Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Indeed, Senator Brandis. You and I were there talking to the medical profession in Cloncurry just a couple of weeks ago. We understand these problems. We realised again that, if it were not for private industry, the bustling mining town—it is only a small country town, but it is a bustling mining town—of Cloncurry would be without adequate health services if you left it to a Labor state government.

Why would anyone expect any better from this Labor government when you look at the ministers—good men, no doubt—who are in charge of everything rural and regional in Australia? We have Mr Albanese, a union official in days gone by from the bush areas next to the Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport! The agriculture minister—a minister who we hoped might have had some empathy with the bush—represents the adjoining seat in the leafy, bushy suburbs adjacent to Kingsford Smith Airport! The Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia, someone who supposedly has carriage of all things good for the bush from the Labor government, comes from the leafy suburbs of Perth. His background is not in the bush; it is in running the Labor Party. That certainly does not give one any understanding of the needs and requirements of rural and regional Australia—that part of Australia which, I might say, produces more than 30 per cent of Australia’s export earnings.

As Senator Brandis adverted to, a couple of weeks ago I—and Senator Brandis joined me for some of it—spent 10 days driving 4,000 kilometres around north-west Queensland. As the opposition spokesman for Northern Australia, I like to get out there and talk to people on the ground.

While I was up in Normanton, Karumba and Mount Isa, they were all rather excited in those areas because Mr Gary Gray was going to come in and make things good for the bush a few days after I was there. He popped in—flew in in his chartered aircraft—spent a few hours talking to a few people and could not get out of the place quickly enough. He left them with no real confidence as to what might happen in the future. He said to them, as I have been saying for many years, that the Office of Northern Australia, established with such fanfare by Labor following the election, was more of a coordination unit—downgrading their expectations. What it really is is an office of the department of regional services rebadged as the Office of Northern Australia. Northern Australians will not be fooled by this, although they and I were hoping that Mr Gray was coming to the north-west of Queensland with some good news. Regrettably, we were all disappointed.

Next week, I and a number of colleagues will be travelling to the north-west of Western Australia and to the Northern Territory to talk to people to try to understand their problems and to look at the opportunities that there are in Northern Australia and indeed in rural and regional Australia. In my 10 days driving over 4,000 kilometres in those remote areas, much of it on unsealed gravel roads—and I suggest that the ministers and indeed most of the senators on the other side of this chamber would not know what an unsealed dirt or gravel road was—I saw four-wheel-drive vehicles all the time.

They are not luxury vehicles. They are not purchased because people like the kudos or reputation of driving a four-wheel-drive vehicle. They are used in Northern Australia and in country and rural and regional Australia because they are essential vehicles. Very often the roads are such—and I have mentioned the gravel and dirt roads—that you need a four-wheel-drive vehicle to get through the bulldust or, when it rains, through the mud and slush. You cannot do that in a Holden or Falcon or a Ghia—