Robbie Katter calls out red tape he says will prevent new dams going ahead

Katter's Australian Party leader Robbie Katter, describing himself as disgusted, said the threshold represented a "changing of the goal posts" as it had not applied to previous unallocated water releases along the Flinders River, including in 2016.

The bureaucratic process was revealed by Queensland Water Minister Glenn Butcher during Budget estimates questioning.

Mr Katter asked Mr Butcher to justify the application of a downstream tolerance threshold for water users vying for the 110,000ML of unallocated water currently open for tender along the Flinders River near Hughenden.

"The Queensland public needs to know that both the minister, and his department, are designing and presiding over bureaucratic processes that can only be intended to destroy projects," Mr Katter said.

"Under questioning, the minister revealed the bizarre process he has either created, or allowed to be created, around water development in this state.

"He revealed that he has either knowingly orchestrated, or through reckless ignorance enabled, processes that allow the ideological bent of departments to come up with a thousand ways to stop development instead of being there to enable it."

Mr Katter said the miniscule threshold parameters that businesses tendering for water allocations from the Flinder River must meet - a 0.1 per cent downstream impact - were designed to stop any new dams from being built.

During Estimates he commented that there were downstream users competing in the tender who would benefit from the Hughenden Irrigation Project Corporation falling over and them then having access.

"Would the minister advise HIPCo that it is pointless pursuing the tender any further given they need that 100 per cent compliance of their water users," he asked.

In reply, Mr Butcher said it was a departmental process.

"I am not aware of which companies are still in it or which projects are still in it," he said. "It would not be good for me to start to dig in and look at those types of things inside that tender process."

During Estimates he said that "rules were set for that tender process (and are the) department's way that they have done that process at this point in time", before passing the query on to the Water Department's acting Director-General Linda Dobe.

Ms Dobe said that there was "no trigger in the (government's) process" to assist otherwise successful upstream applicants to proceed if they could not meet the threshold requirement.

This appears to include cases where projects are being nullified by the annual volume probability of sleeper licences, or projects that could reasonably tolerate a greater threshold.

Mr Butcher told Queensland Country Life that as with all allocation decisions, the government used the best available science.

"It is a feature of any water application process that existing water rights and catchment flows are protected, in line with the relevant water plan," he said.

"The government continues to deliver water infrastructure Queenslanders need, right across the state.

"We are proud of our record in North Queensland - moving forward with the raising of Burdekin Falls Dam, progressing Big Rocks Weir and delivering both stages of the Haughton Pipeline.

"In the last 12 months, right across Queensland, the department has been managing water releases that will see 229,045 megalitres of water made available for new or expanding projects."

However, Mr Katter says the processes involved with allocating water from the Flinders River are "changing goal posts, unworkable demands and dog-eat-dog corporate style bidding wars of which the true Labor giants and long-gone developmentally-minded leaders of our state would be ashamed".

"If the modern Queensland Labor Party was designing processes to stop any new dams being built in the state, it should be awarded ten out of ten," he added.

Mr Katter said that applying the same logic to road projects, for example, would mean no new highway or bridge could ever be built in Australia as such ventures almost always rely on compulsory arbitration or acquisition to proceed.

He said it prioritised river placement of projects above all other considerations and torpedoed otherwise valid, genuinely competitive projects, including HIPCo's irrigated agricultural plans that have already secured $180m in government funding.

He accused the government of having a 'dam phobia' and said it was firmly embedded in the culture of the state's public service.

He feared the latter was using process to prosecute the ideals of the Labor Party.