TANYA PLIBERSEK
MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER

ANTHONY CHISHOLM
ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
 
HELEN MADELL
LABOR CANDIDATE FOR FLYNN

 

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP INTERVIEW
MOUNT MORGAN, QLD
TUESDAY, 8 APRIL 2025
 
SUBJECTS: Final pipe laying for the Mount Morgan pipeline; corflutes; Labor’s environment achievements.
 
HELEN MADELL, LABOR CANDIDATE FOR FLYNN: Good afternoon everyone, thank you for coming today and welcome to what is the final pipe bring laid. I’m Helen Madell and I’m the Labor Candidate for Flynn and it gives me greatly pleasure to introduce you all today to our ministers, our senators and Mayor coming in today. So the final pipe laying of the project today so we've got Tanya Plibersek, Senator Anthony Chisholm and our wonderful Mayor Tony Williams.
 
TONY WILLIAMS, MAYOR OF ROCKHAMPTON REGIONAL COUNCIL: Firstly, I'd like to begin with acknowledgements of country and acknowledge we meet on traditional ownership of this land. I'd like to welcome Minister Tanya Plibersek to Rockhampton, Senator Anthony Chisholm, my fellow councillors, Councillor Cherie Rutherford and Ed Oram and candidate Helen for the upcoming election.
 
Look this is a project that was very passionate to a number of us and being born locally, understanding what this means to the mount Morgan community as part of the Rockhampton Regional Council, this is just not a permanent water supply, but it's a change of life for the people of Mount Morgan. It's allowing them to live like the rest of our community, having permanent water supply on tap when they go to go to use it. They'd been living on a level six water restriction before this project came to fruition, and it's not a way for our modern community to live in that with that type of restriction, having to carry buckets out to water their gardens, to keep them alive, but also being very careful about the water use. So we needed to find a change, and it's great to see all levels of government working together to deliver that. And especially, I'd like to acknowledge Glenn Butcher, the former minister for his involvement with the project, with the contribution of $40 million. And then being regional, we run into some difficulties and some struggles, and delivering a project of this nature was always going to have some conditions around it. We found we needed more money for the project, as prices and cost escalations impacted this project. We found we were short, so I contacted Senator Anthony Chisholm, and he quickly got on to Tanya to say look, can we make this project come to fruition because we really need to deliver it. And yeah, thankful to the federal government who tipped in $30 million which is really what we needed. Council on our part, put $18 million fixing up the road and other reservoirs at Gracemere to give us the ability to go from reservoir to reservoir. So it's been a real team effort for on behalf of the community, I'd like to also acknowledge Councillor Rutherford, the divisional rep for Mount Morgan. She wears all the all the tough questions, when people were ringing up saying, why do I have to carry a bucket to water my garden, when everyone else has got a tap in their hose to do that, so I'd like to pay tribute to Councillor Rutherford, but as far as the team effort goes to be here at this final stage of it, I've been dreaming of this day to see this pipe going in the ground.
 
ANTHONY CHISHOLM, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Thanks Tony, and it's great to be with you the mayor, the councillors Helen as our federal candidate, and also Minister Plibersek, as well. As you can see from Tony, and he's not someone who gets emotional very often, but I think it just goes to show how much this means to the community. And you think about Mount Morgan and the uncertainty that having the lack of water, and what it did to them to actually have this project now coming to fruition, with this last pipe being laid, is going to make such a difference. So I wanted to thank Tony for his advocacy, but also for the constructive way that he works with the federal government as well. I really appreciate having that strong relationship. It's fantastic to have Minister Plibersek here, because she was integral to this from a federal government point of view, someone who understands Queensland wants to ensure that the federal government are supporting projects right across the country that are going to make a difference for communities, and this is exactly the type of project that is going to do that. So it's my pleasure to introduce Tanya, to say a few words before we see that final pipe being laid.
 
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Thanks so much, Chis. And it's such a pleasure to be back in Mount Morgan. I saw the beginning of this project. I saw a big stack of pipes ready to be laid, and here I am today seeing the end of the pipeline part of the project. It's very, very exciting indeed.
 
It's such a pleasure to be with Helen Madell Labor’s Candidate for the federal seat of Flynn. A pleasure to be here with Senator Anthony Chisholm, we call him Chis in Canberra. He is such an incredible advocate for the people of Queensland, and he has been up to his elbows in this project from the very beginning, because he has not given me a break in advocating for this project, and it's wonderful to be here with Mayor Tony Williams and two of his councillors.The Rockhampton Council, have been on my doorstep in Canberra, multiple occasions, constant phone calls, advocating for this project, telling me how important it was for the people of Mount Morgan, for Gracemere and for surrounding communities as well.
 
Mount Morgan was on level six water restrictions for years. The council was carting water here for 30 months. We know that that was incredibly expensive and incredibly disruptive for the people of Mount Morgan. But it wasn't just that they couldn't get the water they needed day to day. This has been a real constraint on the growth of housing and businesses in Mount Morgan and the same for Gracemere. Unless communities have reliable quality water supply, they can't grow. And that's one of the reasons that we were absolutely convinced with the Queensland Government and the council to put money into this project. We know that Mount Morgan with reliable water has a bright future.
 
This is just one example of around 230 projects like this that we're doing around Australia. And I wanted to be here today because it's a day to celebrate in Mount Morgan, but also to say that this is just one of around 230 projects. Now, this is a huge contrast to the previous government. The previous government promised 100 dams, they delivered two. They delivered no national water grid projects in Queensland at all. Since coming to government, we've delivered $700 million worth of water projects. That's compared to about $360 million under the whole previous period of the previous government in the National Water Grid. We've got a whole pipeline of projects underway, $3.2 billion worth of water projects around Australia that will do for communities around Australia what this project is doing for Mount Morgan.
 
So congratulations once again to the Council. Thank you again, Senator Chisholm, for your absolutely relentless advocacy for this project, and congratulations to the businesses, the Council staff and everybody involved. Any questions?
 
JOURNALIST: Yeah, just a couple of questions for you, Minister. So just something that you used in the last election as well the use of purple rather than the Labor red on your corflutes. Is there any reason behind that?
 
PLIBERSEK: I've used it in probably about the last six elections actually, I'd have to count up. I've consistently used purple because it stands out. It stands out against the telegraph poles in my electorate and against the front fences and the businesses of the people who are putting up my posters. It looks good, that's why I use it.
 
JOURNALIST: So you're not trying to distance yourself from the Labor Party or anything like that?
 
PLIBERSEK: What a nonsense made up story by the LNP to try and bring something into something that I've been doing for years, decades.
 
JOURNALIST: And are you concerned about recent environment decisions you've made might hurt you in your electorate?
 
PLIBERSEK: I'm proud of what we've achieved as a government in the environment. We have added more than 100 million hectares to the land and ocean conserved around Australia since coming to government. That's an area larger than Germany, Italy and Norway combined added to the area of land and oceans that we protect. We've added more than a million tonnes of recycling capacity to our capacity in Australia to keep more rubbish out of landfill, to get more plastics out of landfill, and glass and metal and paper, and we've approved enough renewable energy to power well over 10 million homes. We're investing more than half a billion dollars to protect our threatened species. The list goes on and on, but I would just say this, no government has achieved more for the Australian environment than the Albanese Labor government, and I'm proud of that.  Any other questions? Okay, thanks everyone.

ENDS