Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Over the last few weeks I have been travelling widely across the territory—across my electorate. In just the past couple of weeks I travelled from as far west as the Cocos Islands, in my electorate, to communities north-west and north-east of Alice Springs—Haasts Bluff, Papunya and Arlparra in the Utopia region—talking to people about the issues that might be of importance to them.

In the case of Haasts Bluff and Papunya, I attended the opening of two community stores, which were cause for great celebration and delight because these iconic stores were funded out of the Aboriginal Benefit Account, which is money derived from royalty equivalence, as a result of mining and other activities on Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory. This money, which has been provided to invest in these two new stores at Haasts Bluff and Papunya, came from Aboriginal people's earnings off their own land. It is a tribute to those communities, and indeed the ABA committee, for making the recommendation that these funds be made available. I am proud to say that they were made available during the course of the last government. It is a very effective use of these resources and it now gives people, in these two very remote communities, stores which you and I would be proud to have in our own communities. The Papunya store is a relatively large supermarket. It is a very isolated community. If you can imagine living in one of these communities, which are very isolated and where store infrastructure is, to say the least, modest, having this new infrastructure and new product on the shelves is extremely important.

But I want to raise issues which are of constant concern to people in these remote communities. Many people are unemployed or live off benefits; there are some who have got very good jobs. The roads are very crook—'real crook' is a way to describe them—and people drive on these roads for long periods. One of the issues for those communities is the need for additional infrastructure and resources for road infrastructure. It has been a constant issue over the time I have been in this parliament. I first arrived here 27 years ago and nothing has changed in that context. Money has been invested in roads in the bush but not sufficient money. We need to do a lot more to ensure that infrastructure is made available.

But even if you had good roads, one of the key issues confronting Aboriginal people and people in these remote places is the price of fuel. You can imagine, when it already costs you $2.20, $2.30 or, in some cases, $2.50 per litre, the compound impact of having the fuel excise actually indexed and the disproportionate effect it will have on these communities. Because the fuel excise is only one part of the price of fuel—the GST also applies to this fuel excise—you get a disproportionate impact on these communities. If you are paying $1.50 or $1.55 a litre in a major city, the impacts of the tax arrangements on you are far less than they are on people living in remote communities. It is a disproportionate impact. It is unfair, unreasonable and inequitable. These communities need to drive long distances. If, for example, they need to attend medical, specialist, legal or business appointments in a place like Alice Springs, which may be 250, 300 or 400 kilometres away, then it is an extremely expensive business. Yet there seems to be no consideration of that by this government, when contemplating the impact of the indexation of fuel.

I say to the government: not only do we need more infrastructure but we need you to be fair and reasonable, to understand the plight of people who live in regional and remote Australia, and to understand the stupidity of indexing fuel and its impact on these communities, because you do not understand it. And, if you do understand it, you have demonstrated that you just do not care. And, if you just do not care, then that is unfair. And, if it is unfair for those people, what does it say about those people opposite who represent regional seats—bush seats? Of course, they have sat mute and have not said a word about protecting the interests of the people who live in those communities, who are affected so poorly by this stupid decision. ((Time expired)