Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In a rare exercise of bipartisanship I certainly support the sentiments of this motion. The circumstances that have been set out by the member really are quite alarming. I am from a Western Australian background. I cannot be totally opposed, obviously, to fly-in fly-out. There is no doubt that there is a real place for fly-in fly-out and indeed drive-in drive-out. Many Western Australians support a lifestyle that they greatly value through the use of fly-in fly-out. Indeed, as I am travelling up between the north and Perth, and indeed from Perth over here, I often sit next to people that are coming off their rosters and speak very positively. I am likewise aware that there is a large degree of social dislocation that can occur and that for every positive story there are probably some negative stories as well. As a Western Australian, I would be quite appalled to see 100 per cent fly-in fly-out developments in the minerals and resources sector. In my view, it is simply not acceptable when those mines are located near towns—towns that could benefit from the infusion of activity.

This is a very complex issue, and it is very much the responsibility of both state and federal government to drive the companies in the right direction and insist that measures be taken that can help local business operate and gain benefit from fly-in fly-out. It obviously depends on the size of the town and how much you have to work with, but just a basic thing would be ensuring that if, for example, there is a construction camp—obviously you do not want to locate people permanently when the workforce requirements are only going to be for the construction phase—there is an obligation on that camp to access supplies through local business and to set up positive community relations. I am quite surprised that the mining companies are not taking this component far more seriously. If they want to use fly-in fly-out, they have a real obligation to be working with local communities to work out ways in which they can provide greater opportunities for local people to participate in the economic benefit that comes from having a camp within the area.

It is imperative that the state government drive a diversification agenda so that larger towns can provide the capacity for people to relocate there and have the sort of lifestyle and amenity that they would expect in the metropolitan area. When the mining towns in Western Australia were built in the sixties and seventies, they had pretty much an amenity that was not dissimilar to Perth's. From the eighties on, the general standard of amenity available in Perth increased quite dramatically and the mining towns did not keep pace—in fact, they became rather sad and tired-looking and they became far less attractive places for people to relocate to because of that increasing differential in lifestyle. It is important that there be very focused measures to keep the amenity of those towns lifted; that there be resources put in by the state government, and by the federal government and local government, in partnership with the mining companies to make those towns places people would want to bring their families to. We have intervened in a number of towns. For example, in Kalgoorlie a greened desert golf course was created with a tourism facility around which we built housing. Part of the rationale for that was that we needed to diversify. (Time expired)

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