Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Resources and Energy and Minister for Tourism. I refer to the agreement struck with Gina Rinehart to employ 1,700 overseas workers at the Roy Hill project in Western Australia through an enterprise migration agreement. Is it intended that this agreement will be a model for future enterprise migration agreements across the mining sector?

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Resources and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the shadow minister for the question and in doing so indicate that we made it very clear in the budget of last year that we are open to doing these agreements on a variety of projects if they meet the conditions that we deem appropriate. This is the first of potentially a range of agreements, but people should remember first and foremost this is about creating jobs for Australians. That was our top priority during the global financial crisis and it is our top priority as we go forward as a nation. This is 6,700 new jobs. But also understand that this project is not currently committed. Last week we reported to the House that there were $260 billion in committed capital investment in Australia at the moment. Delivery of this project will take us to $270 billion. My problem as the minister is that in all of the discussions I have with the companies we either make sure that we can source labour or we lose these projects, we lose investment and we lose job opportunities for Australians.

People should remember that this is not just about jobs in construction; this is about almost 2,000, high-skilled, well-paid jobs in production. Our agreement is that only Australians will be employed during production. The training agreement entered into by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship demands that during the period of construction Australians will be trained to have jobs during production—2,000 of them: apprenticeships and traineeships and, perhaps more importantly to me, as someone who cares about employing Indigenous Australians, 100 guaranteed opportunities to employ Indigenous Australians.

The agreement speaks for itself. It is in our national interest but, as usual, the coalition cannot see the wood from the trees when it comes to the national interest.