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

I'd like to very briefly take note of the report of the Select Committee into Jobs for the Future in Regional Areas. That was not a committee I was a member of, but I did follow that inquiry quite closely given my interest in the subject matter of jobs in regional Australia, particularly in my state of Queensland. I think that this is a particularly important topic at the moment as we all seek to deal with the effects of COVID-19. The reason I wanted to say something today is that we all know that tomorrow there's going to be another meeting of the national cabinet, and one of the reasons we know that meeting is on tomorrow is that we've seen sustained attacks day after day by the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and various LNP members from Queensland on the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, and her government.

I remember only a few weeks ago in this chamber we had every single LNP senator sitting along the back row screaming at us on the Labor side about how important it was to open Queensland's borders. Well, weren't they proven wrong! They've been proven wrong on health grounds, because we've been able to keep Queenslanders safe from COVID-19 by having hard borders, and they've been proven wrong—

Senator McGrath interjecting—