Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this morning for the benefit of the Committee and the people of Australia to give a snapshot of what Australia would look like if Kevin Rudd, the Leader of the Opposition, became Prime Minister. The Bowen Basin lies in the very northern parts of my electorate, and Emerald and Blackwater are two service towns to the coal industry. When I first became the member for Maranoa, Emerald, for instance, had a population of about 6,000 people. Yet, with this huge resource of the Bowen Basin, the workers were domiciled in the towns like Blackwater and Emerald. They really acted as dormitory towns rather than having businesses associated with coalmining as well.

The control that the unions had over those mining operations was holding back those communities, and it is the sort of snapshot people need to focus on as to the impact on rural and regional communities of the control that unions had over the union shop, if you want to call it that. The town of Blackwater was a dormitory town for the mining operations around there, but there were no businesses operating there that were directly related to the coal-mining operations in the way we have now. In fact, so chronic was the situation under the union dominance of the workplace at that time, the houses in Blackwater were actually being sold off and sent off into other towns. Some of them were being relocated to places like Birdsville, in the west of my electorate. They were being sold out of town because there was not sufficient business activity to keep the community of Blackwater growing.

Prior to our workplace agreements, under the union dominance of the workplace under a Labor government, any repair that had to be done to large mining equipment had to be done at a union shop. It had to be transported to places like Newcastle and Wollongong. It could not be repaired locally; it had to go to another union dominated workplace. Under our flexible workplace relations and Australian workplace agreements, we now see that privately owned and run businesses are servicing the mining sector and that large mining equipment. As I said at the start of my address, Emerald was a town of about 6,000 people and Blackwater was rather similar. Emerald now has a population of about 15,000. It is dominated by very small businesses that are servicing service providers to the mining community. If people want to have a look at what happens under a Labor government, they should look no further than at Emerald and Blackwater— (Time expired)

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