Conservationists and Queensland's Environment Minister Stephen Miles have brushed off One Nation's announcement that it wants to drought-proof western Queensland through a mass water infrastructure project.

One Nation has been plotting its course to the next state election, tipped for 2018, and yesterday announced its first 36 candidates.

Most of the initial candidates are based in regional Queensland, and the party's policy to reconsider the controversial Bradfield Scheme is seen as an attempt to win the rural vote.

Thought up by civil engineer John Bradfield in 1938, the plan proposes diverting water from the Tully, Herbert and Burdekin Rivers in north Queensland to Western Queensland, and even as far as Lake Eyre in South Australia.

"It will turn the west of Queensland into a Garden of Eden," One Nation's state secretary and campaign manager, Jim Savage, said.

"All western Queensland needs is water, and once they have got enough water the only other thing they need is more water."

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 4 minutes 2 seconds 4 m 2 s Marty McCarthy reports One Nation wants to drought-proof western Queensland through a mass water infrastructure project. ( Marty McCarthy ) Download 3.7 MB

One Nation said if the scheme was ever realised it would create hundreds of thousands of jobs, and open up 100 million hectares of western Queensland for irrigated cropping.

The Bradfield scheme has been modified over the years, to include versions that would see the water flow down to recharge the Murray Darling Basin.

In 2007, former Queensland premier Peter Beattie suggested the Murray-Darling version of the scheme be included in the Prime Minister's $10 billion National Water Security Plan.

Regardless of where the water flows, the Bradfield Scheme is often criticised for not being worth the cost, and for the risk it poses to the environment.

Mr Savage said he 'didn't care' what the cost was and said financial issues should not be a deterrent.

"If you tried to implement the Snowy River Scheme today the comeback would be that it's too expensive and too damaging, but that is garbage," he said.

"The expense is irrelevant, it will pay for itself 100 times over over the next 300 years because we are talking about a nation-building project.

"There was a man called President [Ronald] Reagan who once said 'I have all the good ideas, others can work out the details'.

"Of course I haven't got the costing on it now, nobody has, but that doesn't matter."

Tim Seelig from the Queensland Conservation Council ridiculed the proposal, and said any attempt to build large water projects in northern Australia was fraught with problems.

"Quite frankly it is the latest version of a pretty mad cap plan to divert water, build dams and a project that is destined to never happen, because the costs and environmental impacts are astronomical," he said.

"The science is pretty clear that northern Australia is really not suited to irrigated agriculture on the scale proponents talk about.

"Evaporation rates in dams are much higher in the north and the rivers do not flow all year round like they do in southern Australia."

Queensland's Environment Minister, Stephen Miles, said farmers would not be able to afford the cost of water under the Bradfield Scheme.

"What we suspect with a scheme of this scale is that the water would end up being too expensive for farmers and other land users would miss out on water that would otherwise flow to them," he said.

"There would also be significant environmental impacts of changing the catchments."

Mr Miles said One Nation was trying to appeal to voters with populist policies.

"They will say and do anything without really thinking it through," he said.

"They are a populist movement attempting to be popular and will say and do anything that is popular, without necessarily looking at the facts or what might actually work".