Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Christinamiot.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, December eighth, twenty twenty five. Foreign Minister Penny
Speaker 1: Wong and Defense Minister Richard Miles are off to Washington,
Speaker 1: DC this week. They're in town for high level talks
Speaker 1: about the Aucust Military Pact, but they'll be feeling the
Speaker 1: pressure to bolster defense spending after the White House released
Speaker 1: its new national security strategy. That story's live right now
Speaker 1: at the Australian dot com dot AU. A peaceful valley
Speaker 1: was meant to become a renewable energy hotspot, but farmers
Speaker 1: say their water has been poisoned today when a green
Speaker 1: energy dream goes wrong. About twenty five minutes drive west
Speaker 1: of Mackay in Queensland lies the picturesque Pioneer Valley, one
Speaker 1: of the state's oldest farming communities. It's where rolling green
Speaker 1: hills boorder, sugar cane fields and platypum swim under glittering
Speaker 1: waterfalls in the National Park. But families who farmed this
Speaker 1: land for years say their fresh, clean groundwater has been
Speaker 1: contaminated by a defunct green energy project proposed by the
Speaker 1: former State Labor government, and now no one will tell
Speaker 1: them what's going on.
Speaker 2: Over the next one hundred years, Queensland's competitiveness will be
Speaker 2: on an entirely different focus, relying on harnessing, moving, and
Speaker 2: storing renewable energy.
Speaker 1: This is a speech given by the former Queensland Premier
Speaker 1: and a state of palichet in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: To put that in the language of sport, this isn't
Speaker 2: a sprint or even a marathon, It's a triathlon.
Speaker 1: The grand was this cut greenhouse gas emissions by seventy percent,
Speaker 1: triple the number of renewables projects, and accelerate the closure
Speaker 1: of Queensland's coal fired power stations. The former Labor government
Speaker 1: said two huge pumped hydro projects were vital to achieving
Speaker 1: those goals.
Speaker 2: I prefer to call it the Battery of the North.
Speaker 2: It will be the largest pumped hydro storage in the world,
Speaker 2: with five gigawatts of twenty four hour storage and the
Speaker 2: potential for Stage one to be completed by twenty thirty two.
Speaker 2: These are projects of national significance on a scale not
Speaker 2: seen since the construction of Snowy Hydro. Bigger than Snowy Hydro.
Speaker 1: So a taxpayer funded organization called Queensland Hydro was established
Speaker 1: to develop the five gigawat Pioneer Bertekin pumped hydro project
Speaker 1: in the Pioneer Valley and another southwest of NUSA, but
Speaker 1: the Palochet government didn't do its homework, and just days
Speaker 1: after the twenty twenty four state election, and despite a
Speaker 1: taxpayer cash splash on fifty properties in the region, a
Speaker 1: long delayed report deemed the multi billion dollar project commercially unviable.
Speaker 1: It was subsequently shelved by David Chrisofoli's victorious Liberal government.
Speaker 3: So we've spoken to a number of landholders across the
Speaker 3: Pioneer Valley and what they're telling us is that their
Speaker 3: wells and their dams that they draw their drinking supply
Speaker 3: and use for irrigation has been contaminated.
Speaker 1: Michael McKenna is The Australian's Queensland Editor.
Speaker 3: There was tubidity in the water of the wells, there
Speaker 3: was discoloration in the drinking water dams, and most recently
Speaker 3: there's been a black mark, an oily substance that has
Speaker 3: come from the bottom of these wells. Some of the
Speaker 3: landholders have sent their water off for testing and they
Speaker 3: report and I have seen these test results, and they
Speaker 3: show that there's dangerous levels of aluminium, iron, and manganese,
Speaker 3: as well as the Ecla bacteria that has been found
Speaker 3: in their water supply. The first signs of this was
Speaker 3: happening when there was actual drilling being conducted on the
Speaker 3: land for the Pioneer Bertican project. But these problems have
Speaker 3: continued to occur, and I have spoken to landholders going
Speaker 3: back about fifty or sixty years. I've tracked down people
Speaker 3: that grew up on the properties. On one of the
Speaker 3: worst affected properties, he's a seventy year old man, Bernie Mansell,
Speaker 3: and he lived on the property and farmed it for
Speaker 3: sugarcane for decades. And he and a couple of others
Speaker 3: that took over this land after he sold it have
Speaker 3: said that there was never any discolouration, There was no
Speaker 3: problem with the well and certainly no contamination.
