David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the plan to develop regional Australia, which many in my party have committed their political careers to. We all think that the iPhone and the computer make us pretty smart, but we are essentially the same as generations gone by, to as far back as ancient Roman and Egyptian times. Some things never change, even though we have got a lot of technology to make life a lot easier. The first civilisations in the Middle East had dams on rivers and were connected to ports for trade, because the highways of the time then were the sea and rivers. They took products that they grew in their hinterland and farmland to markets and they processed them. Cities grew out of rivers and ports, access to dams and the ability to grow foods. That has not changed. It will never change.

To put things in perspective: the first dam in Jordan was in 3000 BC. That was the Jawa dam. There was the Sadd el-Kafara dam nearby, which was not only for water supply but for flood mitigation. The earliest irrigation system in India dates back to the BC period, and the oldest dam in China also goes back a couple of thousand years. There was a massive dam that supplied ancient Rome, the Subiaco dam. It was 50 metres high. It supplied water via major engineering structures called aqueducts, which we all know about, until the 1300s. The mighty city of Amsterdam was formed after the Amstel River was dammed. You only have to go to Holland and the low countries to see the massive engineering and control of water there.

In our country over 100 years ago we dammed the Murray-Darling Basin system and developed areas, whether it is the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, or areas along the Darling down to Adelaide, or the coastal dams in Queensland and other ones in Western Australia, and around the country—things don't change. We have a deficit of water of in this country. As you know, we are the driest continent and water is the key to developing regional Australia. But that is not enough. In that you also need a food supply, which we are pretty good at, but we are relatively undeveloped compared with the agriculture in the northern hemisphere. We have massive tracts of land that are undeveloped, but again they depend on water.

We also need connectivity. We need fast highways and telecommunications in the modern world so that you can not only trade physically but also electronically. We need a comprehensive transit system for our cities, which is the key to developing regional Australia. A lot has been said about the congestion in Sydney and we are doing a fantastic job delivering highways around the country that will facilitate trade, tourism and safety. But that is not enough. If we want to grow Australia we need more cities than Newcastle, Sydney and Wollongong, and part of the key to that is developing our food bowls in this current state. We do not say you should not develop northern Australia, but we have an untapped food bowl, due to a variety of environmental goals, some of which are quite questionable. A lot of the Murray-Darling Basin is flowing out to the sea. It used to be a river full of little dry riverbeds. A series of locks and dams has allowed irrigation.

In regard fast connectivity, whether it is a physical highway, a train system or an internet system, we are delivering all of those at the moment. Inland Rail planning is far advanced. It will increase trade through Victoria and New South Wales, up to the ports in Brisbane. We have telecommunications being rolled out in the NBN.

I also want to mention the suffocation of our cities. We need to develop our regional cities. We think of cities as Newcastle, Sydney, Wollongong, Melbourne and Brisbane, but it is the hinterland where Australia needs to go. Part of that is a high-speed rail to allow business and trade. We need to secure the corridor and get cracking on planning for the next period of growth in Australia.