Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

That seemed to be a little bit thin-skinned about the exposure of some of these well-known facts. They appointed Labor Premier Peter Beattie to head the Commonwealth Games Corporation. What a conflict. They appointed former Labor Treasurer Terry Mackenroth to the board of QSuper. This just goes on and on. I do not have time, because I do not intend to devote the substantive bulk of this speech to these exposures. They appointed former Labor minister Steve Bredhauer to the board of Trade and Investment Queensland. These are appointments that clearly would be in conflict with all the best practices in the appointment of people to these very important positions.

The message that needs to come from here is that this is about a Labor senator who has obviously been selected amongst the ranks of Labor and the Greens to try and lead the charge, and I think that will prove to be a disastrous decision in the fullness of time. There are many of his colleagues who are much better qualified and competent to do this. This is about stopping 44,000 direct jobs that are at the virtual cusp of being shovel-ready in our central Queensland—his central Queensland and my central Queensland. Of course, the report showed that there are some 150,000 jobs related to this. This is in an area that is suffering employment depression. It is being attacked by the Labor Party, who parade themselves as being those who have the interests of working men and women. During the parliament that Senator Watt was a part of and in his previous life as a staffer to a failed Premier, there were 14,000 jobs routed out of this area in my home state of Queensland. There are thousands of empty houses in Mackay, Rockhampton, Gladstone, Gracemere and Emerald—places I am certain Senator Watt would not recognise, notwithstanding that I have offered to take him on a tour of these places, where we will have some public forums.

Our second largest export industry, with 90 per cent of its production exported, is under direct and unprecedented attack by the federal Labor Party and the federal Greens—again, a very tight coalition, like we saw in their previous term of government. We all know how that turned out for the economy of the nation. His own state Labor colleagues this week reported a surplus of some $2.3 billion I think. Where did that come from? That came from the $3.4 billion of royalties generated by the coal industry. This is like chewing your arm off at the wrist. They are resisting the generational opportunity to regenerate Central Queensland. Townsville has nine per cent unemployment in certain age categories. These people would be well placed to take possession of some of these jobs.

There is not a business in Queensland, particularly between Townsville and Gladstone and certainly north of the Tropic of Capricorn to Mackay, that does not rely significantly on this industry. The development of the Galilee Basin is going to give them a brand-new opportunity in life to enhance not only the economy of that region and the economy of the state—administered currently by a Labor government, who are in absolute conflict with this push—but also the national economy.

This is about stopping the coal industry. This is about discarding thousands of existing jobs. This is about preventing the development of thousands more jobs, not just with the development of the Galilee Basin but with all of the things that the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund is going to bring online over the next decade. It has been doing some fantastic work. It is on the cusp of delivering decisions that will support northern Australia. It defies logic that any Queensland senator would resist these things, would attack these things and would diminish the potential of these things. I just hope that every person over the age of 18 in my home state is watching and listening carefully. I will, to the best of my ability, point them in the right direction.