Former AACo boss and managing director of Colly Cotton, David Farley has added his weight to the call by the Flinders River Agricultural Precinct for the state government to do substantially more to develop irrigation in northern Queensland.
FRAP spokeswoman Sara Westaway last week called for some of the $10 million that has already flowed into Treasury coffers to be invested in greenfields development in the north west.
Coming in the wake of a government announcement of another 92,500ML that would be made available in the Flinders and Gilbert River catchments from late August, Ms Westaway said that simply allocating the water and extracting millions of dollars out of the area wasn’t driving growth or jobs.
Mr Farley said that without adequate consideration of terms and conditions of aboveground channel access, flood levees or drainage, the Palaszczuk government was doing little more than selling pipe dreams to landholders.
Currently the chairman of soft commodity trader, Matrix Commodities, Mr Farley learnt firsthand about irrigation development and its interplay with federal, state and Californian water policy as a managing director of Colly Cotton and president of Calcot California in the early 2000s.
“While there is no doubt there is plentiful streams of water on offer, ongoing policy inertia is leaving important engineering and environmental questions unplanned, un-engineered and unanswered,” he said.
“Queensland Natural Resources Minister Anthony Lynham must equip local landholders with adequate and accurate topographical, hydrographic and bathymetric surveys so important decisions regarding engineering, construction and investment planning can be made to bring this newly allocated and sold irrigation water into production.”
Irrigation development would need flood levee and aboveground channel licences, and below-ground irrigation and rainwater runoff drains and sumps to be transformed into a bankable product.
Mr Farley said that without accurate survey data, Dr Lynham would be pitching neighbour against neighbour and graziers against irrigators, townships, local governments, and fishing and tourism industries, and would pit agreed indigenous land use agreements against each other.
“It would be just like what happened in New South Wales,” he said.
The only response so far, from a departmental spokesman, is to re-emphasise that revenue received from the sale of unallocated water across Queensland is credited to Queensland Treasury for its budgetary consideration.
A question on how the fixed price for the forthcoming licences will be determined remained unanswered, with the spokesman saying only that proponents can choose flexible payment options in time frames that suit them.
Mr Farley said it would be difficult to value water licences without knowing how they can be used effectively, “especially when the vendor, the state, will control the terms and conditions via another government ministry”.
He said proposals would have to be cleared by the Department of Environment and Heritage.
“Australia has a strong and qualified history of planning and developing irrigation districts and this knowledge must be called upon to properly plan and engineer the potential and sustainability of the Gulf irrigation projects,” he said. “Minister Lynham must deliver a bird in the hand rather than a pig in a poke for the proponents of these long term irrigation projects.”
Sally Gall
Based at Blackall, CW Qld, where I've raised a family, run Merino sheep and beef cattle, and helped develop a region - its history, tourism, education and communications. Get in touch at 0427 575 955 if you've got a story idea for me.
Based at Blackall, CW Qld, where I've raised a family, run Merino sheep and beef cattle, and helped develop a region - its history, tourism, education and communications. Get in touch at 0427 575 955 if you've got a story idea for me.
