Scott Morrison has denied a commitment to build a dam four times the size of Sydney Harbour is an effort to curry favour with Bob Katter should the election result in a hung parliament.
The $5.4bn commitment to get Hells Gates Dam off the ground is a guarantee the government will build the project along the upper Burdekin River, subject to final stage of the business case, after decades of talk.
“This is going to transform this entire region. It's about four times the size of Sydney Harbour. These are the projects that transform nations and open up jobs and opportunities for decades and decades to come,” the Prime Minister told Nine’s Today Show.
The government expects the project to create more than 7000 jobs and inject $1.3 billion into North Queensland’s economy during construction.
Mr Katter, the independent MP who holds the Queensland seat of Kennedy, has been campaigning for the irrigation project for more than 20 years.
Following the removal of Malcolm Turnbull and subsequent Wentworth by-election loss, he secured $54xjmtzywm from the government for the first steps of the project in return for his confidence and supply on the floor of federal parliament.
Asked if he was deploying a similar strategy, the Prime Minister danced around the question.
“Are you just greasing the wheels in case there’s a hung parliament, that’s what it looks like?” host Karl Stefanovic asked.
“We started with Bob on this project many years ago,” Mr Morrison replied.
“It is not an easy thing to build a dam … and so that has taken us since 2018 to get where we are today. In a few months time that, detailed business case will be made public and it will be out there and I know it’s going to say this is a big go ahead project.”
But Mr Katter said he would only support the project if it was built 395m above sea level, in line with the vision of the man who kicked off talk about the project, John Bradfield.
“The Prime Minister thinks he’s pushing a proposal that develops North Queensland when actually it destroys the future and potential of the region. The current proposal would create one-hundred farms,” he said.
“What would that do for Townsville when there are already more than one-thousand farms in Hinchinbrook and the Burdekin?”
“The federal government should do the right thing and build the dam to 395m above sea level and send the water west, as was always proposed by Dr Bradfield.”
It will be up to the state Labor government to sign off on the environment approvals, but Mr Morrison insisted they will not have to chip in to get the project off the ground.
“They’ve just got to get the big approved stamp out and put it on it,” he added.
“I think that would be an act of absolute self-harm for the Queensland government to say no to this project.”
A final business case into the proposal is expected to completed in June.
