Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Secker, I add my congratulations to you on assuming your current role.

Today I want to give a report to the parliament on the state of the electorate of Herbert, the state of the north, and I bring to the parliament some very encouraging and exciting news. Last week I was able to attend the opening of the Australian Technical College North Queensland. There have been a few knockers around the place about Australian technical colleges. They ought to come to Townsville and see the success of what we have built on a greenfield site in a period of 12 months, and they should see the opportunities that have been created for the young people who are attending the college.

The college was contracted to deliver 100 training positions. Being North Queensland, of course, we delivered 151 on opening day. One hundred and fifty-one young men and women will have the opportunity to get a year 12 qualification but also to learn a trade and ultimately gain an apprenticeship. But as I told them at the opening, they should aspire to more than that—they can be the foreman on the job site, they can be the supervisor, they can be the manager, and ultimately they can own their own operation. I think that is an exciting future for those young men and women who will be trained through that Australian Technical College. The college is state-of-the-art—built for the tropics but built with the latest training equipment. Indeed industry, who are a partner in setting up the Australian Technical College, marvel at the equipment that is there. They say that they could not find anything better for their own commercial businesses to do their own work. What a far cry that is from some of the equipment that exists in the old TAFE system that is 30 years out of date.

There are no books in the classrooms. They have MP3s, they have memory sticks and they work electronically. Classrooms are such that if you want to drive a car into the mechanical automotive classroom, you can. It has been absolutely set up according to all of the modern trends and according to how you best train a young student. I reckon it is the best ATC in Australia. I congratulate John Bearne and his team and Bob Knight, who is the college principal, on what they have been able to do in setting up a wonderful new skills resource for North Queensland.

I also advise the parliament that this particular college is not going to be working under the old system. It is not going to have a six-week holiday over Christmas and several lots of two-week holidays during the year. It is going to be open for 50 weeks a year. That is a great outcome. It is also going to have a mid-year intake. So in July we will take in another 50 students, and we will build the numbers to 200. We are already looking further into the future. We want to acquire an additional hectare of land next to the site so that in years ahead the college can further expand, because of the demand from industry to make sure we have well-trained young men and women. So not only have we delivered; we are looking to the future. We have a model that the rest of Australia would be mighty proud to adopt.

I will now report to the parliament on Palm Island—the place described by the Guinness Book of Records as ‘the most dangerous place on earth’. It is an Indigenous community where 50 tribes have been thrown together—a part of history that is a horrible, dysfunctional place. I have been going there for 10 years. I have compared it to other Indigenous communities that are model Indigenous communities. It is a chalk-and-cheese situation. I was at Warburton in Western Australia relatively recently. It is a great community, run by an Aboriginal council. There is a white mayor. Nobody sees colour of skin; they all work together. But the council banned alcohol so the rate of domestic violence is minimal, the health problems are certainly reduced, they run their own sewerage system, water supply, local store, airline and so on—all at a profit. The town is tidy, the houses do not have holes in the walls and kids go to school. It is a wonderful outcome, and they are basically in the middle of the desert. Indigenous communities can do it. Palm Island is the reverse.

Having said that, after going there for 10 years, I was there relatively recently—just before Christmas—and I detected a change on Palm Island. I detected a change among the leadership that they understand that they can do better, that they have to do better, that the people of Palm Island cannot go on living the way they are living. It is not acceptable. The solution is in the hands of the leadership of Palm Island. It is not in my hands, it is not in the government’s hands—it is in the hands of the leadership of Palm Island. Of course, there has to be the will in the community to follow that leadership.

There are a couple of key things that I have talked to the council about. Those key things are, firstly, the absolute necessity to address law and order and governance issues and make sure that that operates properly; and, secondly, land ownership. Certainly, Mal Brough, the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, understands that and has been very proactive in relation to that issue. At the moment Palm Island is a Soviet-style collective: nobody owns anything. The central group has control. Nobody can own their own little piece of land; they cannot own their own little house. If you said to somebody in Brisbane, Perth or the Coonawarra, ‘You can’t own your own piece of land and your own house,’ they would be outraged. That is what it is like on Palm Island. We have to address the land ownership issues, and I think it is going to happen. For the first time in 10 years, I have some confidence that the island is heading in the right direction. I will give them every support that I can.

