Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Indeed, Senator; we have raised this at estimates. I would call the runway anything, even after a nice guy but a failed communications minister! I would still call it after him if we could get the Commonwealth to commit some money to it. But I am disappointed. It is not something that the Commonwealth in the past has dealt with, but under the so-called stimulus package here is a great opportunity for that money to be spent. The surface needs to be sealed, and it also needs to be extended.

Now the Queensland government, who do have a responsibility in this area, have been approached for years by this community to do something to provide a decent service into Karumba to support the tourism industry, support the fishing industry and help in times like these when you cannot get road access there. But the Queensland government have done very little over the years. Just recently they said, ‘Look, we’ll put in one-third of the cost of resealing if the council puts in one-third and the Commonwealth puts in one-third’—a total sum of a massive $360,000-odd, as I recall.

What it needs is a much larger commitment of $5 million or $6 million to extend the runway and to seal it. I would have thought that would have been a high priority for the Queensland government over the last four or five years. Regrettably, it has not been, and again I can only express concern that the local state member, the member for Mount Isa, who just happens to be a Labor member, has not been able to get the Queensland government to deal with this airstrip over that period of time. Why this would be I cannot understand. Of course, now, a couple of weeks before the election in Queensland, we are getting promises flying right, left and centre. But I think the locals would be thinking a bit like me: if you are going to express some concern about it, then why didn’t you do it during the past 10 years when you have been in government, rather than leaving it until the last two weeks? I do hope at least the federal government, with all of this money they have available and will be splashing around everywhere, could use some of it for a decent infrastructure project to help the Karumba people with an extended and sealed runway.

While I am on that, I want to briefly mention another runway that desperately needs assistance. It is on Horn Island, which, as many senators would know, is in the Torres Strait. It is the entry into the straits and all of those communities up there. It is used by any number of Commonwealth and Queensland government agencies. But this airstrip needs a massive upgrade of some $12 million to make it serviceable. Again, you cannot drive to Thursday Island. You cannot drive to the island communities of the Torres Strait. The only way you can get there is by an aircraft into Horn Island and the ferry across to Thursday Island, or a smaller plane from Horn Island out to one of the outlying communities. And yet this airstrip, which was built during the war—that is how long it has been around—desperately needs strengthening and upgrading. The result, according to Sinclair Knight Merz, is that the current pavement of the runway does not have structural capacity to cater for the continual use of the aircraft Qantas want to fly in there—the Q400. There is serious rutting and cracking and this has resulted in a situation where there is a medium to high risk of a crash or a serious incident occurring if that aircraft continues to be used.

A recommendation has been made for the runway to be extended and upgraded, as per a Queensland Transport report, but unfortunately there has not been any assistance from the Queensland government. This part of Queensland is represented by a member of parliament who, unfortunately, is another Labor member, but nothing seems to have been done about this most important piece of infrastructure. I want to repeat this: we want this airstrip not just because we want everyone to have an airstrip; this is a vital means of entry—the only means of entry—into the Torres Strait, not only for the convenience and ongoing daily work life of the inhabitants but also for any number of important Commonwealth and Australia-wide border protection issues. But nothing has been done. It is a Queensland airstrip. It should have been upgraded by the Queensland government well prior to now. I regret that neither the local member nor, it seems, the Premier have had the fortitude to do anything about it, even though the campaign for upgrading it has been going for a number of years.

There is a lot of money splashing around in the Commonwealth’s coffers these days with the so-called structural package. I will not go into who is going to pay for that. Someone will have to pay for that in the future, but we do not seem to worry about that. We opposed it, but it is there. A good use of some of that money would be to help the Queensland government upgrade the airstrip. I will keep calling for the upgrade. Quite clearly, neither the local, state nor federal members, regrettably all Labor, seem to have been able to use their influence. I will keep calling for this.

None of that alters the fact that the coalition will be supporting this bill that is before the parliament. We think it is an important update. It will build on the strong foundations left by the previous government and will enable us to maintain a solid aviation security apparatus in an efficient and effective way.