Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I am honoured to have been elected for a fourth term by the people of Blair. The electorate of Blair covers most of Ipswich and all of the Somerset region in South-East Queensland. The region has been my home all my life. It is where I was born, grew up, went to school, married, and raised my children. I expect it is where I will grow old. Representing Blair is a great privilege. It is a great to have represented this region. I have always considered myself a working-class boy from a working-class Ipswich suburb, Basin Pocket.

Blair is a region of many working people, with a rich rural heritage. It is home still to coalmines and was home to limestone quarries before that. It is home to manufacturing. There were the woollen mills. There were big railway workshops, now much smaller. There is much meat production. Blair boasts numerous meat manufacturers, at places like Kilcoy, Churchill and Coominya, and, of course, Australia's largest abattoir, JBS at Dinmore. It is home to the largest RAAF base, soon to be the largest military base, in the country, RAAF Base Amberley, which is surrounded by a growing aerospace industry precinct, located currently on the base. I hope it will be adjacent to the base in years to come.

The region has a love of cars, and we have the Willowbank motorsport precinct, with drag racing and the V8 supercars. It is home to many resilient people, and the floods in 2011 and 2013 showed that. Indeed, the floods in 1974, which I experienced as a child, showed that. Some of the largest floods that have taken place across Australia, such as the 1893 flood, have affected Ipswich terribly. Looks can be deceiving. The beauty of the Wivenhoe Dam and the Somerset Dam, their picturesque aspect and the aesthetics of the region, can be deceptive, and we saw much devastation in 2011 and 2013.

I am humbled by the support and loyalty of the electorate. I believe Labor has a strong track record and our core values have contributed to the strong performance of Labor in our part of the world. Blair is a unique electorate, in the sense that it has nine other electorates surrounding it and, for most of the time, only the Labor electoral of Oxley has been my Labor neighbour. I want to honour my friend the former member for Oxley Bernie Ripoll. Together we fought for and delivered the Ipswich Motorway upgrade from Dinmore to Darra, the Robelle Domain parklands development and the USQ building upgrades. The Mater cancer clinic was built very much because of the work that he and I did in getting the funding for it in Springfield. And the very popular Orion pool has added to profitability and employment in the region. It is a pool which is much bigger than the South Bank pool in South Brisbane.

For most of the last term, Bernie was a neighbour in this place, next door to me, and the member for Moreton was located nearby, so we called that part of Parliament House the 'Ipswich Motorway', much to the bewilderment of the members for Batman and Makin, who also had offices along that corridor in Parliament House. I want to thank Bernie for his friendship and cooperation and wish him every success in his business endeavours. I am fortunate to have Milton Dick as his successor as the member for Oxley. Milton has been a longstanding friend of mine. We share the growing Springfield region, and I have enjoyed many opportunities to collaborate with him and campaign together for infrastructure and the project needs of our local communities.

I want to mention my good friend and former senator Jan McLucas. Jan was a friend of mine before I even came to this place, in 2007. She helped me launch the first Blair Disability Links in 2010, and became well known and beloved throughout the community of Ipswich and its surrounds. I had the pleasure of seeing Jan in action on the campaign trail in North Queensland during the election, and she was in her element; she has certainly not retired from her political campaigning. She represented me in the Senate when I was the shadow minister for Indigenous affairs, and she had an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the topic. I want to thank her for her commitment to Queensland, to Indigenous affairs and to disability particularly, and to Far North Queensland and North Queensland specifically.

Locally, with my colleagues in Oxley and Moreton, Labor has continued to hold strong across the western corridor between Brisbane and Ipswich—not always in good political times for Labor. It is precisely those Labor values that resonate, I believe, with the men and women of our region. Labor has long been the party advocating for and delivering on upgrades in infrastructure, particularly of the Ipswich Motorway. However, the previous Liberal government, the Abbott-Turnbull government, did not have a commitment to nation-building, and the government in its current context does not have a commitment to nation-building, to infrastructure development or to planning for the future of South-East Queensland. As a result, despite the fact that Labor delivered funding in the 2013 May budget, the Ipswich Motorway upgrade has ended at Darra, leaving the Darra-Rocklea stretch one of the most notorious car parks in the Brisbane region. It is a seven-kilometre headache and heartache for the 93,000 motorists a day—vehicles that include 12,000 trucks—that use the Ipswich Motorway. This stretch of road is not actually in Blair—it runs through Oxley and Moreton—but a good number of those 93,000 motorists come from Blair, and they have made it clear to me that this upgrade is absolutely essential. I want to thank the Palaszczuk Labor government for their $200 million commitment to kickstarting this section of the motorway.

