Deluge defence report shelved

A report by Queensland’s Water Department investigating flood defences for Brisbane and Ipswich has been shelved by Annastacia Palaszczuk’s government for more than seven years.

Former Premier Campbell Newman. Picture” Steve Pohlner

A report by Queensland’s Water Department investigating flood defences for Brisbane and Ipswich has been shelved by Annastacia Palaszczuk’s government for more than seven years.

The study, published in December 2014, recommended government consider building two new dams west of Brisbane as well as raising the Wivenhoe Dam wall.

Former Liberal National premier Campbell Newman said the plans must be revived after thousands of homes were wrecked by floods earlier this month, for the second time in 11 years.

“My government was determined to mitigate flood impacts on Brisbane and Ipswich so we engaged leading technical experts in the department and they came up with three options to be investi­gated further,” he said.

“Then it was shelved by the Labor government under Annastacia Palaszczuk.”

The report found potentially up to 10,000 fewer buildings would be inundated in Brisbane and Ipswich during a recurrence of the 2011 or 1974 floods if there was “appropriate infrastructure in place”.

From a list of nine potential dam sites initially suggested, the department concluded two warranted more detailed studies.

One of those is on the lower Warrill Creek near Willowbank at Ipswich, and the other on the Upper Brisbane River at Linville.

Mr Newman’s cabinet considered the report one month before the 2015 state election that installed Ms Palaszczuk as Premier.

He had promised to undertake a thorough study into “the benefits, estimated costs and ­potential impacts of each of the three options or combination of options” but that would not happen.

After forming a minority government in January 2015, Ms Palas­zczuk did not order further investigations into the Linville dam. Instead, the government focused on “priority” upgrades at Somerset, North Pine and Wivenhoe dams, which are not due to be finished until 2035.

A government spokeswoman said Linville dam would be investigated only if those dam improvements “proved impractical or uneconomic for flood mitigation purposes”.

She said it would be another year before a business case for upgrades at Somerset Dam was finished. “(The business case) will identify the total level of additional mitigation that can be achieved and whether additional flood mitigation, such as Linville Dam, should be considered,” she said.

The Warrill Creek dam option was considered in 2021 but ruled out.

Mr Newman, s now running as a federal Senate candidate for the Liberal Democrats, believes options put forward by the department in 2014 may have mitigated some impacts in the 2022 disaster.

“This is a city prone to river flooding and suburban creek flooding,” he said.

“Now there is not too much that can be done about suburban creek flooding but there is something that can be done for the river; we need infrastructure to capture large volumes of water.

“A point that I sadly have to make is that there will be more floods. We have to take steps to protect the state’s capital and it is no good pretending that a few fiddly bits of work is going to mitigate it.”