Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to this debate in committee. I commend the contributions that have been made thus far this morning by the opposition, Senator Scullion and particularly Senator Fielding. As a Queensland senator, I have intimate involvement in this area and I know there are other Queenslanders, like Senator McLucas and Senator Moore, who have travelled to the cape on many occasions and who understand the Indigenous issues—in particular in this matter concerning the environment. However, the bill in its current form is deeply flawed. If you go through the bill clause by clause, you will clearly identify the flaws in the bill.

When it comes to economic development, we heard during the last inquiry into this bill through the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, only a few weeks ago, of the confusion, the lack of understanding and, on many occasions, the contributions by the Queensland government to the applications that have been presented in terms of economic development up in the cape. I know that there are people in this chamber who have possibly not travelled to that area, and I would suggest that most Australians have not travelled to the cape at all to get an appreciation of the situation up there. But I think people need to understand that it is a remote area. On most occasions you need to fly into Cairns and then fly into Weipa. During the wet season, which has just completed—an extended wet season, in fact—they get their food in via barge from Normanton, and there are various ways of getting their stock and requirements into that area. People need to understand that it is not just a simple matter of saying, 'This is an area that can be developed,' or that it can be considered for development in any shape or form. That is not the issue. The soil is poor; hardly anything can be grown in that area. However, those opposite run the argument about the Queensland government locking it up. Nothing has been locked up. In fact, I think Senator Fielding made the relevant point—and he is quite right; he has taken an interest in this—that things are not locked up in the cape.