We made the Darra to Rocklea upgrade a priority in the election campaign. We put pressure on the Turnbull government to do the right thing for motorists in the western corridor. Last year, the Leader of the Opposition, the now member for Oxley, the member for Moreton and I gathered at the Oxley roundabout to announce Labor's commitment of $200 million in funding for the Ipswich Motorway upgrade from Darra to Rocklea, should we win the election. I am proud to say even the local media recognised that we forced the coalition government under the current Prime Minister to finally respond to the outcry from local businesses, local councils and residents who are tired of waiting and want the job done. Finally, in the May 2016 budget, the government committed to doing it. Construction of this section of the motorway will help create 470 jobs, provide a safer and quicker journey for motorists, and improve national and local freight movements. Before that May 2016 budget, Labor made that commitment and forced the government to do this. It is now up to this government to make it happen, and to make it happen sooner rather than later.

I will never grow complacent when it comes to the infrastructure projects and programs that Ipswich and the Somerset region need. This is not a government with a great track record of following through on its promises. One of the big infrastructure projects that I have campaigned on for some time is the upgrade of the Willowbank interchange from Ebenezer Creek to Yamanto along the Cunningham Highway. The Queensland government considers $345 million the necessary amount, and it is one of the priority projects, according to Infrastructure Australia.

We currently have a government here in Canberra that seems to be focused on wealthy metropolitan areas rather than regional and rural areas. Let me give you an example of that. I was pleased to see the Lowood Show Society receive $25,000 under a National Stronger Regions Fund grant to improve the Lowood showgrounds. It is one of seven terrific applications, worth over $7 million in funding, from my electorate. I will always welcome any investment in Blair, but I cannot understand how two wealthy, Liberal-held electorates in Sydney and Melbourne can receive $13.2 million in grants when the government is supposed to be building stronger regions. I cannot understand why the seat of Warringah would receive a $10 million grant and the leafy suburbs of Kooyong would receive a $3.2 million grant when Blair only received $25,000. This is a genuinely regional and rural area, and home to many disadvantaged people.

Recently we were excluded from any additional applications that we could make under this particular aspect of the Building Better Regions Fund. Ipswich was entirely excluded; only Somerset in my electorate could get it. I wrote a letter to the minister, Senator Fiona Nash, about it, asking that Ipswich be included in future. I cannot understand why Ipswich has been excluded.

Those opposite fail to realise the impact their disastrous budgets and mismanagement have had on ordinary people in regional and rural areas. Mobile phone reception is yet another example. When mobile phone reception in places like Manly is bad, it is inconvenient, but living in an isolated community like Moore, Linville or Somerset Dam and not getting mobile phone coverage can be disastrous. Certainly in the 2011 floods, when land lines were washed away and towns were cut off, these rural communities were without communications, often for weeks.

The coalition campaigned heavily on mobile blackspot funding. We have learnt this program is to be nothing more than pork-barrelling, so people living in isolated areas in Blair have no coverage even though some of those areas were supposed to get funding in the first round. They still have not got coverage in places like Linville, Moore and Somerset, less than a few hours drive from Ipswich CBD.

People in Blair have been hurt by unfair and unreasonable budgets. The 2014 budget of the member for Warringah is a classic example of that. It is a government which makes policies for Rose Bay rather than Rosewood in rural Ipswich. Cutting penalty rates might seem like a good idea if you are living in Chatswood, but in Churchill it sees workers lose their homes. And privatising Medicare was not a scare campaign; it has always been policy of this government if they are given a chance. The coalition has never supported socialised medicine. Scare campaigns from this government seem to be demonising unions while protecting banking and finance, and the people of Blair have told me at numerous mobile offices that they want a royal commission into the banking and finance sector.

