Matt Smith (Leichhardt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

My name is Matt Smith, and I'm of the Far North. The member for Kennedy is correct. The story of the north is told by farmers over generations, be it cane, bananas or cattle. It is told by the songlines of 60,000 years, celebrating the country, culture, sea and air. It is told by the tourism industry that delights people from all over the world as they visit our two World Heritage areas. We support industry and mining. We have tungsten, zinc, bauxite and silica, the tools required for the energy transition. All of it is in abundance in my beautiful part of the world, which is a place I'm very proud of and a place I know the member for Kennedy is very proud of. He speaks of it passionately. Nobody loves the land like a farmer. Nobody loves the reef like the tourism operators. Nobody loves country like mob. There is no better place to demonstrate why this bill is needed than Leichhardt, because we need to give our industries, including our farmers and our tourism industry, the surety that they need to continue business, continue to bring wealth to the area and continue to drive jobs and economic development in my region, but we also need to protect the natural assets that allow us to do so. Our farmers need to be able to keep farming. Our tourism operators need a healthy and thriving reef. The reef and the Daintree are symbiotic. One cannot exist without the other. They have to be protected. We need to have regulations that work both for environmentalism and the industry. Otherwise, we hang out electorates like mine to dry.

I hear multiple arguments that we're going too far or not going far enough, but the balance is critical. Without the balance, I'm losing one or the other, and I can't lose one or the other. You would destroy the far north. We cannot go without our mining. Our mining will drive the energy transition—the silicon in the solar rooftops, the tungsten in the wires and the aluminium that is powering basically everything in this building.

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