I read with interest an article the other day comparing China’s ability to build dams to the latest industrial action grinding the trouble plagued Snowy 2.0 to another halt.
It made me think about other projects that seem to be continuously delayed in bureaucratic processes.
The last dam built in Australia was the Rookwood Weir outside Rockhampton. Funded in 2016 by Liberal and Nationals in government, the $568 million Rookwood Weir was completed in 2023, delivering water in 2024.
Meanwhile in NSW the much smaller Wilcannia Weir is back on the drawing board to be redesigned, despite a community approved design already sitting on the table.
First announced in 2018 a detailed consultation process was undertaken to design a weir that had the support of the whole community – farmers, townies and the indigenous community.
So imagine the fury when in late December 2023 the community was told the final design would be nothing like their approved design. The backlash was immediate, the new design withdrawn and the Government started the process again.
A review panel was announced in October 2024, yet a December 2024 update said the review was just commencing. So it took 10 months to commence a review into a project that had already been through extensive community consultation and design work.
The estimated costs of the project have blown out from $30 million to over $100 million, including over $18 m in NSW biodiversity offsets.
How does it come to this?
On reading an announcement last year about funding for another business case or planning process for constraints management along the Murray, my frustration led me to question the process in Senate Estimates.
From July 2017 to September 2024, $86.9 million was spent on business cases, yet no payments have been made to Basin states as none completed a final case. An additional $67.5 million funded early works without results.
On some projects we have seen multiple business cases for the same project.
I’m loath to mention the Menindee Lakes, where planning has dragged on since the 1980s. Despite fish kill reports urging fishways and $8.3 million allocated for a business case, nothing has been built. Another $6.5 million went to a temporary fix. It’s now been abandoned.
In Queensland the Crisafulli Government is progressing early works for the Paradise Dam project which will see an entirely new dam wall built to replace the existing wall that has been found to have severe structural issues.
The concern is the new wall requires entirely new approvals, which cannot commence until the final business case is delivered (currently being drafted), adding delays and costs to a project that must be delivered not just for the prosperity of the region, but also to address the fundamental safety issues downstream.
Even the much maligned construction of transmission lines across our landscape face cost blowouts and delays. Regulatory red tape is one reason given for the delays of between three to five years.
How have we gone from a nation that could build a complex engineering project consisting of 16 dams, nine power stations and over 200 km worth of tunnels in under 25 years to one that needs that many years in planning before even turning a sod?
