Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about a topic which is near and dear to the heart of every representative of particularly northern Australia, members and senators alike. It is on this topic that we rise above the petty politics of party politics and we talk about the future opportunity of this nation. I'm delighted to speak after Senator McCarthy, who is one of those other northern Australian representatives. Many of the topics she touched on, I think, are critical to us investing in the future of our country.

After nine years in opposition, on the very first day of parliament, one of the first actions of this new government was to scrap the northern Australia agenda. They scrapped the northern Australia committee, the only committee in this parliament dedicated to exploring the very important cross-portfolio and cross-jurisdiction issues to develop 51 per cent of our land mass. There are 1.3 million people living in northern Australia, 16 per cent of those Indigenous—over 200,000 Indigenous people—and we removed the very, very small advantage that northern Australia had in that place.