Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Brockman for that question. I know he is a passionate supporter of the development of northern Australia, and particularly of northern Western Australia, of course. There have been some very important developments in our northern Australia development plan. It is the first time in our history that a government has had a white paper and a plan to develop northern Australia. It was a great pleasure this week to announce a $95 million investment from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility towards Sheffield Resources' Thunderbird mineral sands project in the Kimberley region. This project is an incredibly important project, principally to create 400 jobs in the Kimberley region during construction and 280 jobs over the life of the mine.

Our northern Australia agenda is all about creating jobs and opportunity for people who live in northern Australia, and this project will do that in spades. This project is going to be staffed completely by locals in the Kimberley region. The proportion of Indigenous people in this part of our country is 44 per cent. I give credit to Sheffield, which has set a target of 40 per cent of its employees to be Indigenous Australians. Today, 60 per cent of Sheffield's employees are Indigenous. It is already beating its target, which is a fantastic outcome.

This project is important also because it produces products that are essential for modern life. I can see a number of senators on their phones and iPads. I'm sure they're listening intently to my answer to this question, but they're also looking at modern technologies that need mineral sands, that need zircon and titanium for their production. We need these mines and a strong mining sector to be able to use our phones and our iPads. Without mining we wouldn't enjoy any of these modern products. We have so many of these products here in Australia.