Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will take that interjection, Senator Macdonald. You say, 'What did the Gillard government or the Rudd government do to secure this? I put it to you that I know personally that Minister Martin Ferguson and his department worked day-in and day-out. They undertook many trips to Japan and had many discussions convincing this operator based in Tokyo that it should in fact, first of all, look at Australia and look at Darwin in which to base this gas hub. This is of enormous benefit to Northern Australian. It was a major project that was facilitated through the Department of Infrastructure and Transport and through Minister Ferguson's department. Undeniably a lot of hard work went into this project in order to get it to go ahead.

The Ichthys major project facilitation status was granted by this government. Let us not underestimate this. We are talking about a $34 billion infrastructure and export market in relation to gas here. We are talking about the employment of more than 3,000 people. We are already talking about 700 people being employed during the operation phase of this and additional jobs being created during the offshore construction. Already JKC have a shopfront established in Darwin Mall. They are recruiting people right now to try and get the workers village built and established in rural Darwin, and from there the major LNG plant will be established. That is what this government has done for Northern Australia. It has secured the second largest ever infrastructure in gas and gas hub in this country. That is what we have been doing.

Hand in hand with that, we have worked with the IMEX project to encourage Larrakia Development Corporation to get on board with the local Indigenous people. This is not just about a Japanese company coming to Darwin and setting up and creating jobs for 3,000 people. This is also about the work that has gone on behind the scenes ensuring that IMEX and the Japanese consortium provide employment opportunities for Indigenous people. It does not happen without a plan, it does not happen without a vision and it does not happen without hard work either.

The other thing I want to talk about quickly is the infrastructure that we have put in places like Darwin to grow and create our own doctors. The Flinders Medical School has been established at Charles Darwin University. Last year, for the first time ever, this government purpose-built a facility so that people in Northern Australia and particularly in the Northern Territory could train in Darwin to become doctors. We know that if you train in Darwin to become a doctor you are highly likely to stay in Darwin and undertake your work there as a doctor. We have put a lot of effort and emphasis into training and recruiting our own so that the number of doctors we have in Northern Australia increases because we are training them locally.

Finally, I just want to talk about our plan to put more health infrastructure in Darwin and Palmerston and our commitment to build a $70 million hospital in Palmerston, in one of this country's fastest-growing cities. Even today in the NT News we have a headline 'Plan to move Royal Darwin' about the CLP and the hospital. They plan not to replace it but to knock it down and to try and build a new one out in Palmerston. Such foolishness shows to me that the Liberal Party and the Country Liberal Party have really no vision for the growth and the expectations of the people in Darwin and Palmerston. If you think you can simply relocate the Royal Darwin Hospital, move it out of the infrastructure and the grounds that it is on, move it away from the oncology unit, move it away from the private hospital and try and create some megastructure in 10 years at $3 billion cost, you have no plan. (Time expired)