Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) commends the Government's Pacific Step-up and its focus on building prosperity across the regions, including by encouraging close links between Australian business and investors with the Pacific;

(2) recognises that the Pacific is part of Australia's family and that we have a special relationship with our Pacific neighbours; and

(3) notes that the significant Australian investment in key infrastructure projects, such as the Coral Sea Cable, is providing positive economic and social opportunities to communities in the Pacific.

The government's Pacific step-up is working closely with our region to ensure the security and prosperity of the Pacific. There has never been a time more vital than now for Australia to stand with our Pacific family in the face of the global COVID-19pandemic. The Pacific has been impacted profoundly. While the measures that governments have put in place with our support have helped to stop the pandemic's spread, the impact on economies and livelihoods has been severe. For example, countries reliant on tourism and remittance flows are facing significant economic downturns. In my own electorate of Longman in Queensland, we have a strong Pacific islander community. I've heard some of their stories about how COVID-19 has impacted them and their families back home in the Pacific. They were pleased to hear about some of the changes this government has made to support them during this pandemic and that our commitment to our Pacific family through the Pacific step-up has not wavered and has, in fact, been deepened. As someone with South Sea island roots myself, I am proud of the efforts this government is taking to support Pacific islander communities in Australia and our Pacific family in the region.

Australia's ability to respond to COVID-19 in our region is stronger as a result of our Pacific step-up. Our step-up has added considerable new depth to our partnerships across the Pacific to help grow economies, build resilience and enhance regional stability. It has put Australia in an even stronger position to work with Pacific island countries in times of crisis, building on many years of cooperation in areas such as education, health, security and humanitarian and disaster response. Australia has been determined since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to adapt our work in the Pacific wherever possible to support our region's health, security and long-term stability and prosperity. The government has moved quickly to reconfigure our Pacific step-up initiatives and our broader development efforts to provide immediate relief to Pacific island countries and Timor Leste, and to respond to our partners' most acute needs. Since January we have been working with our Pacific partners to help them prepare for and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. We're prioritising funding for critical health services and helping to mitigate the financial and economic impacts, particularly for those countries that rely on revenue from tourism and commodity exports.

A number of our Pacific step-up initiatives adapted to this new environment are now an important part of our work to support our region's response to COVID-19. The Pacific Fusion Centre is delivering targeted and timely information on COVID-19 to decision-makers across our region. Our Pacific women's program is expanding support for crisis centres to provide frontline service support, including counselling for survivors of domestic violence. New visa arrangements announced in early April mean that workers in Australia under our Pacific labour initiatives, who are unable to return home due to travel restrictions, will now be able to stay and work in Australia for up to 12 months. We're working to redeploy workers whose contracts have expired or who have been stood down and providing expanded support for worker welfare, including additional services and resources in Pacific languages. These measures are enabling Pacific workers to continue to support themselves and send remittances to their families back home, and continuing to support the agriculture sector across rural and regional Australia.

The $2 billion Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific, or AIFFP, will be an important part of our longer-term work to promote economic recovery in our region. We are working with partner governments to review the AIFFP project pipeline in favour of infrastructure projects that will deliver more jobs and higher growth. This will include critical health infrastructure where this is a priority for our Pacific partners. While COVID-19 will impact the delivery of some of our initiatives in the short term, the Pacific step-up success will be measured over the long term, in line with our enduring commitment to support long-term economic development, deeper security cooperation and closer personal connections across our region.

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