Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about the implications of fly-in fly-out workers in the resource sector. I will confine my remarks to my own electorate, where we have the Surat and Galilee basins, two enormous resources that are in the construction phase at the moment. The Surat Basin is in the early stages of developing coal seam methane gas, with some coalmines to be opened up—particularly the one at Wandoan, the Xstrata mine—when final approval is given, which may be several years away. The Galilee Basin in central Queensland is in a similar situation; it is a coal resource and it is also in the development stage.

The proposal in both these area is that the mines will be developed on the basis of having fly-in fly-out workers. I accept that having fly-in fly-out workers may be all right in the construction phase, but once the initial construction for the coal seam methane gas—the development of the wells and the construction of the pump stations and the pipes to deliver the gas to Gladstone for the LNG projects—is completed, a permanent workforce will be needed for the ongoing running of the pump stations and the further construction of wells in the coal seam beds.

My concern is that some of the resource companies want to continue with the fly-in fly-out workers well into the future, well beyond the construction phase. We have seen in some areas along the coast—the Gold Coast, Wide Bay, North Queensland—that towns would like to become hubs for fly-in fly-out workers. In other words, they would be the home for the workers, who would be flown out by business operators to the Surat Basin, for instance, on a more permanent basis, rather than just for the initial construction phase.

I have real concerns about that. The resources companies will be in my electorate for 30, 40 or 50 years, and I want to see them develop bigger towns in our communities over time rather than sucking the wealth out and taking all the wealth of the workers out of the area because they will be living elsewhere. If the Mount Isa mines were discovered today and were developed on the basis of a fly-in fly-out mentality, Mount Isa would not have 20,000 people living in it today—no ifs, no buts. It would be the same for Broken Hill and Kalgoorlie. That is the simple analogy that I am putting to the resource companies and to governments, state and federal. We have to make sure that we are not using these resources just as a milch cow to take the wealth out and to establish bigger communities elsewhere and leave nothing behind. If the wool industry had been built with a fly-in fly out shearing industry, we would not have those towns right across western Queensland. I want to see these resources deliver something in the long term and to see communities grow and prosper as a result of the wealth that is trapped beneath the soil.

I have also been talking to the P&C associations in Queensland recently and they are reporting that teachers are telling them that, when fathers go away for a two-week shift, they notice a significant change in the behavioural attitude of many of the children. That disturbs me. As these children are growing up, they do not have two parents at home— (Time expired)