Speaker 1: Hydro Geologists privately hired to look into the alleged contamination
Speaker 1: have linked it to exploratory drilling conducted before the Pioneer
Speaker 1: Burkin project was canned. That's where experts drilled deep into
Speaker 1: the earth to understand what they're working with. In this case,
Speaker 1: almost a kilometer. According to public records. What does Queensland
Speaker 1: Hydro say about that alleged contamination.
Speaker 3: So they've denied any responsibility for the alleged contamination in
Speaker 3: any of the water supplies in the Pioneer Valley. They
Speaker 3: have looked at one of the worst affected properties and
Speaker 3: looked at the test results and done some field work.
Speaker 3: What they have said, or what their findings are is
Speaker 3: that these metals were already evident in the ground, and
Speaker 3: they're suggesting that the contamination or the dangerous levels of
Speaker 3: the metals and also the existence of the E. Colon
Speaker 3: bacteria is as a result of heavy rain events that
Speaker 3: occurred earlier this year, and that it stirred up some
Speaker 3: of this material in the ground and that it washed
Speaker 3: down the hill and into the wells now. I have
Speaker 3: spoken to landholders. There's been two landholders and another farmer
Speaker 3: that have leased this property over the last fifty years.
Speaker 3: I've spoken to all three of them and they dismissed
Speaker 3: this suggestion. They're saying that there has always been heavy
Speaker 3: rain in this area, but going back those decades, they
Speaker 3: have never seen what has happened the discoloration, the tubidity,
Speaker 3: and certainly the contamination in that well and in the
Speaker 3: surrounding waterspy that it has never happened before.
Speaker 1: You've spoken to people who, as you said, have lived
Speaker 1: on and farmed this land for many, many decades. How
Speaker 1: has this situation affected the king comunity in Pioneer Valley.
Speaker 3: Well, right from the beginning, this project has split the community.
Speaker 3: You've got to understand that there was no full warning.
Speaker 3: One day, they were going about their business, they were
Speaker 3: farming their land. It was this tight net small community.
Speaker 3: And the next they heard on the news that their valley,
Speaker 3: which is one of the most pristine, beautiful valleys, it
Speaker 3: sits under the Jungella National Park. It's a boxed in
Speaker 3: valley that they found out that it was going to
Speaker 3: be flooded and filled with water to create this massive
Speaker 3: mammoth pump hydro project. Now, some of the landholders were
Speaker 3: able to sell their property. They were moving into retirement
Speaker 3: and they sold it at a premium. Others wanted to
Speaker 3: stay and want to continue on with their farming. But
Speaker 3: while this process was going on, I've been told that
Speaker 3: Queensland Hydro wasn't public about the prices that were being
Speaker 3: offered on each of the properties, that there was non
Speaker 3: disclosure agreements that were put on those that had sold
Speaker 3: there was suspicion. And then up above there are people
Speaker 3: who live in and around the national park, the Yungella
Speaker 3: National Park who was so concerned about the impact on
Speaker 3: the spring water and the waterways up there, which is
Speaker 3: full of platypus. And so this project has pitted people
Speaker 3: against each other in the community. I have been told
Speaker 3: repeatedly that this has caused division within the community, and
Speaker 3: particularly the contamination. There's a lot of angst. I've spoken
Speaker 3: to farmers who say that they haven't been able to
Speaker 3: sleep at night. These are people that have worked the
Speaker 3: land for decades and they've built up their enterprise. The
Speaker 3: local MP for the area, Glenn Kelly, has confirmed to
Speaker 3: me that he has spoken to people who believe that
Speaker 3: their lands contaminated, but they're afraid of what it would
Speaker 3: do to the value of their land.
Speaker 1: So why do it at all.
