So Barnaby Joyce is in the Clarence Valley today

Barnaby Joyce  (right) with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott

Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce, the Coalition’s candidate for New England at the forthcoming federal lower house election, while clinging on to his senate seat until the last possible moment is down in the Clarence Valley today opening fellow Nationals Kevin Hogan’s Grafton campaign office.

It is a wonder Joyce would show his face in the Valley, given he sat on the Senate RRAT Committee inquiry into additional water supplies for south-east Queensland where he made it plain at that time that he was not adverse to any proposal to steal Clarence freshwater so that his Queensland mates could continue their unsustainable irrigation practices [April-August 2007].

He also voted against The Greens motion in the Senate which read in part:

"That the Senate:....(b) calls on the Federal Government to: (i) abandon plans for damming the Clarence, Tweed, Richmond and Mann Rivers;" [C'wealth Hansard,Senate,proof issue,19 August 2007,p.p. 33-34].

He was still including mention of the Clarence catchment in his discussions on water supply in 2008:

"You can't create water with money. That means you have to think about bringing it from somewhere else, like the Gulf or the Clarence." [The Land, 13 August 2008]

While according to The Clarence Valley Review on 20 February 2013 the leaked  ‘100 Dams’ draft consultation paper mentioned the Clarence River catchment area:

The document, leaked to a Sydney newspaper, reportedly lists 100 potential projects including four options for piping water from the Clarence area to the Logan River in south-east Queensland.

Joyce has this to say about these latest dam proposals:

"Now some of these dams will require public funding and at the last election I had half a billion dollars put away in my portfolio as seed capital to this purpose.

Some of them will require private funding and ... myself and (my) chief of staff, Matt Canavan designed the infrastructure partnership scheme which is a mechanism to attract funds from private investment to invest in this nation building infrastructure.

Some of them don't need anything because in such areas as the mining industry they require water to get coal mines up and they'll build them."