(Image: Tom Red/Private Media)

Barnaby Joyce is making a major election appeal to Queensland voters and the coal industry with money he doesn’t yet have for a dam which for decades has been denied environmental approval.

But the political importance of the 970,000-megalitre project to the Morrison government’s election prospects could guarantee its progress this time.

The deputy prime minister and Nationals leader wants the federal government to spend $483 million to part-fund construction of a massive dam at Urannah, in central Queensland.

The funding could reinforce the Coalition’s electoral dominance of a regional Queensland seat, directly benefiting the Nationals’ holdings of Flynn, Capricornia and Dawson. It would also send an explicit message to the fossil fuel industry that the government is not retreating from spending significant amounts backing coal production — a message it would also hope reaches voters in such electorates as Hunter.

Coalmining would get a third of the water the private operator wants to collect by damming the Broken River, some 90km west of Mackay. This would not only service existing mining but would allow for expansion and mines to be opened. Most of the remainder would go to agricultural irrigation. The plan includes hydroelectric generation.

The aggressive funding proposal also puts pressure on the Queensland Labor government to provide approval and cash.

Joyce will say in Brisbane today that it was money “in the bank”, but will concede it would need official confirmation in the March 29 budget. And Environment Minister Sussan Ley told Radio National an extensive environmental impact study would need to be prepared and considered before construction could begin on the $2.9 billion dam by Bowen River Utilities.

Ley said the first step had to be made by the Queensland government: “We will consider matters of environmental significance that impacts the dam, on world heritage places, on natural heritage, on migratory species, on threatened species and so on.

“There is no suggestion that this proposal steps outside our national environmental law.”

The dam was first considered about 60 years ago and 25 feasibility studies have denied it environmental endorsement. Local Indigenous groups have also opposed it.

The government hopes public opinion will outweigh the objections by stressing the jobs — 1200 during construction, 600 to run it — and revenue it says would flow.

“Our government understands that building and growing our nation requires industries that produce wealth, such as the mining, agriculture and farming sectors,” Joyce will say. “It is these industries that earn the export dollars that will help make our country as strong as possible as quickly as possible.

“That’s why we have put $483 million in the bank to build Urannah Dam. Our investment will further drive the development of central Queensland, ensuring businesses and industries have the water security they need to grow into the future.”

This wealth guarantee is contradicted by an economic analysis prepared for a Mackay conservation group which argued the return on every dollar spent on the dam would be just 75 cents. A separate report claimed the dam would cover 9850 hectares of suitable high-value cropping farm development and 12,250 hectares of improved grazing land.

Indigenous groups have said the area to be covered would include burial grounds and ceremonial sites.