Scandals, rip-offs and rorts are simply not good enough for this government, which seems to turn a blind eye. It is appalling to see what the government does not do in relation to the 200,000 customers of financial services when the banks charge exorbitant fees. And what is the government intending to do? Give them a $7.4 billion tax cut. It has been made clear to me by the middle-class and working-class people of Blair that they deserve a better go and a fairer go in the financial and banking sector. That is why the evidence demands a royal commission into the banking and financial sector, and I will continue to campaign in relation to that. I will never give up fighting for ordinary working people in my area.

In the previous term, I had the privilege of being Labor spokesperson for Indigenous affairs and ageing and later for northern Australia. It is a great honour and privilege to be on Labor's front bench, and I want to thank the Leader of the Opposition for allowing me to serve in that way. I appreciate the unity and collegiality and the number of members who also gave me assistance through that time. We came within, in rugby league terms, a field goal of winning the election, but we will continue to campaign and hold the government to account.

I want to thank the member for Lingiari, who was my deputy in Indigenous affairs and in many ways my superior because of his encyclopaedic knowledge of Indigenous affairs. We enjoyed numerous flights in small planes, visiting some uniquely beautiful parts of remote Australia. We battled where there were some of the worst examples of ineptitude. The appalling Indigenous Advancement Strategy, condemned by Labor and criticised heavily by the Auditor-General, is just one. Over half a billion dollars was slashed from front-line services. Family and legal services, diversionary programs and preventative health initiatives make a big impact.

With the member for Lingiari we listened to Indigenous people in remote areas, country areas, rural areas and metropolitan areas. They are our first people and deserve to be recognised in the Constitution. The rest of us really are new arrivals compared to people who have been here for 60,000 years. Their traditional ways are not lifestyle choices. They are part of a culture and heritage that should be recognised as one of if not the oldest living culture on the planet. That is why Labor believes we should support the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples, the only peak representative body to truly represent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, not a hand-picked advisory committee as the government seems to do.

We understand engaging with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people requires genuine partnership. It is not always going to be comfortable, but we need to do that. We need to make a serious commitment in this country to stemming incarceration rates, ensuring Indigenous young people are free from family violence as well.

In the ageing portfolio I want to thank Senator Helen Polley from Tasmania for sharing the same passion I did. For 14 years before I was elected into this place, I served on the board of Carinity, an aged-care provider in Queensland, and acted as a lawyer for many aged-care providers in Queensland, so I had some knowledge of that space. We did the hard yards in terms of that portfolio and we held the government to account. I want to thank Senator Polley for the work she did. I also want to thank Everald Compton, in particular, for his tenacity and the wonderful contribution he made. He kept going, despite the funding cuts to the Advisory Panel on Positive Ageing, which was established by Wayne Swan, a former Treasurer. I thank him for his Blueprint for an ageing Australia, delivered in September 2014, which I think provides a significant way forward in addressing the challenge of an ageing workforce and the challenges of housing and transport for the ageing. I also thank former Labor Deputy Prime Minister Brian Howe for his contribution and the wise advice he gave me across that space.

I am honoured to now be the shadow minister for immigration and border protection. In the last eight months or so I have travelled to North Queensland, Central Queensland and the Hunter region, hearing about rorts in the 457 visa program and the importance of local jobs. I was proud to join the Leader of the Opposition in introducing legislation to the House to put local workers first and toughen the rules on 457s. We will make sure that local workers are ready and willing to work and that employers have to advertise, and genuinely try to fill, jobs locally before recruiting from overseas. We will also make sure businesses using a significant number of temporary workers have a plan for training local workers. We will protect Australian training standards for our trades and make sure temporary workers meet Australian skill standards before they come here to work.

