Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You cannot get a bed there, Senator Brandis, when you go to Whyalla. You have to book a couple of days in advance to get a motel room. You will not get a hotel room; they will be all booked out. But Whyalla is still there, it is functioning and it has a very good, strong, mining oriented workforce.

There is Port Pirie, which is 271.7 kilometres from the Woomera zone. Once again, they have their issues with Nyrstar, but Nyrstar is hopefully going to get its new smelter going. It is a good sized town, capable of providing a workforce for this area.

Woomera is 374 kays from Wallaroo. Wallaroo has been a recipient of the drive-in drive out workforce because there are very nice accommodations, very nice waterfront shacks—as they are sometimes called in South Australia, but they are very far from that. There are very nice developments in Wallaroo. A lot of people drive into and drive out from Olympic Dam. They will drive up for their fortnight there and then they will drive back. It is probably a little bit more civilised than flying in and out of Hobart, Perth or wherever. A five- or six-hour drive to work at the beginning of the fortnight and then back after each fortnight is something that South Australians are quite capable of doing and quite happy to do. Predominantly, people do like to live on the coast, so the close proximity of Wallaroo, Moonta, Port Augusta, Whyalla and the like is very useful. You can even go down to Port Lincoln; it is only half a thousand, 517, kilometres away!

The point I am making is that there is already a lot of expertise, there is already a lot of infrastructure, there are trade-training centres, there is a workforce and there is a need to get our state moving. This opportunity should not be delayed anymore, and I really do not care who the delay is caused by. I would like to see Senator Farrell's bill supported so we can actually get on and do the job, which is opening this area up for exploration, managing the Defence expectations and managing the Indigenous people's expectations—fulfilling our obligations in that, if we train kids in an Indigenous community, we really need to have somewhere for them to go. This may well be one of those generational opportunities which will see Indigenous kids trained, given an opportunity and claiming the right as Australians to get a decent job, earn decent money and take that back to their families.

The reality, though—and I will make a political point—is that, despite all of this investment in the electorate of Grey, the trade training centres and our other attempts to open up the area, it is a blue-ribbon Liberal seat. So we are not playing politics here. We are not saying that we only want to look after the people who may be displaced out of manufacturing in Adelaide. We are saying we want look after the whole state.

It is vitally important that Defence, as a significant contributor to the South Australian economy, is supported too. But it is critically important that, with the demise of car manufacturing in South Australia, another opportunity opens up and that we do have a coherent plan. The coherent plan would be: let us get, as Senator Farrell says, into a construction phase in mining. That will give some hope to those people in business or in jobs in Adelaide who are facing a pretty grim outlook. Those who know Adelaide well would know that the north side of the city has traditionally had horrendous levels of youth unemployment. We cannot break that cycle without proper training programs into real jobs. We cannot break that cycle without it. This is one opportunity.

As I said earlier, I share Senator Farrell's and Mr Koutsantonis's sense of urgency about this legislation. I was extremely upset when this bill was referred to a committee, because we thought it was self-evident that this was the way to go. We can manage the Indigenous issues. We can manage the defence issues. Complaints by resource companies and Indigenous companies about the way that Defence communicates is, I think, something that Senator Johnston should take up. He should take that up. To come in and say that the bill is flawed because we could have a 70-day shutdown and no-one in Alice Springs or Darwin would get a loaf of bread, a pint of milk, an apple or an orange is, I think, probably drawing an extremely long bow.

I accept that the legislation must be correct—and no doubt Senator Brandis will be crossing the i's and dotting the t's on this legislation. You cannot have legislation that you can drive a truck through, so it all does need to be signed off. But I repeat: this is a very urgent matter. I do not really care who you want to attribute the delay to, whether you want to attribute it to us or to the previous minister; I just want it fixed. I think we have to get on with it. It is vital to South Australia's future, it is vital to the prosperity of South Australian electors and citizens and it will add value to the whole of Australia. So let's do it.