Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

  (i) the Federal Government's Northern Australia White Paper was released more than four years ago,

  (ii) there have been three Prime Ministers and two Ministers for Northern Australia in that time period,

  (iii) the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF), announced in the 2015-16 Budget, as part of the White Paper, was described by the then

Treasurer, Mr Hockey, as the 'first major step in our plan for our great North',

  (iv) over four years, the NAIF has only released $44 million—less than 1% of its $5 billion budget,

  (v) the NAIF has been the subject of four reviews, including another one just announced by the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia (the Minister),

  (vi) the NAIF has recently announced the collapse of one loan awarded to a project in the Pilbara,

  (vii) the NAIF has also been forced to delay its largest loan to date, a

$610 million loan to the Genex Kidston hydro pumped power station in North Queensland,

  (viii) the Minister will not reveal how jobs have been created in Northern Australia as a result of projects that have received loans from the NAIF, and

  (ix) more than $400,000 in bonuses have been paid to senior executives at the NAIF, in the last year alone; and

(b) calls on the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia to fix the failures of his Northern Australia agenda, and start delivering real jobs in the North.

This matter was listed for debate yesterday, essentially to provide an opportunity for senators to make a contribution on their thoughts on the government's performance in relation to northern Australia. The reason we did so was that this week the minister has tabled his statement on the northern Australia progress report, and I note that he didn't think it was worthy of actually speaking to. He simply tabled it instead. But we did have a fairly lengthy debate and discussion about that yesterday, so I won't prolong things unduly today.

All I really want to do is note that even after yesterday's tabling of the northern Australia statement—when I had quite a lot to say about how ineffective the NAIF is and the level of frustration with the northern Australia agenda in general—there was an opinion piece that was run in the NT News today, which I want to put on the record. It was written by Mr Dave Malone, who's the head of Master Builders Northern Territory. I don't think anyone would argue that Master Builders are a Labor stooge organisation or the kind of organisation that, in the government's opinion, might be worthy of deregistration; they are an employer organisation. But I noted that Mr Malone, speaking on behalf of Master Builders, was also very critical of the northern Australia agenda. In his opinion piece today, he referred to the fact that he and other business groups gave evidence at our recent Darwin hearing of the northern Australia inquiry. Basically, what Mr Malone had to say on the Morrison government's attitude to northern Australia was:

The North is more out of sight and out of mind every day.

He goes on to note that there's been inadequate investment in Kakadu and that, despite all the government's talk about making northern Australia and Darwin in particular a defence hub:

… the number of military personnel in our neck of the woods is the lowest in a decade.

So the government is actually withdrawing military personnel from Darwin, despite saying that it's a priority. He talks about the Closing the Gap measures and the fact they're a priority for COAG to close the gap on a whole range of measures between First Nations people in our country and the general population, but he then goes on to note in his op-ed:

… no-one can recall when the number of federal public servants was lower in the NT. In fact, key Australian agencies have almost no-one here.

So I suppose the point I want to make is that it's not just the opposition who are raising serious concerns about the progress with the Northern Australia agenda. We've actually got business groups out there, who—let's face it—tend to support the government, but even they are disappointed with this. I referred yesterday to submissions to our inquiry from Central Queensland University, the Darwin Major Business Group and many others that also expressed disappointment.

It's no real surprise when you think about the fact the Prime Minister has not even deigned to visit the Northern Territory once since the election this year. I'll be interested to see what Senator McMahon has to say, because recently she was quoted in the NT News as basically saying that she didn't think there was any need for the Prime Minister to visit the Northern Territory. She's actually a senator for the Northern Territory, and she says that no-one has given her a reason why it's necessary for the Prime Minister to go up there. If you haven't got decent representatives arguing the toss for your state or territory, how on earth can you expect your state or territory to get a fair share? It's that kind of poor representation that means that the Northern Territory and northern Australia in general are missing out. It's about time the government took this northern Australia agenda seriously. It's about time Minister Canavan took it seriously. Fix the NAIF, get this agenda moving and start delivering on the potential of northern Australia. The opposition wants to see it work, business groups want to see it work, First Nations people want to see it work and the general community wants to see it work. It's time to get it working.