Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to make a brief contribution about the importance of the north, particularly the importance of the north of my home state of Western Australia. It's great that the minister is in the chamber at this time. The north of Australia has a population of only 1.3 million but contributes over 10 per cent of our national GDP. Obviously, it's a very important part of Australia and it's a very important part of Western Australia, particularly with the contribution of iron ore leaving from the Port of Port Hedland.

The government has a very strong commitment to developing the north. It commissioned the first ever white paper on developing northern Australia. It is a very important initiative to make sure that we continue this push to further develop that part of Australia—which is significantly underdeveloped—in a sensitive way but in a way that delivers jobs and growth to Australia.

I want to speak about a couple of things very quickly. The Ord River scheme is a significant project that has been underway for a very, very long time in Western Australia. It's in the East Kimberley, a part of the world that gets enormous rainfall. Lake Argyle holds 20 times the volume of Sydney Harbour—11 million cubic metres of fresh water. The first stage of the project involved 14,000 hectares of irrigated agricultural land, stage 2 added a further 13,400 hectares of land, and there is a proposed stage 3, which is largely in the Northern Territory. This represents, potentially, a significant food bowl, for Australia and also for export to the rest of the world.

In order to export, particularly in order to export perishable high-value crops, we need air links out of the north. We need also need air links out of the north to support tourism. That's why it is exciting that SilkAir, the regional offshoot of Singapore Airlines, will be trialling direct flights to Broome over the next few years. That will bolster tourism and facilitate the trade of high-quality agricultural goods from the north of Western Australia into those key markets of Asia—particularly the Singaporean market, which is obviously a very important one for my home state.

On tourism numbers, recently released tourism numbers show that, whilst there was no decline in numbers coming into Western Australia, people were staying for a slightly shorter period of time and, commensurately, spending a little less money. Obviously that is a trend we do not want to see continued. We need to see tourism as part of that mix, but we also need to see the export of those high-value agricultural goods out of the north—goods that are being produced and can be produced in greater volumes, as part of the ongoing expansion of the Ord River project, in conjunction with our existing major exports, the live cattle trade and mineral exports out of the north. All these things combine to create a very vibrant, exciting part of Australia and of our economy.