Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak tonight on the government's agenda for northern Australia. The reason I am standing up here tonight is the northern Australia agenda is often explained to me as an agenda to further the policies of the government rather than a policy to further the agenda of northern Australia. I have some concerns about the issues that are not being talked about as part of this agenda. I want to begin tonight by acknowledging the Torres Strait Island Regional Council and Deputy Mayor Keith Fell and Mayor Fred Gela, who are here today in the gallery to listen to this debate because they are members of our community in northern Australia. It has taken a long time to get to this debate tonight, so thank you for your patience, and it has taken a long time for them to be included in the conversations around northern Australia.

I often talk about the Torres Strait in here and how long it takes to get here and how the voices of the people who live in the Torres Strait can seem to be silenced by that distance. I know, as the people here know—and I am very pleased that the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia is in the chamber to listen to these issues being raised—that it takes a long time to get here. It takes a ferry and then a small plane and then another plane and then another plane, and it's a long journey. It's about 3,000 kilometres from Canberra to the Torres Strait. But these people who are here tonight are here representing their community, and they have raised with me quite a few issues that I think are being overlooked in the northern Australia agenda.

I haven't had an opportunity to read the minister's statement in full. I have been able to have a look through it tonight and certainly to consider the statements that have been made on previous occasions, and it does occur to me that there's one glaring omission. The statement does talk about industry, and it's very important that the northern Australia agenda talks about infrastructure and industry and economic development, but there's no mention at all of climate change in the statement. It might seem unnatural for a minister of the Liberal-National government to make a statement including mention of climate change, but it just goes to show that they don't really understand the issues that are facing people in regional Queensland and the issues that are facing people in the Torres Strait Islands, because the No. 1 priority of the Torres Strait Island Regional Council's journey to Canberra today is to talk to the government about support for climate change mitigation and protection, and natural disaster impacts.

The Deputy Prime Minister has made comments to the effect that climate change is just a concern for people living in inner cities. I sometimes have sympathy for some of those comments, because people who live in inner cities might not ever really feel the effects of climate change. But members of the Torres Strait Islands, including the councillors who are here, will feel the effects first, before all of the Australians who are concerned about this. So to say that this is an issue that only people in the inner city care about is just not true, and it shows that you're not actually listening to the concerns of people who are living in islands that need protection against erosion, islands that, if we see sea levels rising, will disappear. I have to say that is something that I didn't think I'd be quite as emotional about, but, when I heard Fred Gela talk about the impacts on his communities and the fact that his people will be the first people that will have to relocate from islands that they've lived on not for a hundred years but for centuries, it really made it clear to me that this is something that we need to take seriously. We need to make sure that regional people are included in the conversations. Even if climate change is not the central part of the northern Australia agenda, it is certainly something that should be included in terms of mitigation of the impacts of climate change.

The other thing I noticed isn't necessarily part of the discussion that we're having tonight around the northern Australia agenda is the desperate need for housing. I appreciate that that comes under a different portfolio and it doesn't feel like it fits neatly with some of the concerns that are raised in the northern Australia agenda, but housing is fundamental to the lives of the people living in northern Australia. At the moment in the Torres Strait there are 324 households on the needs register for a house—324 families that need a home. That is on top of the thousands of people in Far North Queensland and regional Queensland that need housing. The government did make a promise to those people before the election, a $105 million promise, to provide housing directly to councils such as TSIRC, to give that funding to the councils to build houses but also to create jobs. That's something that needs to be done. Unfortunately, six months later, we're still waiting for that funding to be delivered. Not a single house has been built since that election promise was made.

The thing is that election promises are made and funding requirements need to be organised—I understand that. But the ferociousness of this announcement and the way that it was spoken about and dealt with meant that there was an expectation that that money would flow through to communities. And these are not communities that can make do until the money is provided; they need those houses right now. So I would like to see the northern Australia agenda include a conversation about the social welfare of the people living in northern Australia. Certainly it is an important thing not only for the Torres Strait but for communities like Yarrabah.

Finally, I want to make note of something that Senator Watt raised, and that is the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility or, as we've been referring to it, the 'no actual infrastructure fund'. The NAIF is based in Cairns, where I am based, and I could walk to the head office from my office. But, at the moment, no money has actually been spent in Cairns on a project. The NAIF was established three years ago and we still haven't seen a project in Cairns—nothing, not a cent, not one single job in Cairns. In fact, the NAIF has spent no money and created no jobs in Queensland.

Despite this, the NAIF saw fit to hand out $400,000 worth of bonuses to its senior executive this year. That's just in one year alone. Those executives who haven't actually built anything or created any jobs in northern Australia have handed out to themselves $400,000 in bonuses. When it comes to the pub test, it doesn't matter whether the pub is in inner-city Brisbane or on Thursday Island, that's never going to pass. Minister Canavan is failing to do his job and get jobs and funding flowing in Far North Queensland and across northern Australia. That $400,000 could have built at least one of the houses we need to build in Far North Queensland. Over 300 people are waiting for a house in the Torres Strait, and $400,000 went to bonuses for senior executives who have not created one single job. It shows the hypocrisy of this scheme, it shows the failure of this government, it shows the failure of this minister to take this scheme seriously and it shows that there are people in northern Australia who are not getting a look-in.

We know that there are parts of northern Australia that need economic development and that there is so much potential, but we need the government and the minister to open up their eyes, look further than the very limited scope of that agenda and start thinking outside the box. That's what we want. We want infrastructure built in places like the Torres Strait, we want homes for people to live in and we want to make sure that people have not only a job to go to but a home to go to at the end of the day. I don't think that's too much to ask for. I don't think Australians living in Queensland should have to beg and borrow to get a house. I don't think Australians living in Queensland shouldn't have a home to go to at the end of the day. (Time expired)