Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I speak to Senator Hughes's matter of public importance on the need for infrastructure in rural and regional Australia. I welcome this discussion and agree that rural infrastructure is a pressing need. So I ask: what the hell did Senator Hughes's party do about infrastructure over the last 10 years? I'll save the public looking it up—nothing. In fact, the last 10 years have been counterproductive. Inland Rail has been so poorly handled that only a few kilometres of track have been built. The Liberals and Nationals insisted on bringing Inland Rail into the city of Brisbane instead of the regional centre of the Port of Gladstone—a much more logical destination. In the process, Inland Rail will traverse the Condamine floodplain. In the recent rains, Millmerran would have been flooded as a result of the Inland Rail embankment, damming the floodplain. Recent rains have issued their warning, and the Albanese government must change the route of Inland Rail, sending it north to Gladstone. How many major dams did the Morrison government build? None. The NBN rollout was a disaster and many locations across rural Australia have an internet connection that can only be described as a joke.

So I agree: now is the time to get going on infrastructure. Growing our economy and putting the excess liquidity introduced during reckless COVID mismanagement to good use in building productive infrastructure is a solution to inflation. Productive capacity will restore our economy to an even keel and guarantee our economic and national security moving forward. It will increase our country's productive capacity.

One Nation are committed to rebuilding this country, literally. I have already succeeded in bringing Project Iron Boomerang before the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee for a significant inquiry. Project Iron Boomerang is an exciting and visionary project that consists of a 3,300-kilometre railway and multipurpose easement across the Top End. The route does not pass through any national parks and can be privately funded, such is the interest overseas and in Australia in the project. The name comes from how the railway will be used—bringing Western Australian iron ore across to Queensland's coal, where steel parks will turn those into quality Australian steel for domestic and export markets. Trains will then return, carrying Queensland coal to steel parks in Western Australia, producing more steel for export—boomerang!

The rail line will open up rare earth deposits that are currently stranded assets without the power to mine and the transport to bring to market. Rare earths are key ingredients in wind turbines, battery storage and most modern electronics, including phones and computers. Australia must take its place in producing these minerals using well-paid workers, not the child and slave labour currently featuring strongly in world supply chains. World steel demand is expected to increase at two to three per cent growth over the next 30 years as the emerging economies of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh replace falling demand from the USA and Europe.

Project Iron Boomerang will reduce long supply chains on iron ore and coal exports with much shorter supply chains. Iron Boomerang will use electric gas-powered locomotives. Large ore-carrying ships burn 10,000 litres of oil per hour. For those pushing 2050 net zero economic insanity, the reduction in taking ships off the water will be significant in cutting carbon dioxide from human activity.

Every tonne of steel made in Australia will take the world closer to the UN's unfounded 2050 net zero target that Labor, the Greens and the Liberals and Nationals slavishly adopt. And there will be a lot of high-quality steel. East West Line Parks have received formal expressions of interest from some of the world's largest steel manufacturers to locate steel mills in the vicinity of Murrumba, in Queensland, and the Pilbara of Western Australia. Ten steel mills are anticipated, producing 88,000 tons of high-quality steel and creating 40,000 breadwinner jobs for Australians. If that sounds optimistic, understand the world steel market is currently worth US$1.3 trillion. Australia has just six per cent of that. Iron Boomerang will make Australian steel cheaper than that of market leader China, and higher quality.

The attraction to Labor should be clear. A huge increase in Australian steel production will save the jobs of union coalminers that the Albanese government threatens in Labor's sellout to green ideology. The multipurpose corridor I mentioned earlier will carry water from Lake Argyle and Hells Gate through the corridor, along with internet and power cables. This will allow for the provision of water, power and internet to hundreds of remote communities across the Top End, lifting up the lives of those mostly Aboriginal communities in a way that 100 years of shallow, patronising federal government policy never has. That's the power of infrastructure. I thank Senator Hughes for her excellent motion.