Analysis: Steven Miles’ $12bn hydro headache is set to sharpen over unexplained project

Ploughing through picturesque valleys and disturbing platypus populations is the last thing you can be doing when spruiking your environmental agenda, writes political reporter Stephanie Bennett.

Premier Steven Miles would have thought his harshest critics of the Pioneer-Burdekin pumped hydro project would be the locals set to lose a huge chunk of their stunning region to make way for a giant dam.

After all, on paper, this project is the renewable energy dream.

A project – Miles says, anyway – will serve the state not just for decades but “hundreds” of years, creating thousands of jobs and making power cheaper, and more reliable.

But the problem may not be the 150 or so locals in Eungella who jeered the Premier, but in explaining to the rest of the state why and how we are spending at least $12bn - and probably more like $18bn, and rising - on something he can’t clearly explain why we need.

The project costs are headache inducing - that’s two Cross River Rails, a couple of Copperstrings, or about four of those new stadiums the Premier said we couldn’t justify splashing cash on.

Janelle Nielsen from Walkerston, a member of the Save Eungella Committee involved in the town hall yesterday. Picture: Fergus Gregg

You could even pay for the blown-out Queensland Train Manufacturing Program in full at $9.5bn – and build a second M1 with the leftovers.

But that’s assuming we can even lock in that cost - which we can’t, the Premier himself admits.

He said yesterday this announcement wasn’t his - it was his predecessor’s, Annastacia Palaszczuk. But it will be his to sell - or scrap.

And if he hopes to push forward with the billions of dollars of capital it will cost (don’t forget, we’ve also got a $14bn bill waiting for the pumped hydro project at Borumba), he needs to do it better - and fast.

Ploughing through picturesque valleys and disturbing platypus populations is the last thing you can be doing when spruiking your environmental agenda.

And a town-hall meeting with locals telling them all will be fine won’t cut it when we’re talking about potentially building Queensland’s biggest infrastructure project in its history.