The damn dam
March 11th, 2009 by Paul Norton | Published in Environment, Politics, Queensland, State/Territory Elections, Water | 19 Comments
As I and a few others have noted, the Queensland State election may well produce a hung parliament. This has also been commented on by my colleague Paul Williams.
Also as noted on another thread, if this eventuates the independent member for Nicklin, Peter Wellington, could once again have the decisive call on which of the major parties forms government. Politically, Wellington is best characterised as a moderate conservative with stronger than average views about accountable government and democracy, and his responsibilities as an MP. In 1998 he supported a minority Labor government headed by Peter Beattie, in large measure because he could not bring himself to support a Coalition government which was also dependent on One Nation support to form a majority.
This time around, however, it looks as though he might be driven into the Coalition’s embrace by Labor’s intransigent support for construction of the contentious Traveston Dam.
“I can’t [support Labor], because the Labor Government has made it very clear part of their, crucial to their re-election campaign is the building of the Traveston Dam,” he said.
“Now my constituents are passionately against it and I have always been passionately against it.
“I am not about to change my position over the Traveston Dam.”
This raises a number of issues.
One is why Labor has forgotten the lessons of 1995 and the South Coast Motorway dispute, primarily that intransigent support for an unsustainable development which has aroused deep-seated local opposition, and for which there are prudent and feasible alternatives, will have political consequences.
Another is whether Peter Wellington is right to base a decision on who should form government of the entire state on a policy issue specific to his electorate, rather than an assessment of what would, on balance, be better for the state as a whole.
A third is the question of what conditions Peter Wellington would place on his support for a Coalition government, how effective such conditions would be on constraining the more reactionary and authoritarian tendencies of such a government, and whether he would thereby be doing the LNP a favour by saving it from itself and giving Queensland its first experience of a reasonably moderate non-Labor government.
Finally, does the Labor Government have an exit strategy for the Traveston Dam issue if the political consequences of its current stance turn out to be worse than it seems to have anticipated thus far?
Or would Labour lose more support in other seats than they would gain in just one by a change in policy now? We’ll never know. Remember, one can be in favour of the dam, and at the same time against the clown show that’s charged with building it.
I just wish we had an ALP government with sense enough to build a dam.
Here is one reason why Mr. Wellington, notwithstanding his strongly-held views about the dam and the wishes of his constituents, might want to take other things into account before making his call.
Paul, I think the metrics are that the Traveston Dam Stage 1 will supply 70,000 ML/a as against, for example the Tugun desal plat which has 45,600 ML/a capacity. Towards mid-century there was Traveston Stage 2 foreshadowed @ 40,000 ML/a. The SEQ Water Strategy draft (see especially Ch 6) reserved 6 sites for future desal plants, but these, which are seen as having potentially many times the capacity of Tugun, were being kept in reserve to cater for excessive population growth and/or greater than expected shortfalls through climate change.
With Traveston, Tugun, the 84,500 ML/a from recycling and other projects the planned infrastructure should have a yield of 684,000 ML/a from 2012 or perhaps 631,000 because of climate change. Then we should be OK until 2028, as I understand it.
The LNP are saying they want to dump Traveston and build an additional desal plant. So we save the farming land and increase the survival chances of some rare species, with the negative of a desal plant where there has been no talk of green power. (Do we dig up other farming land to feed the beast?)
No-one as far as I know has worked out the implications of the ad hoc political decisions made last year about recycling. The LNP says “no” for human consumption unless we are desperate, without defining desperate. Bligh said “no” unless the dams fall below 40%. No-one pointed out at the time that the purpose of the draft strategy is, once we get to 60%, to never again return to 40% under a “water guarantee”. But that plan included using recycled water.
Good comment, Brian, as always.
On the issue of recycled water, some very well-produced and glossy, albeit seriously alarmist, pamphlets attacking the Government’s plans to add recycled water to Wivenhoe Dam and to fluoridate Brisbane’s drinking water have been appearing in my neck of the woods. Someone obviously has lots of money to spend on printing the things.
Peter Wellington is absolutely right to base his decision on his electorate’s interests. The ALP and LNP members will be representing only their party’s interests rather than the people who voted for them. I’ve got no idea what my local member has ever done for me, nor what she proposes to do… she could be replaced with a mannequin for all the difference it would make. Peter Wellington should not be vilified for daring to have an opinion.
Friendless, I’m not sure that anyone’s vilifying Peter Wellington – I actually have a lot of time for him as a politician of integrity. What I am saing is that there is a legitimate debate to be had about the matters he should consider if he is called upon to decide who the next government of Queensland should be.
…the Queensland State election may well produce a hung parliament.
Now there’s a sentence with dangerous spoonerism potential…
‘Another is whether Peter Wellington is right to base a decision on who should form government of the entire state on a policy issue specific to his electorate, rather than an assessment of what would, on balance, be better for the state as a whole.’
Of course Wellington has the right to base the decision on whether his electorate likes it because they’re the people that put him in Parliament. Imagine if he did support the ALP in a hung parliament. The people of Nicklin would probably hang him. Secondly it is arguable that scrapping the dam would benefit the state as a whole because then we wouldnt waste $3-4 billion to build the thing when we could build a desal plant on crown land at Bribie for less $$$ (and the water comes out immediately).
