Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

How fortuitous for me to be following the member for Capricornia and the contribution she just made to this place. Sadly, I will not have the opportunity to canvass all my own issues, if I respond to everything she said. However, I can tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker Goodenough, there was a fair bit of licence involved in all of it.

I am just going to focus on one issue that she raised—that is, the expansion, or proposed expansion, of the Shoalwater Bay training area. The member for Capricornia, I noted, while canvassing this issue, was very, very careful not to share with her constituents and this place one thing—that is, when she first knew about the proposed expansion and therefore land acquisitions, whether they be compulsory or non-compulsory, she did not mind standing alongside ministers well before the election campaign to announce that $2 billion would be invested between her region and the hinterland beyond Townsville. But what she and her ministers did not tell her constituents is that that investment would necessitate very significant land acquisitions—that is, the acquisition of prime agricultural land in her region.

It beggars belief that anyone, including the member for Capricornia, believes that the Singaporeans could spend a billion dollars in Shoalwater Bay—and I know it well as former Defence minister—without coming to the conclusion that it must by definition include land acquisitions. The member for Capricornia, I will put to this place, knew well and truly before the election that Defence would be chasing land acquisitions in her electorate but she chose to keep that a secret from her constituents. I put it to this place that the member for Capricornia was elected on a fraud. She was elected by concealing from her constituents those land acquisitions.

I will say this: the fact that those land acquisitions are not now necessarily compulsory does not change all that much. We welcome it and we congratulate the landholders who took the fight up to this government. By the admission of the member for Capricornia, this is prime agricultural land, the withdrawal of which will take up to 60,000 head of cattle out of the beef supply chain at a time when we can least afford it.

The Singaporeans when they come to train here—and we welcome our relationship, the joint training exercise and everything they do here in Australia—do not go into Rockhampton to do their shopping. They do not go in for a beer, a hamburger or for their supplies. Nor would we expect them to. But guess what farmers do? Farmers regularly do. They come for their groceries. They come for their hardware. They come for their furnishings. They come to the motor mechanic to have their car serviced. They have the motor mechanic come to the farm, if necessary. The Singaporeans will not be doing any of that so, regardless of whether the acquisitions are compulsory or non-compulsory, the acquisition of that land will have a very significant impact on the economy around Rockhampton. That is something else the member for Capricornia chose not to canvass in her contribution this evening. She needs to explain how her economy will not be adversely affected by the acquisition of so much prime agricultural land and the withdrawal, therefore, of so many cattle et cetera out of the regional economy. If she is going to come in here and talk about what has happened in her constituency over the course of the last year, or indeed over the last parliamentary term, she should be honest with her constituents about when she knew about those acquisitions. Again, it defies credibility that she only suddenly learnt of the acquisitions after the election. It also defies credibility that the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources—no less the Deputy Chair of the National Security Committee of the cabinet and no less the Deputy Prime Minister of the country—did not know of the land acquisitions until after the election. I suspect no-one in Rockhampton, or its surrounds, believes that.

On a happier note, come Thursday I will have represented the Hunter electorate in this place for 21 years. What a great honour and privilege it has been to represent what I would argue is the best region in the world. That is a proposition that is not without credibility. Everyone knows that we make the world's finest wines and our vineyards are just wonderful. We are one of the three top thoroughbred breeding clusters in the world: Newmarket, Kentucky and the Hunter Valley. Go to Randwick in Sydney on any Saturday and 70 to 80 per cent of the thoroughbreds running there will have been born and bred in the Hunter Valley. We have beaches to match any locality not just in Australia but also in the world. We hold world-class concerts. When I was young, if I wanted to see a band or an entertainer, we went to Sydney. Now Sydney—I am happy to report—comes to us. We have the largest coastal saltwater lagoon in the country in the form of Lake Macquarie, and, of course, we have the wonderful Port Stephens—so water sports are in the Hunter in abundance, not only for residents but also for visitors to the region.

I am not taking credit, but I believe, I think with some validity, that the Hunter region is a better, wealthier place than it was when I was elected 21 years ago. It has gone through a very significant transformation in that time. I am intrigued by those—usually those with an anti-coal agenda—who still say that we lack economic diversity. We always strive for more economic diversity, and we must continue to do so, but we are far more economically diverse than we were 21 years ago. Our unemployment rate, although too high and indeed climbing—and it has been climbing since the election of the Abbott government and now Turnbull government—is infinitely lower than it was when I was elected 21 years ago.

Coal continues to be a critical player in the Hunter economy and it will continue to be so for many decades to come. Coalmining has brought wealth to many families who would not have dreamed of that level of opportunity without it. It has created many knock-on jobs in manufacturing et cetera, and it has helped us to leverage economic diversity, because the wealth coal brings and the demand coal brings help to justify and to make more economically feasible other projects. The Hunter Expressway is a perfect example. The $1.7 billion Hunter Expressway, planned, paid for and constructed by a Labor government, would not have been feasible without the traffic generated by coalmining. It is a really good example of a project that probably would not have passed muster on any cost-benefit analysis without coalmining. The Hunter Expressway, having been leveraged by coalmining, now presents new economic opportunities which will bring more economic diversity into the future, and that is a very good thing. By the way, coalmining is not within our top five employers as an employment category. But it is still very, very significant and very, very important and, again, it drives other jobs in construction and manufacturing et cetera. When coalmining is strong—

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