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

I rise to remind the Labor Party that northern Australia matters. It matters to me, to my coalition colleagues and to the 1.3 million people who call it home. On 2 June I said I feared the installation of a Labor government would herald the sunset for northern Australia. I hope to be wrong, but on the very first day of this new parliament Labor abolished the Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia and has thrown the region's future under a cloud. Only people who don't appreciate both the potential and the challenges of the north would make such a decision, thinking that northern issues are just the same as southern issues. The arrogance and ignorance of this attitude is truly breathtaking.

We in the north pay more, and in many parts we can't make a mobile phone call. Our children's schooling is hampered by slow internet. The Bruce Highway is cut off by every heavy rain event. We have unsealed roads that isolate communities for months in the wet season. But despite all of this, through sheer will, attitude and hard work, the north protects, feeds, clothes and enriches the whole country. The Australian resources sector, much of which is based in the north, poured $39 billion in royalties and taxes into government coffers in 2020-21 and added $390 billion to our economy, funding roads, schools and hospitals used by all Australians. Our northern beef industry is worth more than $5 billion, and more than 90 per cent of our bananas, mangoes, sugar cane, winter tomatoes and other horticulture are grown north of the Tropic of Capricorn.

All these people and these critical industries are relying on Labor to look out for them, but they've been abandoned at the very first step. Under the coalition government, we built momentum for developing the North, and I'll be moving a motion in the Senate that the committee be re-established and give the North the specialised focus and policymaking it deserves. (Time expired)