The Paradise dam debacle is a kick in the teeth for agriculture in the Bundaberg and Burnett region and an obscene slug on taxpayers for years to come to rebuild the dam wall from scratch.
We already know that much. What we don't know yet is who is going to be made accountable in government for ignoring the elephant in the room, for completely ignoring the engineers who on multiple occasions documented very serious structural flaws in the dam wall that were inevitably only to get worse over time.
Peter Beattie, as the political architect of the dam's construction, is rightfully levelling the blame at his own party for years of inaction, apathy and ineptitude bordering on negligence to act upon the warnings issued by the Paradise Dam administrator, Sun Water, which certainly were down on paper very early on in Annastacia Palaszczuk's first term in government. That was 2015.
Maybe the dam wall was a complete lemon from the get go. Maybe government intervention years ago when structural flaws were first documented wouldn't have saved it in the long run.
But the fact is the former Palaszczuk government done zip to instigate any kind of investigation with the pragmatic aim of repairing the dam wall if at all possible before it become irreparable.
The cost difference between repair and replacement with the Paradise Dam will be in the the billions.
That's a lot of money that won't be going elsewhere to things like roads, schools, hospitals and public housing.
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