What should be a strong plank in Katter’s Australian Party policy, an irrigation policy for north Queensland, appears in danger of sinking without trace.
Released in early December, it was described as giving “something to everyone”.
Key points in the policy are for every “owner/operator” landholder to get 200ha of irrigation rights, all “blockies” to get full irrigation rights for all of their land less than 200ha, a live export facilitation program for Karumba based on 30, 1500ha irrigation blocks in an arc stretching from the Coleman, Mitchell, Staaten and Gilbert Rivers, and micro-irrigation schemes in a number of towns, mostly involving a small diversion weir and keyline-type off-stream storage.
“Clearly water rights can’t be given where the water doesn’t exist, so any allocation would be limited to existing resources,” party leader Bob Katter said.
“Successive Queensland governments had given out virtually no irrigation licences in the last 25 years.
“The last LNP government issued irrigation licences that could be counted on the fingers of one hand and the bulk of those were to corporate or near-corporate operations.
“The federal government’s been there for two years and nothing – just talk. Yet every river and major creek north of the Flinders River runs near enough to every year.”
The Katter plan wants to start with the people at the top of the river so the people who live there have their rights “go first”.
“Properly handled, towns like Richmond and Hughenden will double in size,” Mr Katter said.
Speaking to the plan at the recent Flinders River Ag Precinct investment forum, Member for Mount Isa Rob Katter said policy around the development of northern irrigation plans had always been hampered by policy-makers using southern irrigation as a comparison.
“It’s a totally different ballgame up here,” he said. “The challenge here is to push people in rather than stem the flow.
“People like Errol Entriken at Corfield are a case in point. He has a great setup but he says if he’d done too much soil testing and so on, he never would have started.
“Policy makers must realise he, and people like him, are willing to live here, and are a solid operation. They just don’t have the capital.”
However, Richmond mayor John Wharton scoffed at the proposal, saying that without a “big player” and a processing plant for whatever crop was grown, the smaller operators would not generate enough product to get started.
“This is totally unworkable – who’s going to build the infrastructure,” he said. “People with cattle on the town common aren’t going to be able to afford to do that.”
It was a similar, less-scathing response from McKinlay mayor Belinda Murphy, who said it was a very big picture but it didn’t take into account the modelling already done.
“I find it a big confusing,” she said. “I’m not sure how they launch a policy and achieve it, when the government is announcing tenders and has a whole structure behind it.
“You can’t scrap all that, and the CSIRO report that looks at flushing out the rivers for prawns and protecting the water interests already there.”
She acknowledged that the KAP plan could work on top of the established framework for the gulf’s water management.
A spokeswoman for acting Natural Resources Minister Curtis Pitt said Minister Lynham had referred the material released by the KAP to the Department of Natural Resources and Mines for detailed advice.
“The government knows the KAP’s interest in this policy area and appreciated their input previously into shaping the tender for the release of water in the Flinders catchment,” she said.
