‘Pie in the sky’: Coalition’s $6bn dams pitch puts politics before process

Urannah creek in Queensland’s Eungella Range. Plans for a Urannah dam have been studied and discarded at least 18 times but the Coalition is now backing the idea. Photograph: Jeff Tan

The idea of building a massive dam in Queensland’s Burdekin rangelands has been revived and then scrapped, over and over again, for more than 80 years.

The site known as Hells Gates was first surveyed for a dam by the engineer John Bradfield in 1938. Bradfield, who built the Sydney Harbour Bridge, thought he could irrigate the Queensland interior and change the arid climate of central Australia (an idea that has been largely debunked by scientists) by diverting northern floodwaters to the west of the Great Dividing Range.