the Senate party room against setting up a Senate inquiry. (Not all Liberals were against it. Queensland Liberal Russell Trood, an opponent of the dam on environmental, economic and social grounds, is in favour of the inquiry).

But National-turned-Liberal Julian McGauran, Ian Campbell, Bill Heffernan, Rod Kemp and Queenslander Santo Santoro all railed against the idea, arguing that it could make the coalition look "anti-dam" and end up forcing the federal government to "own" a problem that wasn't of its making and may not be within its powers to fix.

In the end the senators felt they had to go ahead with the inquiry, since the Nationals had already told the locals there would be one. But they did so with grave reservations and angry complaints that their Nationals friends had "held a gun to their heads".

Source: Financial Review