Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise today to speak about the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Bill 2016. I want to begin my speech today on the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Bill by echoing the concerns of Senator McLucas. Labor obviously supports economic development in northern Australia. As a Western Australian senator, I certainly want to see the north-west of Western Australia given the best opportunity for growth that benefits local communities and indeed the Australian economy. Certainly it is an area that Labor absolutely supports.

But as we have come to expect from the government, whether under the prime ministership of Mr Abbott or of Mr Turnbull, the government are experts at messing up really good ideas and at not getting it quite right. This bill, until the amendments came through today in relation particularly to Western Australia, was a fine example of not quite getting it right—of just ignoring parts of Western Australia by excluding them from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Bill.

I have to say that it has only been through the advocacy of the Labor member for Perth, Ms Alannah MacTiernan, that we have seen some sensible amendments come through today that put Western Australia in a better position. Certainly the bill that went through the House a couple of weeks ago, with the areas in Western Australia, particularly Carnarvon and Exmouth, not being part of the legislation, was an absolute nonsense and shows again that the government does not really know what it is talking about—that we could be a long way down the track, 12 months from the budget where the northern Australia money was committed, and we still did not have the boundaries right. That would be, you would think, the very first thing the government would determine—and do so in consultation with all of the stakeholders, with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the local councils and certainly the state governments.

It is also telling that, when the bill was introduced into the other place, where there are quite a number of Western Australian members and in particular the member for Durack, whose seat encompasses significant parts of what was excluded, they said nothing. They said absolutely nothing. It has been the advocacy of the member for Perth, Ms Alannah MacTiernan, that has brought some sense at the eleventh hour to this debate.

So telling was it in Western Australia that the government had left out towns and regions that clearly, absolutely clearly, should have been part of its considerations from day one, not from the eleventh hour, that all of us—and I presume the Liberal senators as well—received emails from their partners, the National Party. Last week, we had the absurd notion of the National Party emailing Labor senators asking Labor to see if we could bring some sense to this debate. Their own partners obviously had tried internally to fix this problem, this glaring omission that saw towns and districts excluded in Western Australia. They came and lobbied us. That is how concerned the Nationals, the partners in the Turnbull government, were. They saw fit to email Labor senators.

Of course, it was not just the National Party who emailed us; it was also many of the shires and the councils in the regions which were going to be overlooked. Really, it defies logic—that you would put up boundaries for northern Australia that disadvantage significantly parts of Western Australia which Western Australians clearly see as part of northern Australia.

Perhaps the government has not appreciated just how vast and remote Western Australia is? It is a huge state. It is the biggest state, and it is extremely remote. There are many challenges in northern Australia and there would not be any Western Australians who do not see Carnarvon or Exmouth as Northern Australia. They are certainly not suburbs of Perth and they are certainly not satellite suburbs of Geraldton! But those opposite saw fit to exclude them initially from the bill. It is very telling that when it went through the House none of those Western Australian Liberal House of Representatives members saw fit even to make a squeak—to stick up for their own regions and for their own electorates. They just let it go through, 'Oops! Doesn't really matter!' Perhaps there are not too many votes for them in those towns. But they are uniquely northern Western Australian towns, and no-one in Western Australia thinks otherwise. Obviously—and thankfully—the government is now moving amendments today, which Labor will support, to include the areas that they somehow missed off the map.

Certainly, I want to see real opportunities in the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Bill for Western Australia, because Western Australia has been really badly let down—particularly by the state government and by Premier Barnett. They have absolutely squandered the available resources from the mining boom being played out in Western Australia. We have lost our AAA credit rating and he has been an appalling Premier.

Certainly, he has no interest in northern Australia. We saw that last year with a bit of an off-the-cuff comment. Out of the blue he said that he was going to close down remote Aboriginal communities—just shut them down! He was just going to move people into town, as they used to do back in the 1950s. That shows you how much the Premier of Western Australia cares about northern Australia. Obviously, he did not mind that two significant areas were being left off the map in terms of this Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Bill.

As I said, this is a Premier who has absolutely squandered the mining boom to the point now that we are a very poor state. I saw today that we have dropped down again—we are running at about sixth in terms of the states' economies. We used to be No. 1, until Premier Barnett got his hands on the Treasury dollars in Western Australia. He has completely squandered the mining boom and has racked up a debt which, certainly as a Western Australian, I am very concerned about: it is into the billions of dollars. But you do not hear that from those opposite, because they will be interested in pork-barrelling the state government—which is up for election next year.

That state government should actually hang its head in shame, because it has squandered the mining boom. We have announcements such as, 'Well, we'll just close remote Aboriginal communities,' making this statement that they are non-viable without any facts or figures. But, again, we have come to expect that from Liberal governments—they do not really worry too much about facts and figures; they just make it up as they go along.

As I said, just a couple of weeks ago the Western Australian Liberals in the House of Representatives thought it was just okay to vote for a bill which unfairly discriminated against towns in WA's North West. There was no debate in the House, so they did not see the opportunity to make a point then. Not a single Western Australian Liberal member spoke out against it—not even the member for Durack, whose seat encompasses some of the areas which were being discriminated against.

I wonder what the Liberal senators who have received those emails from their partners in the National Party will say it back to them? And I wonder what those Liberal senators will say to many the councils and shires that they have also received emails from? Will they suddenly turn around and, hopefully, acknowledge the good work of Alannah McTiernan, the member for Perth, when they respond to say, 'Yes, at the eleventh hour we've suddenly realised we've made a bit of a mistake when it comes to Western Australia.'?

