KAP Leader and Federal Member for Kennedy exposed the Government’s geographic ineptitude in the Parliament today when he used a 90 second statement to point out that the $352 million Federal investment into the Rookwood Weir will only serve the ‘southern’ region of Queensland, not northern Australia which has been promised ‘water development’ in the last three federal elections.

“We have the extraordinary phenomenon of the Federal Government going into the third election promising ‘water development’ for North Queensland,” Mr Katter said. 

“They quote the ‘Rookwood Weir’; well the Rookwood Weir is 60km south of Rockhampton and I don’t think anyone in North Queensland considers 60km south of Rockhampton to be North Queensland.

“It’s going to cost $352 million and will make 46,000 megalitres available. The Hughenden irrigation project is shovel ready and could be started tomorrow, costs $165 million and will make 360,000 megalitres diverted from the river and captured behind an off stream dam, and $90,000 megalitres available for irrigation.

“This will create $24 million at least, each year, for the cattle industry and with a quartering works and small biodiesel plant; 600 – 1000 jobs will be created, doubling if not trebling the population of Hughenden – a town which is dying.

“They have the NAIF (Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility) who has been desperate for its first decent project; well they might as well call it a ‘SAIF’ because it appears they are only focused on Southern Australian Infrastructure Facilities and we in the “North” are most certainly ‘locked out’.”

Mr Katter said, “The NAIF was given $5,000 million, five years ago – Peta Credlin who actually set the Facility up has publically said that not one dollar had come out of the fund in five and a half years.  That’s a fair call when the figures on their own website say that only $24 million has been dished out of $5,000 million.  In a similar five year period, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) parceled out $5,500 million.”

Mr Katter blamed political interference for the NAIF’s dismal track record and said that the political nature of the NAIF meant that politicians saw the Fund as a sort of “slush fund for the pet projects of their corporate cronies”.