
Barnaby Joyce abolished Water Advisory Board and made a promise of $5.9bn to invest in a Qld dam with no business plan. Yet, Josh Frydenberg dares to say after 8 years “We have no evidence Victoria’s biggest infrastructure program will be a success”. What a pure political betrayal of Victoria his own state when experts were consulted, reports, and due diligence done and all he did was not be bothered to read them. He inherited the blackmail offer left by Abbott of $4bn withheld unless Dan Andrews capitulated and did what the LNP demanded. Victoria was the growth state before the pandemic and kept the nation afloat when the Federal LNP were dragging us backwards.
The costs of the federal government’s commitment to fund dams in Queensland without the scrutiny of a now-abolished national advisory body should be a cause for concern for the community, a former supreme court judge says. Deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce disbanded the National Water Grid Advisory Body this week, claiming it was “an appropriate time for it to conclude its work”. The body had been established by Joyce’s predecessor, Michael McCormack, in 2020 to scrutinise and provide advice on major water infrastructure projects.