We have had a bit of rain recently in North Queensland. Two weeks ago in my backyard, two feet—600 millimetres—of rain fell. I wish a bit of it would fall down here and, of course, in the south-east part of the state. But it does rain in North Queensland. We have had some cuts in our Bruce Highway. The media have driven a campaign about the cuts in the highway. We see that every year when it rains. I understand that. As a government we have got to do everything that we can to minimise those road closures during the wet season. But I know that today the state Minister for Transport and Main Roads, Paul Lucas, has told it like it is and said, ‘You can’t flood-proof the highway.’ It would be extraordinarily expensive. In fact, you would have to build a bridge from Townsville to Cairns to flood-proof the highway. He has accepted the reality that there will be closures, but it is his goal to minimise the closure times. If you have to wait three or four hours for the flooding to go down then you have to wait three or four hours. That is his view. That lines up with the federal minister’s view. To completely flood-proof the highway would be financially impossible. The taxpayers would not accept that burden for the benefit that it would deliver.

In relation to other roads, I have certainly taken on a major program to build new roads in the electorate of Herbert in North Queensland. The largest ever road funding package is being spent on the Bruce Highway between Townsville and Cairns, but there is more to be done. I have committed to the community that I will find $40 million to build four lanes from Woodlands Road to Veales Road on the Bruce Highway. That is something that people along the Bushland Beach, Mt Low Parkway and Deeragun desperately want to see. I am going to deliver that and I am hopeful that in the not-too-distant future—certainly by the end of March—I will be able to announce that I have secured the $40 million and that the project will get the green light, and we will proceed to have that road done. We cannot not do it because too many people are being killed on that section of the road. If it comes to motorists having to wait a couple of hours for the floods to go down or stopping the deaths that are occurring on the highway, I will stop the deaths on the highway first and I will have the backing of the people of North Queensland in doing that.

Road construction on the Townsville ring road is about to commence within the next two weeks. That is a $119 million road—a high-speed motorway linking the Bruce Highway to the Douglas arterial road. That also is a flood mitigation project. It will avoid the flooding that happens on the Bohle River and it will connect the Northern Beaches and the northern Bruce Highway to Lavarack Barracks, the university and the hospital via a 100-kilometre an hour high-speed motorway. That is a great outcome and I am looking forward to that construction starting before the end of this month.

Also, a little bit further down the horizon, I am committed to the construction of the Townsville port access road. This is a nearly $200 million project. It is a fifty-fifty share with the state government. It is time that we got on with the design and construction of the port access road. I have spent considerable time with the port people. There is huge development going on and we are probably going to see tonnages triple through the port in the next 15 or 20 years. We need to get that freight down the port access road and not take it through some of the suburbs of Townsville. It is big money—a $119 million ring road, a $200 million port access road, $222 million in flood mitigation on the Bruce Highway and $128 million raising the road in the Tully area. They are huge licks of money and I have been part of delivering that. I am going to be part of delivering the further commitments.

I want to move from roads to Defence. Again, it is extraordinary news for the people of North Queensland and in particular industry and commerce in Townsville. We are going to proceed with the redevelopment of Lavarack Barracks stage 4, we are going to do 3/4 Cavalry Regiment, we are going to do 4 Field Regiment, we are going to do 3CER—$207 million. If it goes according to Defence’s time frame, we will see that start in August this year—$207 million being spent on the barracks.

It does not end there. In 2011 the 3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment will be transferred from Holsworthy up to Townsville, so we have to build the working accommodation for them. That is going to cost about $350 million and that will start probably at the end of 2008. So we have lined up over half a billion dollars worth of capital works at Lavarack Barracks in the next three years—extraordinary what it does to our economy.

But there is more. The Defence Housing Authority has to house these 800 soldiers and 700 support staff; it will probably need 1,500 more homes. Defence will spend a heap of money on phase 2 Single LEAP, which is the single soldier accommodation, for 168 single soldier accommodation units. That is extraordinary.

There is more. Over at RAAF Townsville this year we are moving all of Australia’s Caribou aircraft to Townsville—another 250 airmen to support that operation. Just across the runway there is more at 5 Aviation Regiment—$20 million to prepare for the arrival of Australia’s MRH90 helicopters, which will be based in Townsville and replacing the Black Hawks. On top of that there might be a little bit more. I am unable to announce that yet, but we are certainly working very hard on it. In other words, the future in North Queensland, the prosperity in North Queensland, is locked in—perhaps for the next decade. Families can plan for the future with confidence with these sorts of major developments locked in.

I now switch tack to an opportunity which has emerged today. That is in relation to Tiger Airways. Tiger Airways is the Singapore government Singapore Airlines low-cost carrier. It currently services Darwin; it has a connection between Darwin and Singapore. It is operating now. Tiger has confirmed that it is very interested in running domestically in Australia. I am in the process of setting up a meeting between our peak tourism people and Tiger to talk about the Darwin to Townsville connection. There is a very significant passenger load that is Defence generated between Townsville and Darwin, home of the 3rd Brigade and the 1st Brigade, and I think that route is currently not serviced by any other domestic airline. It is an opportunity for Tiger to move in on a new route and take advantage of the traffic loads that are undoubtedly there.

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