Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to make some remarks in respect to the Defence Legislation Amendment (Woomera Prohibited Area) Bill 2013 now that I have had the benefit of hearing a number of other speakers. My remarks are in no particular order, but I want to address some of the issues raised by Senator Wright.

I actually had the absolute honour and privilege of opening a trade training centre in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands on behalf of Minister Garrett. There was a contribution there from an Aboriginal leader, a woman, who stood up and said, 'This is good: we want real jobs—real jobs for our young people.' It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, as it should for everybody, because there was a fair dinkum senior Aboriginal person saying: 'This is a great investment—a trade training centre for our young people, and we want jobs.'

You might ask: where are the jobs? Sure, there are some jobs at Uluru—there are some hospitality and chef jobs. But, increasingly, there has been employment at Prominent Hill, which is very close to Woomera. So, for me, this is all about getting our objectives of Closing the Gap to reality. Any research you do on this bill will lead you to submissions. And there have been submissions from Indigenous groups. There have been submissions, obviously, from the resource sector—but, importantly, the resource sector and the Indigenous groups are at one on this issue. The Antakirinja Matu-Yankunytjatjara Aboriginal Corporation highlight the in-principle financial and wider community benefits of royalties stemming from resource based projects.

There was an Indigenous group that raised concerns that the 2007 Woomera Prohibited Area Indigenous Heritage Management Plan had largely been ignored by Defence when they were conducting activities in the WPA. However, there have been extensive consultations. I absolutely reject Senator Wright's position with respect to this. I think there is a growing awareness in Indigenous communities. Increasingly, there are facilities to train young people. And there are young people, and not-so-young people, already engaged in these mining activities. An increase in mining activities in this area can only benefit the Indigenous community there and will go a long way to providing some of the objectives which have been sought by the parliament with respect to closing the gap.

There is an interesting comment that is largely ignored by Defence in conducting activities on the WPA. I had the benefit of hearing Senator Johnston's contribution and I have done a little bit of reading in respect of this bill. There is a really interesting use of language. I am sure even Senator Brandis would like this sentence:

IMX Resources Ltd stressed the need for more responsive communication from Defence in relation to its decision making processes so as to achieve more commercially acceptable response times.

That is a great gathering of sentiments in one very eloquent sentence. This really goes to the heart of the matter. Quite properly the minister has been captured by the Department of Defence. I suppose Defence priorities are overriding what I think are more critical priorities. It would appear that Defence has a history of not conducting its communication in a responsive and commercially acceptable manner.

Senator Johnston also raised the 70-day rail closure. It would shut down Alice Springs and shut down Darwin! There would be no food, no fruit, no veggies! The question that was occurring to me—hopefully I will get someone to research this—was: what is the history of rail closures? Senator Johnston did say that there had been a three-hour interruption. That is the history. There have been minimal interruptions to the rail. I suppose—dare I say it?—that Defence, in their drafting of, or looking at, any legislation would be thinking about what their job is and what is the worst-case scenario.

I suppose that if the country were under threat we could probably cop the rail being shut down for 70 days. I think that history says that Douglas MacArthur landed at a place up in the top of Australia after coming by DC3, or whatever it was, from the Philippines. He got on a train and ended up at Quorn or thereabouts. So at a time when we were under extreme threat, the rail was running 24 hours a day.