Newsroom

February 5, 2026

FEDERAL Member for Kennedy Bob Katter has been reprimanded in Parliament for questioning eight years of “dithering” by governments on North Queensland water security, as lost opportunity floods into the sea.

After decades of no dams being built by governments spending hundreds of millions of dollars on successive studies instead, Mr Katter challenged Australia’s Treasurer to just “create a water authority and call tenders” on $170 million of federal funding for a pioneering project set to take a fraction of the north’s mighty monsoonal river flows, to irrigate the rich plains west of the Great Divide.

“Treasurer, you won't get a portrait,” said Mr Katter, “you’ll get a statue” for intervening immediately to unlock the potential prosperity of the long-awaited Hughenden Irrigation Scheme and support sustainable growth, rivalling the success of California’s agricultural backbone.

“Advance Australia Fair is Hughenden’s Irrigation Scheme,” declared the 50-year veteran of state and federal parliaments, including as a minister for northern development in Queensland, where water security stands to expand the rural community of Hughenden 15-fold to “create 3000 farms, 10,000 owner-operated businesses, and 100,000 homes with backyards” for generations to come.

While the Treasurer reinforced the continued commitment of $170 million made by the previous government in 2018 to support the off-stream water storage supplying the Hughenden Irrigation Scheme, he acknowledged Mr Katter’s mounting frustration over the wait for a State Government review of broader northern water resources to determine project supply allocations, following the completion in 2022 of a detailed business case with $10 million of additional federal funding.

“I understand that (review) is the next thing that needs to be completed in order for the project to go ahead… and we're waiting for that process to conclude now,” said the Treasurer in response to the Member for Kennedy’s question in parliament.

He added that the Prime Minister, who has twice visited Hughenden, also shared Mr Katter’s passion to “maximise the enormous economic potential of north-west Queensland… and a big part of that, an important part of that, is building more water infrastructure”.

“But we do know, as a government, we can always do more on this front (and) we take the member for Kennedy's suggestions very seriously.”