Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Hansard source

I also want to begin my contribution today by welcoming Senator Pat Dodson to the Senate. His contribution has been significant on the issues of reconciliation, native title and Indigenous affairs more generally, over many, many years. And I know that his contribution to this place will also be a significant one. I think we are a better place for his being here.

But now I go to the bill, the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Bill 2016. It is very interesting that here we are, in probably the last week of this parliament, rushing through a piece of legislation that the government over there says is the most important thing that it has been doing for northern Australia since the last election. We had a big hoo-ha at the last election about how this government was going to be everything for northern Australia, and here we are at five minutes to midnight putting through a piece of legislation that still has government amendments.

This government has overegged its commitment to northern Australia, because here we are still trying to work out where the boundary is. We still do not know where northern Australia is. Come on, guys. We are nearly there. It is nearly the end of this parliament, and we still do not know where the boundary is. This is a problem. Senator Smith, you said that you have had people writing to your side of politics since late last year about this, and it was only resolved, I understand, over the weekend. I really want to commend Ms MacTiernan for her engagement in this activity where she has taken up the cudgels for some of these people in Western Australia who believe they live in northern Australia. This is not good enough. It is not good enough for a government which has overegged its commitment to northern Australia.

This facility, this activity, was announced in last year's budget. I hear we are about to have another one tomorrow night. It has taken a whole year to get to this point where we work out where northern Australia is and what we are going to do about this money—which is in fact a loan scheme. Just to make sure: this is not a grant scheme; this is a loan scheme. If you live in Melbourne and you want a big road, you just put your hand out if you are in the Liberal Party—people in Victoria actually do not want that big road, but that is by the by—but if you live in northern Australia you have to take out a loan. There is a different way that we are being treated in northern Australia.

As I said, this was announced in the budget last year. There was no detail or clarity, and that was commented on quite significantly in the mainstream media—that we did not really know what this facility was going to be. It has only been bit by bit, drip by drip, that we have learnt what this thing might do. I think it is rather funny that you have two ministers for northern Australia in the coalition. We only had one shadow minister. We could work out what was going on, but you have had two.

The expectation management has been a disaster. I concur with a lot of what Senator Siewert said. This process has allowed for people to be given carte blanche in what they might want to dream up. I agree with Senator Siewert that we heard some extraordinary proposals—proposals that defied the laws of gravity in some cases. Proposals that do not meet the basic principles of science were proposed to our committee. This government has to do a bit better in expectation management. Please do not tell the people we represent that they can do whatever they want. Give them some parameters so that we know what we are, in fact, up for.

Finally, before I go to the issues, I want to talk about what happened in the House of Representatives when this bill went through the House of Representatives at their last sitting. There was no debate on this bill. If the boundary question was so important to the Liberal and National parties, why wasn't it resolved in the House of Representatives? There was not a word spoken in favour of this bill over there. The whole of the carriage of this bill in the House of Representatives was gagged.

Let us go to some of the issues that are around this bill. The first question is the question of the boundaries. I, as a member of the Joint Select Committee on Northern Australia, asked that question when we went to the hearing. I said, 'Can you tell me?' I will not go on about where it was. But I said, basically, 'Where is northern Australia?' The officer gave a sensible answer:

The definition we used was the same as that used from the northern Australia infrastructure audit. As I understand it, it was based on those statistical classifications that you are referring to.

It was a very straightforward answer. Clearly the department has a bit of an idea about where northern Australia is. Unfortunately, it would seem that the government does not concur. Apparently we are going to have some resolution of that here today, and then it will go back to the other place.

There is something that I do not know that the business community truly understand, and that is the question of the cost recovery elements of the bill. The bill allows for the facility to charge a fee for cost recovery. I asked the officers again about what that meant. I particularly asked if there was going to be a fee for an application. The officer quite clearly said, no, there would not be a fee for an application to the facility, but:

… the facility itself will determine how it goes about doing that. It is just an expectation that, across all its operations, it recovers its costs …

Once again, we really do not know what that truly will mean in effect. I put it to this place that we should know by this time what that really does mean.

There has been much discussion in the Queensland press about where the facility should be located. In the bill it talks about the fact that the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation will be providing the back office facilities for this. There was some expectation from some quarters that, to have the facility based with the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation, an ideal place would be Brisbane, as opposed to Sydney or Melbourne, because that is where EFIC is located. That then resulted in all and sundry saying, 'No, no, it should be in'—and you can add a city in northern Australia after that sentence. They said it should be in Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Darwin or wherever—Gladstone, perhaps—if it is in.

A big discussion ensued, and I made representations on behalf of the city of Cairns to Senator Canavan. It was on the night when we sat all night. About two o'clock in the morning, I did my duty and made my representations to Senator Canavan. I am not saying it was because of my excellent representations that the decision has been made that the NAIF will be based in Cairns, but we had a conversation about it. I did my duty on behalf of the people of Cairns; others did as well.

