Cathy O'Toole (Herbert, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The development of Northern Australia is incredibly important for my electorate of Herbert. Townsville is the largest city in Northern Australia and, as such, has the capacity and capability to take a leading role in the development of Northern Australia. However, I am also very aware that Townsville and the surrounding regions can learn a great deal from other regions in Northern Australia. The key to the success of the development of Northern Australia is genuine collaboration between local government, the state governments across the three states that make up Northern Australia and the federal government.

During the winter break, I visited the Northern Territory with members of the Joint Committee for Northern Australia. The purpose of our trip was to gather evidence about tourism and the opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in relation to employment. The committee travelled to Uluru, Alice Springs, Katherine and Darwin. My congratulates go to the secretariat for their coordination; this trip was very well organised and incredibly fruitful.

As we travelled through the Territory it became very obvious to me and the other members of the committee that the answer to opening up tourism in Northern Australia lies not in fancy, over-the-top attractions but in the availability of necessary infrastructure. Northern Australia does not need a Sydney Harbour Bridge type attraction because we are gifted with incredible natural beauty, as we experienced at Katherine Gorge. Tourists experience the city life in Sydney and Melbourne. But if they want to experience the laid-back Australian lifestyle and see incredible natural wonders they choose the Aussie outback, rainforests and one of the great wonders of the world, the Great Barrier Reef, they come to Northern Australia. If people want to experience and delve into the oldest living culture in the world, then there is no other place like Northern Australia. We have 60,000 years of history with our First Nation people and their stories and cultural sites to visit. Overwhelmingly, tourism operators told us tourists want a genuine cultural experience with Aboriginal tour guides.

Tourism in Northern Australia from the 21st century tourist perspective is about experiencing the amazing diversity of cultural heritage and the real Australian lifestyle. All of this was supported by James Cook University's professor of tourism, Phillip Pearce, who was the first professor of tourism in Australia. The professor and I caught up last week, and his expert advice reiterated everything I had discovered through my Northern Australia committee visit.

Modern-day tourists want, in effect, a backyard experience. They want to experience the real Australia. The old 20th-century philosophy of 'build it and they will come' is outdated and not needed in Northern Australia. The new thinking is 'build it to provide access to some of the most gorgeous and untapped natural resources and then people will be able to come and visit'. For rural and remote communities in Northern Australia, the consistent evidence provided was about the need for infrastructure such as roads and bridges; access to regular and affordable air travel; housing and training for staff; and access to water. And the list goes on. Investment in infrastructure, both minor and major, will mean much bigger things for Northern Australia. Opening up opportunities for more local guides, roads in smaller island communities, adequate signs on the roads, bicycle tracks and smaller iconic infrastructure is the way forward. This was confirmed in public hearings in Northern Australia. Opening up opportunities with infrastructure build will make an enormous difference—particularly in the beautiful Kakadu, where the weather plays such an incredible role in access to area.

Bill Shorten and Labor understand this potential, and that is why a Shorten Labor government will inject $1 billion into the Northern Australia Tourism Infrastructure Fund to provide financing and concessional loans to build new tourism infrastructure in Australia. Northern Australia's tourism industry is being let down by ageing infrastructure that is not fit for purpose for the needs of a growing and changing market. We need to make sure the infrastructure is in place to encourage more people to visit Northern Australia and experience all that we have to offer. The World Economic Forum's 2017 Travel and Tourism Competitive Index ranked Australia 7th for overall competitiveness but 14th for infrastructure. What is even worse is that the ground and port infrastructure in Australia is ranked 53rd. (Time expired).