Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a fairly short contribution to the debate on the Regional Investment Corporation Bill 2017. Labor will be opposing this bill. I'm very happy to speak against the bill as it currently stands. I listened to most of what Senator Williams had to say, and I've got no doubt that he and many of his National Party colleagues are very sincere in their support for regional Australia, but I have to say that this bill and the entity that it proposes to create are, unfortunately, just another white elephant that we see from this government when it comes to providing for regional Australia.

Day in and day out, we hear—particularly from representatives of the National Party but also from the Liberals—that they are the friends and supporters of regional Australia. What they don't want to tell you is that, for decades now, they have consistently failed to deliver prosperity and growth to their supporters in regional Australia. To this day, nine out of 10 of the poorest electorates in this country are represented by the National Party. If the National Party were serious about delivering to the bush and delivering to the regions, do you think that they would accept that as the outcome for the people that they represent? It is hardly something to be proud of that, after decades of service to electorates in regional and rural Australia, they are still condemned to some of the highest rates of poverty in this country. That is failure. That is not success. Unfortunately, this is just another example of the false hope that is held out to regional Australia by the National Party.

It is not even the first example that we've seen from this government in this term of government alone. Over many months now, the Labor Party has pursued this government over the gross failure of its Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility. This was held up by the government about two years ago, when it was announced—it was going to be the saviour of northern Australia. It was going to create jobs and wealth and prosperity right across northern Australia. To this day, it has not funded a single project and it has not created a single job. We know for a fact that the only money that has been spent, to this day, relating to the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility is about $2½ million to pay the fees of its directors, travel for its directors, functions for its directors and its stakeholders, and salaries for its highly paid senior executives. Not one thing has come out of that fund for people in northern Australia, who are desperately crying out for jobs.

Labor, more than any party, is the party of jobs. It doesn't matter to us where you live. It doesn't matter whether you live in Western Sydney, in northern Melbourne, in central Brisbane or out west or up north in Queensland. We are the party of jobs. We want to get behind initiatives that offer real prospects to regional Australians and real jobs that will last into the future. That's why you will never find a Labor senator or a Labor member of this parliament who has criticised the concept of the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility. But you will find many of us who have been highly critical of the implementation of it and the way it has delivered—or failed to deliver—to a point where most Labor members of parliament and many people in regional Australia have now rebadged it the 'no actual infrastructure fund'. It is $5 billion of taxpayers' money, which is supposed to be out there right now creating jobs in northern Australia—North Queensland, the Northern Territory and the northern part of Western Australia. These are areas that desperately need jobs. They were given hope by this government through the creation of the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, but, to this day, nothing has come from it other than largesse for directors and senior executives. That is one of the key reasons Labor is opposing this bill.

We all know that this Regional Investment Corporation was only coined after the disastrous Orange by-election result in New South Wales, where the National Party copped an absolute hammering. It's no surprise that the head office of this corporation is proposed to be in Orange, because this is what the National Party do: every time they get into trouble they offer a little bit of pork here and there to their trouble spots and then neglect them for the next three years. As Bill Shorten, our Leader of the Opposition, said at the national Country Labor forum in Rockhampton only a week or so ago, the National Party are the party of 'pork and poverty'. Every time there is an election or some little political problem somewhere in regional Australia, they'll dole out a little bit of pork—a bridge here, a road there, a new white elephant, a new government structure created offering apparently thousands of jobs—but it never materialises, they walk away from it, and people in the electorate are left condemned to poverty, as they have been for decade upon decade with the National Party.

This Regional Investment Corporation is just more false hope from this government. It's the latest white elephant being put up by this government to disguise its lack of success in delivering for regional Australia. If this government had been able to manage one project through the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund, if they had been able to deliver one job out of that fund, then we might have taken this proposal seriously. But we know that all this is is another structure that is being created to disguise the lack of success this government has when it comes to regional Australia. This government is always saying it stands for regional Australia and for jobs in agriculture. Well, in Central Queensland, an area that I have come to know very well with my responsibilities as a senator, this government is so in favour of the cattle industry and agriculture that it wanted to go out and compulsorily acquire prime agricultural land to expand a Defence base—without telling anyone about it. They went out during the election—in typical National Party style, with lots of pork—and talked about how they had signed a deal with the Singaporean government to expand the Shoalwater Bay Defence base.

There is nothing wrong with that in itself; it actually does offer some opportunity to Central Queensland. But what they didn't tell people before the election was it would only be able to go ahead if they could compulsorily acquire prime agricultural land that services tens of thousands of cattle. It is no surprise that Rockhampton is known as the beef capital of Australia; it's because it has so much high-quality agricultural land near it and has thousands of people employed in the meat processing industry. This project from the government was going to go ahead until it was blocked by the actions of Labor and many powerful and loud voices in the community. It was going to take tens of thousands of head of cattle out of the supply chain, meaning a massive loss of income for rural producers; and thousands of jobs in meat processing were going to be jeopardised as well. That's how much a friend of the bush this National Party government is in regional Queensland.

And they consistently turn a blind eye to the abuses of mining companies that replace their permanent work force with labour hire, casual positions and contract positions. Even in question time today we had Minister Cash give another spray against the CFMEU. But you never hear one word from anyone in this government taking on the mining companies about the hundreds of thousands of permanent workers they continue to put off the job on the very same day they bring in people on insecure labour hire arrangements. Let's not have any more rubbish from this government about how they're the friends of regional Australia and that this Regional Investment Corporation will deliver prosperity to the bush. It's nothing more than false hope; it's nothing more than 'pork followed by poverty', for which the National Party has become famous.

If the government were serious about developing regional Australia and providing jobs to keep our regional communities strong, they would get projects out the door from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund. They would get some of the beef roads funded that they announced at the same time, which are still waiting to be built. They would get the Northern Australia roads program up and running—and spending money like they promised to do two years ago but have failed to do. At last year's election they committed to jobs growth funds in all the different regions of Queensland. There was going to be a Bowen Basin jobs fund. There was going to be one up around Cairns and in other parts of regional Queensland as well. But they have been flat out even getting a steering committee appointed to start talking about proposals for what jobs might be created in regional Australia. They can't deliver on the promises they have already made. But here we are listening to them bang on about another white elephant that will sit out in Orange probably do nothing. Labor is serious about getting behind regional Australia and wants to see jobs created in regional Australia. But all this government can do is construct white elephants that disappoint people.

Why not get projects out the door from structures that have already been created rather than creating a new one? Why not take up Labor's lead and put some money into the tourism industry, which we know creates hundreds of thousands of jobs in regional Australia?

Why not get the NBN working properly, which is what so many regional businesses are tearing their hair out about to this day? I was in Rockhampton last week, meeting with regional businesses who are suffering greatly from the shoddy rollout of this government's NBN. Fixing those kinds of things may be a better way to deliver jobs rather than ramming new bills in to create mythical corporations that will sit on the shelves and do nothing at all, just like the northern Australia fund.

It's time this government became serious about delivering to regional Australia. It is time to stop ramming bills through parliament that try to create structures that actually never deliver. Let's get the ones that have been created already working before we start wasting more time on new corporations that are just to satisfy a headline for Barnaby Joyce, the Deputy Prime Minister. Let's get jobs into regional Australia by doing things that will work rather than create new structures that will fail.