“I have a great honour in representing the electorate with an electorate that is a home to one of the most beautiful regions in Queensland? The ongoing national park in the lovely pointy valley. The people who lived there had their world turned upside down on the 28th of December 2022, when the Queensland Premier announced the Government’s plan for building the world’s largest pumped hydro scheme right on their doorstep.

To my knowledge, not a single minister or anyone else connected with the govt, but the government bothered to visit Eungella or the proposed location of this project before committing 12 billion. Not even the Yuwibara people, the traditional owners of that area ran towards tearing out whole area. If they had, they would have seen this lush rolling fields and precious subtropical rainforest.

The fragile ecosystems that is home to many of Queensland’s endangered species. I even asked the Environment Minister today, this morning and I will be writing to her and asking her to come up and have a look at just what they propose that we’ve seen the majestic mountain top that will have its top blown to smithereens and its insides hollowed out for giant pipelines and vegetation, cleared for the network of roads needed to service this gigantic project.

Speaker Eungella National Park is one of the jewels in the Crown for Queensland’s beauty, biodiversity and tourism. Now the whole community is being hit with a swarm of Queensland hard drive bureaucrats from Brisbane trying to tell them what to do. Well, they themselves refused to answer any of the residents most basic questions about the project people being pressured to sell their homes with a deadline for these acquisitions of this month and many are being threatened with compulsory acquisition if they refuse to do so.

And this needs to stop now. So does this whole project, frankly. Does the government even bother to look at the alternatives? And I we’ve got all the cogent from. Is it all technology. Australia’s three biggest pumped hydro plants were built over 40 years ago. All three only ever operated infrequently and sometimes none at all for years at a time.

What was really shocking to me was when we last went to the meetings with Queensland Hydro and they presented maps with a lower reservoir, Plan B, another area, another valley that they planned on damming up and actually making that part of this whole system. And there’s a reason for that. And now it’s being tried out front with that.

When you put all those calling all the transmission lines and everything in that area and spend that much money to transmit that much power, you’re going to use the rest of those valleys to transmit more power and to use that infrastructure. Someone’s not telling the truth here. Why were those maps dragged out of my hands? Just about? And why were they taken off the table so that the locals couldn’t take them home to scrutinize what was actually going on and what the government had planned?

Oh, no, they’re the wrong maps, we were told. What a shame and absolute shame to the people. First, we never got told at all. Now there’s stuff that they’re introducing that we don’t even know that’s going to happen. That’s a disgrace to these people. Experts on spoken with have said there are a number of insurmountable environmental and technical issues with this project, and the cost alone, they say, will be astronomical.

It’ll blow out, no doubt. Even Rod Welford, the former Labor minister for Natural Resources and the Environment, has issued a warning on this. On the scale of investment and the significant risk of cost blowouts. And Rod was there when everything was happening in the Finch Hatton Gorge and the proposed reservoir b, the lower Reservoir B is actually in Senisis Road, which actually goes into one of our other little areas which is called Killarney.

Then right next door to that is to Finch Hatton gorge. These places are known throughout the world, beautiful ecosystems with rare birds, rare frogs and natural platypus occur in the area and this is what they’re looking at doing, sticking all their infrastructure up in these beautiful areas. While the city folk don’t understand exactly what this means and what a cost is.

Offset documents do not offset the cost of what actually is there. These places have their own personality just like we do, and you can offset as much as you like, but you will never replace what you take away from what we’re about to do. Trust me on that. I know we grow up there. There’s a lot we don’t know about this project.

What is the exact footprint of the of this infrastructure and what is the size of the power stations, the cables and the infrastructure? Because I know for one thing, you don’t put something in there and spent that much money and then didn’t expand on it later, because you’re not going to build two or three of them in that area.

That area there has got the opportunity to be able to expand on. And trust me, when the government sees that generally they go about doing that. That’s the sad part about it. The map that I’ve seen with the lower reservoir Bay tells me that there’s something more going on. The people of Yanga want to know. They want their future secured “