Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to talk on the Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce report. This is the most comprehensive review of land and water science relevant to the north of Australia that has been undertaken for many a long time. If I recollect the past decade or so correctly, when we were in opposition, I do not recall Senator Macdonald’s government moving to do anything about a sustainable development of Northern Australia, other than to set up a committee and to start to talk about it—but I will come back to that in a minute.

Sustainable development of Northern Australia is a priority for this government, and we have moved very quickly to start to do something about it, not languishing for 10 years, as the previous government did, before they realised that there were opportunities here. But rather than charge into Northern Australia and just assume that there is plenty of water or just assume that there is plenty of land that you can develop or that you can capture—the science shows that neither is really possible to the extent people opposite would like it—we have undertaken a task force that is a comprehensive review of the science of this part of the country.

In September 2008 the Rudd government changed both the terms of reference and the membership of the Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce established by the previous government. We wanted terms of reference that focused on tackling the broad range of environmental, economic and social challenges—so it was much broader than just the economic challenge; it also encompassed social and environmental challenges facing Northern Australia in the future. We wanted the task force membership to include experience from a diverse range of interests—not just a bunch of mates who happened to be current politicians, but people who actually had experience and knowledge in areas including business, Indigenous issues, conservation, agriculture, mining and science. So we broadened the expertise and the knowledge on that task force.

We also wanted the task force membership to have a better gender balance—the previous task force of course had no women on it—and where possible to draw on the experience of those who had firsthand experience living and working in Northern Australia. This was about bringing together the best minds, not your best mates, to work in partnership to identify opportunities for sustainable development in the north. We removed the six coalition politicians from the task force and invited other existing members to continue in their role. John Daly from the Northern Land Council was replaced by Wali Wunungmurra from the same organisation, and Noel Pearson was replaced by Richard Ah Mat. We also added the following people: the Chair of the Ord Irrigation Cooperative, Elaine Gardiner; the Chair of the Indigenous Land Corporation, Shirley McPherson; the Executive Director of the Queensland Resources Council, Michael Roche; the Vice-President of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Dr Rosemary Hill; the eminent Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Charles Darwin University, Professor Bob Wasson; and Northern Territory based environmentalist Dr Stuart Blanch. So there are professors and doctors who actually have expertise in this area. We know the membership has been attacked by those opposite, but we added just one person of Indigenous descent to the task force and two northern based environmentalists.

I know that my colleagues will go on to reveal exactly what this task force uncovered, but they found that there are positive opportunities in Northern Australia across a range of industries. They also found that developing Northern Australia as an integrated, sustainable region presents a complex challenge that requires strategic focus, not gathering your mates together and thinking you can solve the problems of the world without the expertise that is needed. It requires national leadership and close collaboration between all governments involved. It also found that institutional and governance arrangements in the north are not yet strategically focussed to seamlessly manage both land and water across the region.

The task force stressed that the planning and management of land and water resources in Northern Australia must account for Indigenous rights and interests. Unlike my colleagues opposite, this is a document that has brought together the review of the science, has identified where some of the gaps are and has made some suggestions about a way to move forward, about how to particularly identify the potential for future sustainable development. It is a report that is based on knowledge and expertise and that provides us with a much more sound base on which to pursue the sustainable development of Northern Australia than would have occurred under the previous government.

In the time left I also want to draw people’s attention to a book I launched on Monday, called Dry Times: Blueprint for a Red Land. This is another piece of research and documentation that all helps in developing knowledge about and providing assistance to Northern Australia. It is a book about desert Australia, which of course spreads across six states and territories. As we know, desert Australia is 5.5 million square kilometres—three-quarters of the country’s land area. This book was written by Dr Mark Stafford Smith and Mr Julian Cribb. It outlines for people the extremities and the uncertainties. It complements quite nicely the task force report. In fact, on Monday it was suggested that the Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce report now has a coupling bookend, in a sense, with this desert Australia book launched earlier this week. The two go hand in hand and provide us with long-term sustainable science about how we can move this part of the country forward. Deserts are home to diverse vegetations but they are generally very poor. We do not really understand how to live in this country with its extremes and its variabilities. This book outlines the knowledge of the desert. It goes through what the desert experiences. We know that there are people and animals and vegetation, flora and fauna, that cope with the extremes of the desert day in, day out and month in, month out. This book actually suggests that if we take stock and if we have a look and learn about what is going on in the desert we can apply that nationally.

So I say to my colleagues opposite that the Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce report is not only about the north; it is also about how we can develop this country for the benefit of everyone. Dry Times: Blueprint for a Red Land provides lessons for the rest of this country about how we can deal with extremes of environment and extremes of climate. Things happen differently in the north of this country, in the deserts and the Top End, right across from Townsville to Broome and from Alice Springs right through to the top. Things do happen differently. But fauna and flora survive. What we have to do is understand why they survive—what do they do that makes them sustainable? That is the science on which we need to base any future sustainable development. You cannot just move into an area of this country and suggest that all the water there can be captured, all of the land can be put to agriculture, and suddenly we can feed the rest of the world. It does not work like that, and it will not work like that. We need to learn from the environment and from there plug the gaps and ensure that we have a comprehensive strategy to move forward. The Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce does this, and the Dry Times book launched on Monday is another response on how we handle the desert.

This government has ensured that sustainable development in Northern Australia is done in a systematic, scientific and routine way based on expert knowledge, collecting the science and the data that is there. This is a blueprint on which we can now move that part of this country forward and ensure that any economic return we have is handled in a sustainable, sensible way. (Time expired)