I met with Australian Border Force staff working on the front lines at airports, such as Sydney International Airport, and spoke with them about the challenges they face. We have also been alive to the issues of refugee families, who have spoken to me about their experiences in relation to Manus and Nauru. Labor has initiated a Senate inquiry about serious allegations of abuse, self-harm and neglect of asylum seekers in these places. That inquiry is due to report in the next few weeks, and it is a direct result of the single largest leak of documents about asylum seekers in offshore detention we have ever seen, known as the 'Nauru files'. I want to be clear: Labor supports offshore processing, regional resettlement and turn backs—when it is safe to do so—but we do not support this government in using Manus and Nauru as places of indefinite detention. Offshore processing centres were meant to be regional transit centres where applications for asylum could be processed and those people found to be refugees resettled in third countries. The refugees on Manus and Nauru have been there far too long because the immigration minister has failed to secure third-country resettlement options.

We support the US refugee resettlement deal, but, just this week, immigration officials have confirmed the Turnbull government is not negotiating with other countries to resettle refugees currently living on Manus and Nauru. Potentially hundreds of refugees on Manus and Nauru will miss out on the opportunity to resettle in the United States and could be left to languish in these places. It is simply not good enough to put all your eggs in one basket, and the minister should do his job and look for other third-country resettlement options for those people. Australia can and should do more. We should engage better with the UNHRC. There are 65 million people displaced around the world, fleeing war, conflict and persecution. We need to do much better in this country. We need to play a bigger role in the region and work with international humanitarian agencies to tackle this crisis while maintaining the integrity of our borders. We will always stand against this government when it has gone too far, as it has with legislation to impose lifetime bans on former refugees who have been awarded citizenship of other countries. As shadow minister, I promise my door will always be open to hear good ideas about how to protect local jobs, get refugees off Manus and Nauru, and bring transparency, accountability and trust back into the immigration portfolio.

In the couple of minutes remaining I want to thank the 250 volunteers who joined the Labor cause and supported me in my re-election. At Rosewood railway station at five in the morning, with Labor hoodies on, there were too many people to thank. I want to thank my wife Carolyn; our daughters, Alex and Jacqui; my electorate staff, who work so well; and people such as Carolyn and Yvonne, Melissa Harris, Jarod Boyle, Kerryl Harmon, Suzanne Miller and Kim Fullarton, who made many phone calls. I would also thank 16-year-old Thomas Chapple and his mum, Nicole, who were fantastic at the Ipswich pre-poll all the time; Steve Franklin and Allan McMillan from the Rosewood branch; Darren Baldwin and Ian Fraser from the Springfield Central branch; Janet Butler and Ineke Rouw from the Somerset branch, who flew the flag year-round in an area in which we were generally not too popular; Councillor Kerry Silver and members of the Riverview/Collingwood Park branch; Trevor Baker and the president of my FEC, Councillor Kylie Stoneman and her Ipswich North branch; and Nick Hughes and all the members of Ipswich Central branch. I want to thank my own branch—the Raceview Flinders branch, one of the biggest branches of the Labor party in Queensland—for their ongoing support. They are sometimes known as the 'Shayne Neumann Protection Society', that branch. We are a force locally and I appreciate the work of people like Frank Zarb and Carol Nevin, my new mobile office and country show offsider.

I want to pay tribute to a good, departed, friend of mine, Greg Turner, who passed away. Campaigning without Greg is not the same. He joined me every weekend on mobile offices, year after year, and I am very sad that he is no longer with us.

I also thank Brian Hall, who managed our sign shed, and the late Peggy Frankish, who was also a great friend of mine. I thank my mum, Joy Butler, and her husband, Rob. I also thank a good mate of mine up in Toogoolawah, a former coalition cabinet minister in the Queensland government, Beryce Nelson, who was always there to offer advice and share stories. I also thank Bill and Lyn Rose from the Fernvale Bakery, Ally from the Kai Lounge, and Harry's Cafe in Rosewood and all the small business operators who worked with me.

I thank Mayor Paul Pisasale and all the state members who have assisted me in councils here in Ipswich. Thank you very much. I will not let you down. (Time expired)

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