Katter’s Australian Party (KAP) leader Robbie Katter is urging the new Queensland Government to turn the bureaucratic tide that has been against building new dams by backing works such as HIPCo’s Hughenden Irrigation Project.

The Member for Traeger congratulated the Crisafulli government for scrapping the ‘wasteful and rushed’ Pioneer-Burdekin pumped hydro project.

The newly elected LNP government this week released the Pioneer-Burdekin Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Project Detailed Analytical Report, saying figures showed the ‘$36 billion hydro hoax’ would have cost each Queensland household $15,653 based on Treasury population projections.

Mr Katter said Queensland still could harness its natural resources for the benefit of the whole state, not just the inner-city concrete jungle dwellers who wanted to sleep at night knowing they did something to ‘save the planet’.

“Water is life, and it’s the missing ingredient to developing North Queensland,” he said.

“HIPCo for example – thoroughly planned and costed – would develop Hughenden and the surrounding areas, generating wealth for all Queenslanders as well as cementing our food security. 

“But while the boffins are looking at multi-billion dollar pumped hydro dams, they say no to rural Queensland.

“Tens of billions of dollars to dam, then pump water (which actually uses power), all to perpetuate the dream that we can have ‘cheap’ power. 

“These dams, just like commuter tunnels and the Olympics, do absolutely nothing to build Queensland.  All they do is spend the wealth that we generate.”

HIPCo’s project would see a 160,000-megalitre dam built 45km north-west of Hughenden to support up to 11,000ha of new irrigation enterprises.