The level of investment here is significant: $5 billion is available. One would think that Western Australian Liberal members—whether they are senators or from the House of Representatives—would want to make a strong bid for some of that $5 billion to come to Western Australia, to improve the north of Western Australia. But obviously, by their silence, they do not think that is worth investing in.

Of course, what was being proposed was to exclude these towns in Western Australia. The bill that was passed just a couple of weeks ago excluded the towns of Coral Bay and Exmouth, north of the Tropic of Capricorn. That is what they were excluding. The town of Exmouth is now going to be added through a special provision in the bill, and so is Carnarvon. If we applied the same rigor to where the lines were drawn in Western Australia as was applied in Queensland, most of the Gascoyne would in fact have been defined as 'northern Australia' and able to access the fund. I am not sure what happened when the ruler was drawn; perhaps they were not enough Western Australian Liberals looking at where the ruler was being drawn. But they seemed to be satisfied with cutting out significant parts of Western Australia from accessing the fund. But, as I said, there is an amendment today. Let's hope that it will get up, because I, as a Western Australian senator, and Labor support development; so we will be supporting those amendments. Turning to the other part of what was happening, Western Australia was on the cusp of missing out on millions of dollars in development opportunities, and that is what concerns us. As I said, that is now being addressed through the work of the Labor member for Perth. Carnarvon is the economic heart of the Gascoyne, with enormous development potential in horticulture and agriculture. I am not sure who in their right mind would have left it out.

The north does have a number of significant challenges. Road maintenance backlogs are a feature of the northern road system. We still have significant parts of northern Western Australia where there are gravel roads and there are significant truck movements on those roads, so road maintenance is an area that really does need to be looked at. There is a limited population, which is a feature of the West Australian north. It is a sparsely populated area, much of it remote, but it is absolutely worthy of investment, because the north of Western Australia is particularly beautiful. The tourism opportunities in the north are developing, but there are places still vastly untouched in these stunning regions. For example, there is really no way to get from Kununurra, the major town in the far north, through to Halls Creek other than by driving. You can take a mail plane, but it only operates a couple of days a week, and in Halls Creek you cannot hire a car. Having done the trip from Kununurra through to Halls Creek, I know it is about a four-hour drive and, once you get to Halls Creek, there are no car hire facilities. You have to hire in and out of Kununurra—a drive out and a drive back—or you plan your trip around when the mail plane is operating. These are just some of the challenges being faced in remote parts of Western Australia. Halls Creek is a town that most people would have heard of—it is a remote centre but not a place that people have not heard of—yet it is an incredibly hard place to get to.

Last week the Australian Bureau of Statistics released statistics about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in terms of disability, discrimination, educational opportunity and disadvantage. We in this place all know that we have a lot of work to do. Significant numbers of Aboriginal people within Western Australia live in our north-west—in fact, the whole of northern Australia has significant populations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We know that the Kimberley, for example, has the highest rate of suicide in the world. There needs to be a much greater emphasis on involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in a very meaningful way in how we develop infrastructure first and foremost for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

From a report I looked at from one of the inquiries of a joint House committee, I must say that the view of the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science certainly requires modernising, to say the least. They thought the key role for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' engagement in the northern Australia strategy was to be the labour force—completely missing any opportunity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to be part of the seed development, part of the ideas generation, part of that development. It seems that the department just came in over the top of that and said, 'We have to have meaningful engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in terms of employment.' Of course we do, but our first engagement should be with the traditional owners of the land as to what they want to see—that is, what are the cultural and economic development opportunities for them, not just as a second-hand labour force but as a critical party in the development of projects? Five billion dollars is a lot of money. Let's use some of it to improve some of those health statistics of Aboriginal people—particularly in the Kimberley, but also in the Gascoyne, in the Pilbara and so on—because they are appalling. For Western Australia to have the highest rate of Aboriginal suicide in the world is a statistic that should stop us in our tracks. It should make us focus on what really needs to happen.

The departmental official went on to say in their evidence:

The second aspect I guess—

'I guess' sounds like a bit of a thought bubble—

in terms of the engagement, could relate to Indigenous groups investing in projects as well.

What an appalling throwaway line! The main thrust of the department was to have Aboriginal people available as some kind of labour hire company who perhaps as 'a second aspect … could'. What kind of throwaway line is that? That is just a thought bubble with no strategic planning around how we really do proper engagement for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples whose land this development will take place on.

Contrast that, if you like, with the Kimberley Land Council's submission to the inquiry, where they said:

The KLC supports a balanced and considered approach to development, where industry, conservation and biodiversity initiatives and traditional owners and culture can coexist.

In the Kimberley we have been using a two-pronged approach to do this. Using this model, we are engaging in commercial projects on one side and creating a cultural enterprise that utilises our land but produces social and environmental outcomes on the other side. Through using this model we are ensuring the very best f our people, our country, our culture and our future. We want any future economic development of the Kimberley to include existing projects and we urge the inquiry to consider the Kimberley as a trial site for the strategic regional assessment of economic and social development.

That submission from the KLC is a far cry from the department's thinking—a far cry. Again it shows how lack of engagement, particularly with Aboriginal people in northern Australia, has been ignored throughout this process. I heard Senator Sterle say in his contribution to the northern Australia infrastructure bill that he wanted to see Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as members of the board that will oversee that project. I certainly echo those sentiments because, when you look at Western Australia in particular, apart from other Aboriginal enterprises there are something like 44 stations there, so this is a significant input by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people which has been overlooked. I urge the government, in whatever it does next, to start to look at proper consultation with the traditional owners in northern Australia to make sure that we have projects that they want, that will benefit them, that they develop, that they drive and that they develop skills from.