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

They will lose weight, as they precondition them. Sometimes it's actually only their progeny that become acclimatised to the country and perform better. So I do understand this nexus between the people and the land, particularly in rural areas. The genesis of this for Senator Hanson was obviously the issues around Central Queensland and North Queensland. I've got to say—and I'll probably get a call from the headmaster after this—that this was not well managed. Despite the pleas that there had been public consultation and engagement with the communities that were impacted by this, that wasn't 100 per cent correct in all of the cases.

I made the point at the time that, had our government engaged with some of us representatives of government who have an affinity with the people in these regions, we might have made more progress or been able to establish exactly where we were with these communities before this all fell to pieces. Senator Hanson, I understand completely the spirit of the proposal being made here with the amendments in this legislation, but I'm inclined to think—using this as a case study—that we can make all the rules we like around this but, unless culturally the people in the bureaucracy, and in this case the Department of Defence, approach this in a more compassionate manner, we're going to end up with the same set of circumstances again and again, notwithstanding what rules, regulations or framework of operation we put in place.

I think that this was, in large part, a poor effort at the front end of engagement with these communities in these particular cases. I know that Senator Hanson played a very active role, as did a number of us. Fortunately on this occasion the Deputy Prime Minister took an interest in it. Had he been commissioned to take an interest in it at a date sooner than was the case, we might have had some resolution at an earlier time. But the Deputy Prime Minister did visit the area, on 3 February, and had meetings with local people who were affected and, indeed, other stakeholders in the community, not just those who might have been the subject of the acquisition. It is a matter of record that, the following day, the government made the commitment that no-one would be forced to sell their land against their will.

There was a division of thought in the area. There were some landowners who were willing to part with their land, on just terms—if I can make reference to my favourite movie, The Castle. In fact, there were landowners who engaged contractually with the government and did sell their land. So we had the willing sellers. But then equally we had—and I suspect there were more of them—the people that I have mentioned here in this contribution today, the people who had put a lifetime of blood, sweat and tears into their land, who were at some stage within a development program for their property and for whom an acquisition at that time would not have realised the great potential that their property might have had. They might have been wanting to upgrade their circumstances, perhaps because of retirement, and, given some more time, they might have had their land more adequately valued.

A great example of that—I touched on this earlier—is that you might purchase a large area of land that requires 200 kilometres of fencing to be done. No matter how energetic you are, that will take you a long period of time. It will have a serious investment impact from a money quantum point of view. If you haven't started that program or you're early into that program but it is not completed, and your property is valued, it won't matter what value is put on it; only one in 100 buyers will show interest in it. If the program has been finished and all the facilities are upgraded and in a functioning form, you will find that 90 per cent of potential buyers capable of buying that property will be engaged. These are serious challenges. I say to Senator Hanson, we talked about this and explored where there may have been other communities where these facilities could have gone, but I suspect, not knowing, that if the process were not managed properly we would get resistance in those other areas as well.

Central Queensland, and particularly the Shoalwater area, has been devoted to defence activities, but I want to make a point, Senator Hanson: the intent of these acquisitions was to try and get some land where particular operations could occur. This was to do with visibility and engagement. Right next-door to the areas to be acquired, through the barbed wire fence, there were massive tracts of land owned by the defence department—hundreds and hundreds of thousands of acres. But they couldn't clear the land, to make it look like the land through the fence, because of impacts on the environment. It was a most ridiculous situation. We wouldn't even have had to confront these challenges with this community. It will be a long time before society realises just what impact the Greens and their policies, with the support of their coalition partners, Labor, have had in our rural communities. But one day, when people are sitting naked and hungry—