Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The issue of water security is a state government matter—always has been, always will be. You would think that would mean that a federal government has no role in this vital area of infrastructure, but you would be wrong. That is especially so if you are from the north of this great country. You see, there have been only two dams fully funded by the federal government since Federation—just two. They are the Burdekin Falls Dam and the Ord River Dam. Despite being on opposite sides of the country, they do have a lot in common. Both are north of the Tropic of Capricorn. Both are more than 1,000 kilometres away from their respective capital cities. Both are vital; neither had the crucial backing of any state government to actually be built.

In the south east of my state, the residents there have 10 years water security; 10 years of gravity-fed water supply. In Townsville, we have two years water security. After that, we will have to pump water from the Burdekin Falls Dam at huge expense to the ratepayers. That must be addressed.

Townsville Enterprise submitted a proposal to secure funding to raise the wall of the Burdekin Falls Dam and to establish another dam further up the Burdekin River at Hell's Gate. In the paper commissioned by the previous Labor government into industry in the north of Queensland, water security and its availability was high on the list. Hell's Gate and raising the wall at the Burdekin Falls Dam were listed as prime sites for delivery of water security and as a catalyst for irrigation of crops such as sugarcane and maize for ethanol production. This proposal from Townsville Enterprise has my total support.

We must back our strengths in this area and look to James Cook University and the tropical sciences precinct to ensure we are doing the right thing by the environment, as we strive to meet markets and develop new markets and new customers. On that front, it is often said that we do not want to make the mistakes the southern states did centuries ago. While that is convenient, there is much we can learn from the irrigation in the Burdekin cane-farming areas. The challenges of salinity, pest management and the like are right there for us to research and learn from.

Two organisations based in North Queensland are perfectly placed to do this research and ensure that we get the best all-round result. Damien Burrows' TropWATER and Scott Crawford's NQ Dry Tropics are the kinds of organisations that need to be backed if we are to deliver water security, the industry and the jobs of the future. We must get the science right at the start. If you get the science right at the start, you do not have to pay the big price at the end. We in the North do not ask to be treated any different to the southern states and the rest of the country. Most of the time we would settle for being treated half as well. On the matter of water and energy, we simply cannot be considered as a viable option for investment in new industries and the jobs that will provide if we cannot provide affordable and plentiful water and energy. It is that simple. Science and sustainable development are the building blocks for the development of the North.

I was talking to a fellow MP and he questioned the development of the North. Why should we do this? Why is it important? I asked him in all honesty, 'Where are the bauxite deposits in Victoria?' to which he answered that there were none. I said, 'Then why do you have an aluminium refinery down there?' The answer is cheap electricity. Energy and water are the keys to development of the North. Affordable and plentiful energy and water are the two essential building blocks for the north of the country. It is the reason Victoria is the manufacturing capital. Burning brown coal for electricity is cheap and therefore manufacturing costs are competitive. If we were to have a baseload power station in the North, we could open up all kinds of things.

If we had had the $5 billion concessional loan facility in 2010 when we were talking about the copper string project we would be having a very different conversation today—the ability to bring those things together with the $5 billion loan facility, where we get a baseload power station, where we can use the Clean Energy Fund, Direct Action and all those things to make it ultracritical. There is enough private money out there to build these power stations but, if we can add value to it, we will develop that. The copper string project was a way of making sure that things could connect to the national grid. If we were to get a baseload power station somewhere out in the Galilee Basin, that would open up the area for the Kennedy wind farm, big solar and Tully-Millstream. All those renewable energy projects and the science that goes with them would open up and they could then feed into the national energy market. We can provide over 40 per cent of Australia's renewable energy needs in North Queensland through this project alone, if we get the funding right and we get the new businesses and industries into our region.

There can be no doubt that the top 5 issues in Townsville and our North Queensland region are jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs. As we see the cranes dominate the Brisbane skyline, the wait for investment from our state government in the North grows longer and longer. The recent appointment of administrators to Queensland Nickel has knocked my city around. We are, of course, acutely aware that we are not alone when it comes to job losses in the resources sector. But we saw 237 people lose their jobs when they were made redundant. Then the administrators were appointed and they are still waiting for their entitlements. Those things tend to knock a city around.

How do we generate jobs locally in a place that is 1,400 kilometres away from a capital city? The federal government has spent over $5 billion in the North since 2006. We have to ensure that many jobs are created locally. How do we do that? We make the decision makers allow local contractors to get hold of that money. If we continue to let the large corporations come in and build these things, the profit will continue to leave our city and the investment that goes with that will continue to leave along with it—and we are left standing at the airport waving goodbye as our profit leaves. If we are able to break down the tenders to bite-size chunks, local firms would be able to tender and get that work. It will save the taxpayer money; it will increase competition; and it will ensure that traineeships and apprenticeships are done locally, as opposed to what we see now where there are no apprenticeships with the tier 1 companies. It is about making sure that we progress those things in our city.

