A did a very quick assessment for Queensland Treasury of the economic case for three South Burnett water schemes (I had two or three hours to look at the material before a decisive meeting). The studies were severely flawed, both technically and in their data and assumptions, which were heavily biassed towards having a dam built. Accepting this shoddy work, it was possible that the smallest scheme might be viable, but a rigorous study would be needed to test that. It was clear that the larger schemes could never be viable, and that the environmental costs of the largest scheme, the Paradise Dam, greatly exceeded those of the other proposals. Nevertheless, it went ahead. Amazingly, my work got into the public domain through FOI - some bureaucrat must have stuffed up. Beattie's response was "I don't care, we are building it anyway." Anyone who expected the environmental issues to be sensitively treated doesn't know the Queensland government.

What sort of behaviour do we expect of the very same people proposing to dam the Mary River at Traveston crossing? - Same CEO, same senior staff, same firms conducting the EIS on their own project. A look at the recent annual report for the Burnett Water Resource Plan gives an insight into the laughable attitude towards river health in SEQ. eg. "No water holes were drawn down to more than 0.5m below cease-to-flow". Translated into English this means "we extracted water until we stopped the river from flowing altogether, and then kept going for some more". I would commend people to follow Steve Posselt's current "Don't Murray the Mary" canoe trip through the waterways of SEQ for information about the upcoming plans for the Mary River, the Australian lungfish and the even more endangered Mary River turtle and Mary River Cod. How proud will Mr Garrett be in a year's time?

I participated in a telephone link up between the designers of the Paradise Dam fishway and Prof. Jean Joss during the design phase in order to discover what the plan was. The designers did not consider the most fundamental aspect of the process which is what causes lungfish to travel upstream. The design, like all others, relies on water flow to attract fish. However, the research conducted on lungfish, and in fact many Australian fish, shows they do not behave in this way. The reasons for movement are obscure. We pointed this out to the designers but it was simply ignored. I would love to talk to them now. Now that it hasn't ever worked and can never work due to the Qld. Government breaking the approval conditions.
This is the most high profile condition which has not been met but there are plenty more for the project as a whole. Such as the projected 1 billion dollar per annum increase in vegetable production in Bundaberg. Where is that I wonder. Or the reestablishment of riparian vegetation along the river. Where is that I wonder.
The state government employees and private contractors who engaged in and built this project have shown themselves to be unreliable and untruthful. They are therefore not of fit character to be granted permission to engage in another activity for which they are capable of failing