George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In 2011 the Bligh Labor government in Queensland gave approval to BMA to operate a 100 per cent fly in, fly out workforce at its Caval Ridge and Daunia mines. What 100 per cent fly in, fly out means is that the worker who could drive from his home to the mine in 15 minutes, if he lived in a mining town, or two to three hours if they lived in Mackay, must instead drive to the airport, fly to Brisbane, change planes and fly back to the Moranbah airport, then catch a company bus and, for those who actually live locally in that mining town, live in a camp for a week with no physical contact with their family who are living just 15 minutes up the road. It is crazy.

At the height of the boom, 100 per cent FIFO made sense, but, in the current economic climate, 100 per cent FIFO is simply not needed at all. Even the local Labor MP in Mackay, a man who sat in the Bligh cabinet and gave approval for the 100 per cent fly in, fly out in the first place, is now trying to absolve himself, criticising 100 per cent FIFO as 'postcode apartheid'. Far from being a de Klerk or a Mandela, the local Labor member served under Anna Bligh—the equivalent of Daniel Francois Malan, the man who actually brought in apartheid. He served there as a cabinet minister, a decision maker, in the equivalent of the Afrikaner government when it comes to that analogy on FIFO. The damage was done by Labor and it can now be fixed by BMA. (Time expired)