Speaker 3: When you look at the policy that was announced in
Speaker 3: September twenty twenty two, both in the ambition and the
Speaker 3: size of the policy, timing is important. The Greens had
Speaker 3: won seats at the federal election. State Labor was down
Speaker 3: in the polls and the Greens were up in the
Speaker 3: state Poles and Anastasia Poloshe who was in her third term,
Speaker 3: wanted something to recharge her leadership, and this I've been
Speaker 3: led to believe it was both the parent and what
Speaker 3: I've understood from speaking to people inside the government at
Speaker 3: the time is that this was what was supposed to
Speaker 3: carry her through to the October twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 3: And also they say more importantly, wedged the Liberal National
Speaker 3: Party government because they would probably have some concerns about
Speaker 3: the projects and they could have a point of distinction
Speaker 3: from the Liberal National.
Speaker 1: Party coming up, how Pioneer Valley residents are being kept
Speaker 1: in the dark. Joe Bijaya has been farming ultra sweet
Speaker 1: sugar cane in the Pioneer Valley for three decades. He's
Speaker 1: had the water on three of his four properties independently tested,
Speaker 1: and preliminary findings in a draft report by a hydrogeologist
Speaker 1: support his suspicions that alleged contamination was caused by exploratory drilling,
Speaker 1: but he says Queensland Hydro won't share results from testing
Speaker 1: it conducted before drilling started.
Speaker 3: Essentially, he's looking for a base to see what the
Speaker 3: water was and whether there was any of these alleged
Speaker 3: contaminants in the water before the drilling was done, so
Speaker 3: he can compare them with the results that he's independently
Speaker 3: got that shows that there are dangerous levels. Now, he
Speaker 3: tells me he has repeatedly asked for these results, his
Speaker 3: initial test results, and he has never been given those results.
Speaker 3: But there is certainly a line of behavior from Queensland
Speaker 3: Hydro that I have seen since the project was announced
Speaker 3: in September twenty twenty two that shows that well, Queensland
Speaker 3: Hydro was saying that they were transparent and they wanted
Speaker 3: to constantly keep the community informed. That there are some
Speaker 3: things that they held back. You can see it in
Speaker 3: the way that they dealt with landholders individually separately and
Speaker 3: didn't tell each of their neighbors and the like of
Speaker 3: the buy up of land or the progress of the project.
Speaker 3: And now with the alleged contamination, Michaels hit a wall too.
Speaker 3: So a couple of months ago I put in a
Speaker 3: right to information requests for documents that related to Queensland
Speaker 3: Hydro and specifically it's correspondence with the then Labor government.
Speaker 3: I was trying to ascertain what Queensland Hydro what they
Speaker 3: were telling the government about the progress and problems with
Speaker 3: the Pioneer Ertican project, and I was met with a
Speaker 3: wall of secrecy. Essentially, this is internal correspondence about the
Speaker 3: progress and problems of the project. But I have been
Speaker 3: refused to access to the majority of those documents on
Speaker 3: the basis that there was a deed a confidentiality agreement
Speaker 3: that was struck between the entities which allowed them to
Speaker 3: block the public release of any of these documents. This
Speaker 3: agreement between the then Queensland Government and Queensland Hydro is
Speaker 3: highly unusual, and moreover, in the legal fight that I've
Speaker 3: been having with the government and Queensland Hydro over their
Speaker 3: blocking of these documents, that the provisions also prevent them
Speaker 3: from telling me why they're blocking it and why the
Speaker 3: confidentiality agreement was struck. In my twenty five years of
Speaker 3: covering state and federal governments, I have never seen an
Speaker 3: agreement like this that effectively ensures that we the public
Speaker 3: do not get access into the secrets of this project.
Speaker 3: There are often provisions or causes to stop access to
Speaker 3: what they call deliberative documents in cabinet, which allows the
Speaker 3: cabinet to openly consider a project. But I was seeking
Speaker 3: correspondence between a government, a taxpayer owned entity and the
Speaker 3: government about a project they're building for the benefit of Queenslanders,
Speaker 3: and they have used, as very unusual this rare contract
Speaker 3: to block any access to anyone to find out what
Speaker 3: it's about.
Speaker 1: Michael McKenna is The Australian's Queensland Editor. You can read
Speaker 1: his full investigation, plus see photos, videos and more at
Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot au