An emerging tolerance threshold that requires upstream water applicants to prove that their projects would have no more than a 0.1 per cent impact on a downstream user's annual volume probability is likely to prevent water projects such as HIPCo's from going ahead.
Katter's Australian Party leader Robbie Katter, describing himself as disgusted, said the threshold represented a "changing of the goal posts" as it had not applied to previous unallocated water releases along the Flinders River, including in 2016.
The bureaucratic process was revealed by Queensland Water Minister Glenn Butcher during Budget estimates questioning.
Mr Katter asked Mr Butcher to justify the application of a downstream tolerance threshold for water users vying for the 110,000ML of unallocated water currently open for tender along the Flinders River near Hughenden.
"The Queensland public needs to know that both the minister, and his department, are designing and presiding over bureaucratic processes that can only be intended to destroy projects," Mr Katter said.
"Under questioning, the minister revealed the bizarre process he has either created, or allowed to be created, around water development in this state.
"He revealed that he has either knowingly orchestrated, or through reckless ignorance enabled, processes that allow the ideological bent of departments to come up with a thousand ways to stop development instead of being there to enable it.
"These processes involve changing goal posts, unworkable demands and dog-eat-dog corporate style bidding wars of which the true Labor giants and long-gone developmentally-minded leaders of our state would be ashamed.
"If the modern Queensland Labor Party was designing processes to stop any new dams being built in the state, it should be awarded ten out of ten."
Mr Katter said that applying the same logic to road projects, for example, would mean no new highway or bridge could ever be built in Australia as such ventures almost always rely on compulsory arbitration or acquisition to proceed.
In response, Mr Butcher explained that "rules were set for that tender process (and are the) department's way that they have done that process at this point in time", before handballing the query to the Water Department's acting Director-General Linda Dobe.
Ms Dobe said that there was "no trigger in the (government's) process" to assist otherwise successful upstream applicants to proceed if they could not meet the threshold requirement.
This appears to include cases where projects are being nullified by the annual volume probability of sleeper licences, or projects that could reasonably tolerate a greater threshold.
Mr Katter said it prioritised river placement of projects above all other considerations and torpedoed otherwise valid, genuinely competitive projects.
"Projects like HIPCO, which is a leading, community-water project designed to open up widespread irrigated agricultural opportunities to small operators, which has already secured $180 million in government funding, are likely to be impacted by this," Mr Katter said.
"Given their awareness of these issues and the fact the Flinders region is starting down the barrel of a 25 per cent population decline projection through to 2046, I can only congratulate the minister and his bureaucrats for doing everything in their power to depopulate north west Queensland."
He accused the government of having a 'dam phobia' and said it was firmly embedded in the culture of the state's public service.
He feared the latter was using process to prosecute the ideals of the Labor Party.