Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on what is expected to be the last day of this 44th Parliament to stand up for a young woman and help her fight for justice: 32-year-old Megan McLean, a constituent in Corangamite. In 2004, whilst studying in New Zealand as a young paramedic, Megan was brutally raped and abducted. The perpetrator, Akeel Hassan Abbas Al Baiiety, was an Iraqi asylum seeker who had been granted New Zealand citizenship. At the time he attacked Megan, he was on parole for raping two other women and attempting to rape a third woman, for which he was jailed for nine years in 1998. The New Zealand government subsequently revoked his citizenship. Meg's attacker was convicted and sentenced for abduction and rape—for what he did to Meg—in 2005 for seven years and is on preventative detention. Like the man who killed Jill Maher in Brunswick—that absolutely shocking case—Megan McLean's attacker should not have been out on parole. He was a monster.

Meg is still living with trauma and with terrible internal injuries she suffered—injuries that I am not able to speak about. Each year, Meg is required to travel to New Zealand to give evidence to the New Zealand Parole Board in order to ensure this perpetrator is not released. Meg is now a paramedic. She is married with two children and pregnant with her third child. Despite the incredible struggles she faces every day, she is doing an amazing job coping.

She did receive some initial compensation, but the fact is that she has incurred tens of thousands of dollars of medical bills, which has left her and her family under severe financial stress. I have made various representations to our government on behalf of Meg, and I want to thank the Minister for Foreign Affairs for taking this matter up with the New Zealand government. The foreign minister wrote to New Zealand minister responsible for the Accident Compensation Corporation in New Zealand seeking financial support and help to assist Meg with her rehabilitation. However, a key issue is that there is a statutory ban on the ACC, the compensation body in New Zealand, paying for overseas rehabilitation. Section 128 of the Accident Compensation Act 2001 limits this payment for rehabilitation outside of New Zealand and there is only a very limited exception relating to the provision of attendant care.

Today, as part of this fight for justice, I call on the New Zealand government to overturn this ban, so that Australian victims of crime in New Zealand are able to receive ongoing treatment for the injuries they suffered in New Zealand and are now paying the price for in Australia. The Australian-New Zealand relationship is a very special one, and when Australians suffer, as Meg McLean has suffered so terribly, our close neighbour and very close friend must stand by us. The New Zealand justice system has badly failed Meg, and now we need to ensure that this wrong is righted.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is the third speech in a series. The federal government has made enormous noise about developing northern Australia. They have ignominy of go into this election having done absolutely nothing: not one cent of money has been allocated and there is not one single job. They have also spent, as far as we can make out, another $20 million on looking intos. We spent over $200 million on looking intos. In terms of today's money, some of that goes back about 15 years—it is close to $300 million in looking intos. Well, as the famous Joh Bjelke-Petersen said on numerous occasions: 'If you cannot make a decision, get the hell out of the cabinet room.' This place is for decision makers, not for looking intos and mirror men.

The Galilee Basin has half of Australians known coal reserves. It is a treasure trove of massive proportions. For those who see no future in coal fired power stations, let me just correct you and say this on the problem with CO2: BHP; Ergon, the big electricity supplier in Queensland; and the CSIRO have already established that all of your CO2emissions can be absorbed in ponded areas so that the modern power station will have no CO2emissions whatsoever. When it goes into the pond, it grows algae, which is of fabulous value to the cattle industry. It is 23 per cent protein, which is extraordinarily high.

What we need in the Galilee is the building of a railway line. The first railway line was built in Queensland in the 1960s, when Australia was a coal importing country. Can you imagine convincing the public that we could go from a coal importing country to being a coal exporting country? Upon that gamble, $1,500 million dollars of public funds was committed from a budget of $3,000 million dollars. I am using today's terms. It probably predated currency in dollars. If the Queensland government then proceeded to lay down 6,000 kilometres of coal line over the next 20 or 30 years.

The coal industry has gone backwards now for about seven or eight years. In 25 years since the Country Party—then calling themselves the National Party; it was knocked over in the 1990s—to my knowledge there has not been a single kilometre of rail line put down. The Adani mining company has said that they are going to produce $3,000, $4,000 or $5,000 million worth of coal annually and they need the railway line. They have now been struggling for three years to overcome 400 hurdles to get the railway line built. If the railway line is built, then the Australian economy benefits the tune of somewhere between $4,000 and $7,000 million a year. That is assuming that only Adani goes on stream.

What in heaven's name are we fooling around with? There are no hurdles for a government initiative—none whatsoever. So build a railway line. It is $2,000 million. Build the Hell's Gates dam. Heaven only knows, the government has done a study on it about every five or six years now, back to 1984 when the giant Bradfield Scheme was announced. This is the major component of that scheme. We are not advocating Bradfield; I would love to, but I am not doing that. I am just saying: build the Hell's Gates dam. That will give your economy an income of $2,000 million a year. There would be $7,000 million from the Galilee and $2,000 million from the Hell's Gates dam.

Above Hell's Gates, which is just south-west of Townsville—Charters Towers, if you like—and south-west of Cairns—Ravenshoe, if you like—is the giant status proposal on the upper Herbert River, which again will give you another $2,000 million dollars a year in income. Build a canal to get our fertiliser out—$200 million is probably all we require there—and we will give you back $4,000 million dollars a year in fertiliser production. We are already doing nearly $2,000 million dollars worth in Mount Isa now. So we have all these wonderful things, along with the realisation of what we should be achieving in the cattle industry: a quadrupling of our present figures with irrigation. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 12 : 20