‘Desperately urgent’: Pocock calls to divert Joyce’s dam funding to conservation

A $7 billion test looms for the federal government as key independent senator David Pocock and environment groups demand the October budget transfer funds earmarked for regional dams into conservation projects.

Then-Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce was promised billions of dollars in the March budget for six major dam projects by then-prime minister Scott Morrison in return for his backing a commitment to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The dams package was funded through the National Water Grid Authority and included the $5.4 billion Hells Gate project in north Queensland as well as upgrades worth $600 million and $433 million at the Paradise and Dungowan dams, respectively.

With virtually all the funds still unspent, the federal government is being urged to reallocate Joyce’s dam fund to halt the “extinction crisis” that federal Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek said in July had been fuelled by a lack of funding under successive Coalition governments.

“The State of the Environment report revealed just how desperately urgent this task is. Meaningful reform takes money,” Pocock said.

“If the billions in taxpayer funding allocated for water infrastructure isn’t going to proceed, it is imperative that this money be invested in environmental protection.

“I appreciate the government is on the hunt for savings, but taking this money back into consolidated revenue would be a huge blow to our capacity to achieve the outcomes our environment so urgently needs.”

About 100 of Australia’s unique flora and fauna species have been wiped out since colonisation, and the rate of extinction has not slowed over the past 230 years. This year, both the koala and greater gliders were added to the list of endangered animals.

Joyce said on Wednesday the Hells Gate project would supply local irrigation projects that would grow produce to help satisfy the increasing demand for food globally.

“Irrigation is vitally important and feeding people of the world is a moral good,” he said. “We can’t feed the world but we can certainly do our part.”

Nationals leader David Littleproud said environmental funding should not come at the expense of regional development.

“I respect David Pocock’s passion for a better environment, but why is it that regional Australians always have to bear the cost and lose their opportunity to a better future to achieve it,” he said.

Wilderness Society policy and strategy manager Tim Beshara said the Albanese government had inherited the environmental funding shortfall but the cost of addressing it ballooned every year.

“A prime minister and treasurer who wanted to ensure that the environment minister succeeded in their portfolio would make sure that they are given the resources they need to get the job done,” he said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Wednesday accused the Nationals of being obsessed with pork-barrelling, prompting them to warn Labor would slash regional funding in the October budget.

Plibersek told the National Press Club in July the State of the Environment report, a five-yearly environmental scorecard prepared by leading scientists, highlighted a “difficult, confronting, sometimes depressing story” of destruction to native wildlife and habitats brought on by “brutal funding cuts. Wilful neglect … All against the backdrop of accelerating environmental destruction”.

The report said the federal government committed about $400 million to the environment in 2012-22, which was a “significant shortfall” compared to what was needed to halt the decline.

A peer-reviewed study by Australian scientists, published last year in the Journal of Applied Ecology, found it would cost about $2 billion a year for 30 years to restore Australia’s degraded ecosystems to the point that they recovered at least 30 per cent of their original vegetation coverage and regained their ecological functions.

The responsibilities of the water minister were expanded under the Albanese government to include water infrastructure – a shift from the former government where the infrastructure minister had carriage of dam funding and projects.

Pocock delivered the crucial vote the government needed to pass its climate change legislation, which for the first time legislated a national greenhouse emissions reduction target and is expected to play a key role in negotiations over future reforms.

He said reallocating the dam funds would be “smart from an economic and from a conservation perspective”.

“Extinction of endangered species such as the koala would take billions of dollars out of the Australian economy and cost tens of thousands of jobs,” Pocock said.

“The government needs to be setting Minister Plibersek up to succeed.”

Plibersek’s office declined to comment on budget funding decisions.

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