One thing that we can do right now is deal with issues around the Federal Safety Commission. In our first repeal day, then Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, repealed the FSC on the building of defence housing homes. This had a number of great effects. Firstly, it lowered the cost of red tape around building defence homes. It actually lowered the cost to the taxpayer of a defence home by about 15 per cent. That is real money. It also allowed a lot more companies to tender for and build those defence homes. So, again, it is creating more competition and creating more jobs. At the commercial level, the FSC does not kick in until $4 million. Commercially, that does not buy you a lot of office space or a government building. We could benefit if we could raise that to $20 million or $40 million. We are not talking about unsafe workplaces; we are talking about everyone around the country operating under the same safety net. When it comes to federal government stuff, the FSC becomes onerous. It is a difficult process to go through to get compliance and it is costly do to, which just cancels out all your contractors from participating in this area. This means fewer apprenticeships, less work in the regions, less profits staying in the region and fewer jobs in the region.

While I am speaking about jobs, I would just make a personal appeal—an appeal I have tweeted every day to Dr Anthony Lynham, the Queensland Minister for Natural Resources and Mines. Can you just sign the mining lease for the Carmichael Mine, please? Everything is in place. The only thing that has to happen now is for the mining lease to be signed. This will lead to jobs all the way from the Townsville port, across every road and every bridge out to the mine site—there is 150 years' worth of mining out there—and then back along the $2.2 billion railway line to Abbott Point. These are sustainable jobs into the future and coal-fired power for our region to develop. All those things could happen there If Dr Lynham could just do us this one little favour. He has taken his eye completely off the ball with these ridiculous lockout laws. He should be concentrating on his own role here and not the lockout laws. He can get this thing done and make sure that we have this mine operating in North Queensland.

Developing the north is not just about dams and power stations; it is also about lifestyles and sustainable jobs. When Andrew Robb addressed a packed ballroom just before the 2013 election, he stated that, if we were to deliver properly for the north of this country, we would also have to deliver the kinds of experience and social infrastructure that people in the capital cities take for granted. The redevelopment of Townsville CBD and the Ross Creek water precinct should be high on our list. Some of the projects, such as the stadium and convention centre, will not deliver the masses of jobs down the line that some believe they will. But being able to offer a seat in the shade or out of the rain as we watch our Cowboys run around should not be an unreasonable request. Jobs in the short term would be created during construction, but they will turn to lifestyle choice for the long term.

As demographer Bernard Salt observed in his presentation at the recent Redefining Townsville seminar, people are choosing cities and where they live based on lifestyle and on what they have to offer. You need only look at the explosion of the Sunshine Coast and Newcastle to see that people are choosing those sorts of places to make sure they get the quality of life that they want. Townsville offers a great quality of life. If we can provide the facilities that go with that, we will move on and create those jobs that we can take into the future. Make no mistake, the building of the stadium and convention centre is state government infrastructure, and they should be funding it in the same way as they do for everything else in the south-east. But we are used to being treated like second-class citizens in the north. The federal government understands the needs of the people in the north, and I will be doing my best to deliver the lifestyle that we deserve.

One of the things that came up in the Redefining Townsville discussions was the need for regional cities to be able to speak with one voice. We as a city must develop that voice. We as a city have to decide what we want our city to be. Too often, I think, our civic leadership has seen people come in wanting to talk about something else and then we drop everything and go after them as if they have something special for us. We have the something special. My city has the something special. As a city, we have to decide what kind of city we are going to be into the future. We have to decide the links that we will have to make. I would contend that our links to the Asia-Pacific are far more important than our links to Brisbane. We will get far more investment if we drive our relationships into Asia, Papua New Guinea and the Melanesian world. We will get far more investment if we concentrate on our relationship with Indonesia than we will ever get by concentrating on our relationships with the state government.

As a city, we have to decide that we want to be that international city that will provide lifestyle, health, training and education to people from all the Pacific nations. That is the sort of city that we want to be. We are a great services city. When we look at the things that we can provide—our professional services, our defence services, our university and vocational education services—we are right on the cusp of being able to deliver these things. It will take a concerted effort from all levels of government and all civic leadership to say: 'What is our city's mission statement? How do we drive this?' And when someone comes in and offers us something outside that, we need to say: 'No, thank you. That's not where we see ourselves going. We don't want to be in that business because we have a mission, we speak with one voice and we are moving in that area.'

We as Townsvillians, as North Queenslanders, have the ability to drive this nation further and to play our part in making sure that Townsville becomes that fantastic city in the north—the true hub of northern Australia, where we are looking at the emerging capitals of Port Moresby and all the cities in Indonesia and through to Thailand, Vietnam, South-East Asia and China and Japan. We need the connectivity, we need the support, and we have the people to do this. We are a great city. I thank the House.

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