Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Joint Select Committee on Northern Australia I present the committee's final report entitled Pivot north—Inquiry into the development of Northern Australia, and I ask leave of the House to make a short statement in connection with the report.

Leave granted.

Before I start, I have to say it is great to see my deputy, the member for Perth here and also another Warren—Warren Snowdon, member for Lingiari—here in the chamber as we deliver this report today.

This inquiry has formed one part of a broader process aimed at looking at ways to develop Northern Australia.

The Australian government had made a commitment to produce, within a 12-month time frame, a white paper outlining its vision for the future of Northern Australia. The committee's findings and recommendations will inform the white paper process, assisting the government to formulate its policy for the future development of Northern Australia. The inquiry into the development of Northern Australia has been greeted with a huge amount of enthusiasm and anticipation, but also with scepticism about possible outcomes.

Since 1937 there have been numerous investigations, reports and recommendations aimed at developing Northern Australia, which are certainly gathering dust on shelves. It is now up to us to prove the sceptics wrong and get things moving. The development of Northern Australia is one of the great challenges and opportunities facing the nation. Northern Australia covers over 40 per cent of Australia's land mass, but contains only four per cent of the population. It has abundant land, water and mineral resources. It has medical and educational institutions with world-class facilities. Northern Australia is on the doorstep of Asia and is part of the tropical world, which by 2050 will encompass over half of the world's population. There are great opportunities for the people in Northern Australia within that tropical zone.

The development of Northern Australia has in the past lacked a commitment of governments at all levels to pursue investment and development in a consistent, sustainable and coordinated way. The committee has made 42 recommendations covering a wide range of very important issues considered essential for the development of Northern Australia. The first is the creation of a department of Northern Australian development based in Northern Australia. This will give a high-level political focus to Northern Australia, ensuring that the recommendations of this report and the directions set out in the white paper are given priority in the development of government policy.

Several priority recommendations target urgent infrastructure with the capacity to rapidly facilitate economic development, including major roads, rail links and water infrastructure. Other priority recommendations call for the investigation of special economic zones, address the availability and affordability of insurance in Northern Australia and urge the continued funding of the Great Artesian Basin Sustainability Initiative. I thought you would find that interesting, Deputy Speaker Scott; I note that you took particular note of that.

The remaining recommendations include particular development proposals and measures to address opportunities for and to overcome impediments to development. To realise the opportunities that development could bring, the committee has made recommendations to establish a CRC for northern agriculture and to develop a national institute for tropical sports and sports medicine. The committee also recommended the exploration of new methods to engage the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workforce. This is particularly significant, given the large and growing proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Northern Australia.

The committee has recommended the implementation of long-term strategies for the development of capital infrastructure and agriculture in northern Australia. These strategies will underpin the long-term growth and development that northern Australia needs.

There are serious impediments blocking northern Australia's development which must be addressed. To do this, the committee has recommended improved regulatory arrangements for aquaculture and better regulations for fisheries to enable sustainable growth of the industry. The report also addresses growing concerns over fly-in, fly-out employment, calling for improved taxation arrangements to encourage local employment in the resources sector. The main purpose of the committee's recommendations is to promote investment and liveability in northern Australia. One major constraint that Australia faces is growing the population in the north. This is absolutely critical.

In conclusion, I would like to thank all those who contributed to the inquiry. The committee undertook a very extensive program of travel for public hearings and inspections and certainly received a very large number of valuable submissions. I would like to acknowledge the outstanding contribution of my fellow committee members. As I said, we have two with us here today, and I thank them as well as the other members of the committee very much for their support and participation. I thank the committee for its endurance in the face of very tight time frames and extensive travel commitments. This report has the support of the whole committee and, as such, will live beyond the life of this parliament and well into the future. I commend the report to the House.

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

by leave—It has been a great adventure to travel with this committee and to meet the brilliant characters whose imagination and hard work have made northern Australia such an intriguing place. I acknowledge that we have some great nor'westers in the gallery today. We have Mayor Kelly Howlett, Deputy Mayor Gloria Jacob and CEO, Mal Osborne, from the dynamic town of Port Hedland—a place which is contributing so much to the wealth of the nation.

Australia does need to pivot north for a whole variety of reasons. Firstly, we have in the north of Australia a very substantial Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population that needs the opportunity to be brought into the economic life of Australia, to provide an opportunity for their current and future generations to be full participants in Australia's economic life. We need to work hard to bring an end to the endemic disadvantage and what we might call an economic apartheid that is still evident today. Secondly, we need to develop the north because it allows us to develop new markets and opportunities for our nation. These opportunities arise from the proximity to Asia and from the fact that we share a climate zone with hundreds of millions of neighbours to our north. This gives us the opportunity to use our educated community and our access to research and technological innovation to find cutting-edge solutions to agriculture, health, resource development and construction in the tropics and hot savannah.

Our committee's task was to hear in great detail from right across northern Australia the vision of local communities for the north and to provide an open filter to bring those ideas together. It would be fair to say that we did not have the resources that would enable us to do the cost-benefit analysis or necessarily prioritise the submissions to provide that rough filter and bring the projects together. We certainly saw some submissions that were quite extraordinary in their aspiration. For me, some of the most important contributions stressed the importance of detailed research—not to stop development but to guide, in the most creative way, the investment in research that is critical for us to fulfil the potential of the north. It is true that we might not be the food bowl for Australia, but we certainly can put more food on the table and we can advance the capacity of our Asian neighbours to feed themselves through the pioneering work that has been done in agricultural and horticultural innovation.

There was a very great focus on the need to develop the water resources, but we stress that, whilst there were many different ways in which the community felt that could be done, we were very clear that this needed to be always predicated and built on a solid foundation of scientific research. I was particularly very taken with the work that has been done in places like Kilto and Gogo Station, where we saw the fine grain mosaic—the use of groundwater brought into the food chain to allow us to not only produce agricultural crops but to feed that into the development of our livestock and local value-add opportunities. I was also very pleased to see the great submissions on projects like the Pilbara interconnected grid—a fantastic project that will reduce the energy cost and will make the Pilbara a place that will be very viable for a whole diversification of interests into the future.

As the chairman said, if we are going to be serious about this, if we want the white paper that this feeds into to be something other than another shelf filler, we are going to need to ensure that there is a well resourced department of northern Australia with its own minister and its own resources. I thank the chair for his very generous and collaborative leadership. I think it would be fair to say that we had a committee that came to the task with some very divergent perspectives. Our chairman's generosity of spirit and leadership enabled us to find some common ground, and I want to thank all my colleagues. We have had some absolutely fantastic times—particularly with the two Warrens. It must be something in the water or in the name.

Mr Morrison interjecting—

That is right; it would be a great one, and it is great to have been a passenger. I have survived it and have become battle hardened. I also thank the secretariat. I understand that it has been a wild and sometimes rough ride, but we do appreciate their efforts and, in the end, we have been able to bring together a very solid report.

Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House take note of the report.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In accordance with standing order 39, the debate is adjourned. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.