I think Bligh would quickly scrap the dam if that’s all that stands between her and government. Building it will just be a non-core promise, especially if there’s someone else you can blame.
If a government can blow $0.5B without even turning a sod for a dam, they could easily blow $3-4B completing one. Unfortunately, the same people could also easily blow a lot more producing a desal plant – not to mention running costs.
God knows, our state government is.
Ok I’m not from Qld, so tell me please, is the Traveston back on the agenda, was it ever off, what is the likelihood of it being built if the ALP win as compared to the other mob?
What’s the buzz, tell me whats a happenening.
Please.
The possibility of this damn dam going ahead worries me.
hannah’s dad, Mark blogged about it last November.
I’m sticking with my comment unless anyone knows better. In other words it was delayed not cancelled by action taken by Garrett.
If you don’t want the Traveston I think you have to accept desalination as an alternative. Originally the NP had some ‘four dams’ policy, which includes a dam further up in the Mary catchment, I think also problematic environmentally, but we haven’t heard any more about that for years.
hannah’s dad, for further background on the damn dam I did a post in September 2006, with links to other posts by Shaun, tigtog and Mark. Some of the links in the post don’t work anymore, but most of them do.
At that time the situation here was on the slide. It was not until August 2007, when dam levels were down to 16.75% and even with severe restrictions (140L pppd) we were heading for Armageddon by about mid 2008. We were saved by a large low pressure system the likes of which had not been seen in SEQ in August since the 1880s. That put about 3% or so in the dams and we’ve now crept up to 46.89%, still with restrictions (170L).
I started off cautiously with my attitude to Traveston because I knew we needed the water. Now I’ve become happier with recycling and desalination and would very much like to see the project canned.
The only way of ensuring that we don’t get it is to vote Labor out of power for a term, I think. The dilemma is that Springborg and
clownscolleagues are probably worse person for person than Anna’s bunch. Also on economics he’s so far off with the fairies that you can’t believe he’ll ever do a single thing in his platform that costs money. He might, but it’ll be at the expense of something that is already a necessity.At Pineapple Party Time:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/electioncentral/2009/03/11/the-traveston-dam/
You folk are between a rock and a hard place aren’t you?
Actually, hannah’s dad there’s water everywhere when we get the summer storms and the place is often (even mostly) quite green. But we are still short of water. It’s curious that there are at least three decent sized rivers between Brisbane and the Gold Coast that run pretty much free to the sea.
Our diminished rainfall in the past 9 years still leaves us with an annual average of 880mm. I think many people are planting drought tolerate plants in their gardens these days and most would probably accept that if we want to water a garden we should put in our own tank.
I was quite impressed that the Qld Water Commission gave some priority to maintaining playing fields etc so that we could maintain an outdoors lifestyle.
We paid the plumber supplied by the authorities to do a waterwise check. He went over our taps, put flow limiters on where appropriate and supplied and installed a new shower rose, all for $20.
We catch water in the shower and use it for the toilet, have a water bucket in the kitchen for clean water (emptying ‘cold’ hot water bottles etc) which we use for pot plants. I think we always will.
At our place we’ve got 16,000L of tank storage, a pool blanket and a front-loading washing machine. Our best effort has been 70 litres per person per day, and we get along OK.
I was up in Qld 18 months ago, in your cold winter [and it was cold!] and couldn’t believe how green and wet the place was, full of rivers that actually flow.
Here we have been getting an average rainfall of 200 mm for the past 3 years, absolutely zero rain in the last 3 months, might get a mm or two tomorrow with luck.
Different world isn’t it?
Its one of the things I love about Australia.
Two articles which may be of interest are:
“Independent candidate responds to water policy questionnaire” and “Lawrence Springborg responds to Brisbane Save The Mary River Questionnaire”. The teaser for the latter is:
“On 8 March I responded to a questionnaire from the Brisbane Save The Mary River group and sent copies to other candidates contesting the seat of Mount Coot-tha, as well as to Premier Anna Bligh and to Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg. Lawrence Springborg replied almost immediately that same day. I responded to ask that he act against the principle driver of .Queensland’s water crises, namely population growth now actively encouraged by the Bligh Government.”
James Sinnamon
Independent candidate
for Mount Coot-tha
candobetter.org/QldElections
candobetter.org/QldElections/MountCoot-th
A few pertinent facts – the Traveston Dam is a significant issue throughout SE Qld, but it is not and never has been in Peter Wellington’s electorate of Nicklin. It is in the Gympie electorate, currently held by David Gibson, LNP.
I would agree with Peter and yourself that the Labor Government has forgotten the lessons of the past and has in fact become arrogant and out of touch with the community who want sustainable development. There are clear issues in Peter Wellington’s electorate which illustrate this clearly – state government want to devastate the Noosa Biosphere by constructing 275,000V power lines and substation hooking up to coal fired power, rather than adopting the alternatives that the community and the Council are looking for. Peter clearly needs to pick up this and other issues that are closer to home to fulfill his responsibilities to his constituents.
It remains to be seen whether if holding the balance of power he is courageous enough to force the next government to adopt 21st century solutions to fix the problems of SE Qld or whether he does not have enough vision and lets them continue with the business as usual approach which is turning the Sunshine Coast into the Gold Coast.