So the NAIF will be based in Cairns. What does that mean for my city? It means that there will be about five people located in the city of Cairns, and I welcome that. That is a good thing. But I say very clearly to this government: this does not compensate my city for the loss of the Pacific patrol boat contract, which would have brought thousands of jobs—jobs associated with apprenticeships. We have been dudded by this government because we did not get the Pacific patrol boat replacement contract. Our city had the expectation that we were going to get it. Mr Frydenberg was shown on the front of our paper being kissed on the cheek by the member for Leichhardt and that made us think we were going to get it, and we did not. So we will have five jobs from NAIF. Thank you. We will take them, but it does not compensate us for missing out on the Pacific patrol boat replacement contract.

I now want to talk about the relationship with EFIC, the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation. It would seem that these five or so officers who are going to be based in Cairns will be employees of EFIC. I am a little unsure about whether there will be a requirement for those individuals to locate themselves in Cairns. Will it be a shingle on a building that says, 'NAIF' and having a redirected phone? I am a little concerned that that is what we might end up with.

I also have some concerns about the way that the board will be appointed. I have had conversations with the minister about this as well. I say to this government, and the minister has accepted my commentary and I thank him for that, that the last thing we want in northern Australia is more politics. I encourage the minister to appoint people who will be able to converse with and understand all sides of the political arena. We do not want people who are not recognised as being open to thoughtful consideration across the political spectrum. I thank the minister for hearing me out on that.

I now want to talk briefly about expectation management. A lot of people, including members of parliament, have talked loudly about how many dams we are going to get out of this. 'This is going to be great for dams.' I commend former minister and shadow minister Gary Gray for the work that he has done to manage expectations and tell people the truth when it comes to what we can deliver in northern Australia. There could well be dams but they must, in my view, be compliant with the National Water Initiative. We have to make sure that we are building infrastructure that is environmentally and economically sustainable for our community.

It troubles me that people from the south—and I do not have a big definitional thing about the north and the south; I do consider we are all Australians—often say, 'Oh my goodness, you got 2.6 metres of water this wet season.' Yes, that is pretty ordinary. People in southern Australia find that rather amazing and say: 'Why don't you capture it all? Why don't you put in dams?' To do what with it? What are we going to do with it? The soils are not that great where this rain falls. The topography of the land is flat. So when you get 38 degrees the next day after rain, it all evaporates. So, please, do not use southern Australian thinking to make decisions about northern Australia. We need to use clever and smart northern Australian thinking to make decisions about our part of Australia.

One more question and then I will go to my conclusion. Shadow minister Gary Gray wrote to Minister Frydenberg on 4 February of this year indicating that the opposition wants to support the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility and made some comments about Infrastructure Australia. Mr Gray said, 'We are concerned that Infrastructure Australia is not embedded in the project assessment and public administration processes for the NAIF. The absence of IA expertise may create unwelcome duplication and wasted resources across agencies and departments where a NAIF project is assessed. Clarity as to how the NAIF will work with IA is desirable. Yours sincerely, Gary Gray.' I am not sure that that letter has been answered. It would be great in your summing up speech, Minister, if that issue could be addressed. If I am in error and the letter has been answered, I apologise.

I conclude by making some comments about northern Australia. I say to my colleagues and to those people who do live south of the Tropic of Capricorn, please do not think of northern Australia or North Queensland as being somehow in deficit. Please do not think that there is something wrong, something bad or something unfortunate for those people who happen to live north of the Tropic of Capricorn. That is often how people construct their commentary about where I live, where I was born and where I will die—that is, Far North Queensland. It is a marvellous place. I choose to live there. Most of us there choose to live there.

It is different to southern Australia and that is why it needs different thinking. Yes, the weather is much hotter and wetter and drier—all of those things. The distances are huge. They have always been there. The population is smaller and I do not think that the answer is to double the population. Would the land carry that population?

We have not answered that question but we do know that there are challenges—there are real challenges to living in northern Australia. But the beauty of the place, the diversity of our population, the interesting people and the human assets are certainly some of the reasons I live there, and most people who live there have made that choice as well.

We have what I think is one of the greatest opportunities. Northern Australia is in a first world country, and one of the only first world countries in what is called the Torrid Zone between the two tropics. We have the best opportunity to do research, education and export that education into the communities that are economically growing in the Torrid Zone. That is where I say focus of this facility should be. Let us grow the potential export of natural resource management, education services and health services into the tropics. We have an enormous opportunity, so let us think of that as the way that we change the economic outcomes for people of northern Australia rather than an easy, quick dam, because that is where we are up to at the moment; we are not there yet.

Yes, we have challenges. We have poorer health outcomes than southern Australia. We have much lower levels of education than southern Australia. The cost of living in some parts of northern Australia defy belief—for example, Thursday Island is the most expensive basket of groceries in this country, and we are not doing much about dealing with that.

So, yes, there are challenges, but we have opportunities, so my final plea is: please do not think of northern Australia as being in deficit; think of the opportunities and the fact that we have more natural assets in northern Australia of international value than the rest of the country. Let's use and value those assets, and make sure that we can then turn a dollar from those assets.

In principle, we think this is a good idea. We would like to know that the government knows where the boundaries are—that would be a good thing. We would like to have some of the detail about how these loans will be decided upon, and I look forward to seeing these issues being resolved. I thank the Senate.