Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, and all communities in Cape York, it is my duty to listen to and meet as many people as possible across our home state. One of the privileges of representing the people of Queensland is travelling across our state, whether it be Cape York in the north, the south-west, or all regions in between. Last week I was privileged to visit Cape York and listen to many people across nine days and across all communities, with the exception of Aurukun, which was closed for sorry business, due to two fatalities. Although I've been to the cape many times—in fact, four times over the last 35 years—I have so much more to learn. The cape is a beautiful, pristine, varied wilderness, untamed, wild and unpredictable, yet loved and cherished by all its people. It's home to a variety of everyday Aussies who have to battle the rigours of distance, Mother Nature, remote location, lack of services and small population to together make a shared future.

Mateship and care for each other are key to survival on the cape. Looking out for each other is an ethos. People work together on the cape with respect. The terms 'blackfellas' and 'whitefellas' are used with respect and signify not skin colour but culture and background, respectfully and often affectionately. Yet more than one person said to me that to fail in the cape is catastrophic. It can be so isolated and remote that, when in strife, failure can mean death. It doesn't help, then, that various institutions, such as the federal government bureaucrats from Canberra, state government bureaucrats from places like West End, and the loathed and despised Greens locking up their country, stick their noses into cape business and make the perilous life in Cape York even harder. They jeopardise peoples' livelihoods and futures.

Paternalism is one danger Indigenous Australians complained about constantly across the cape. Being told by taxpayer funded agencies and Aboriginal elites from outside the cape—the new powers that be—how to run their lives in the communities is severely disheartening. It stops choice, and stopping choice destroys responsibility. Canberra or Brisbane cannot create a single policy that would assist any Australian small-business person to start an enterprise and provide employment. All over the cape, people are crying out for autonomy. Sure, the churches and state governments that removed people from communities and their families a hundred years ago were well meaning, yet they did damage. Churches damaged, governments damaged, and then government welfare, 50 or 60 years ago, did damage. As many Aboriginals now freely say, governments damaged.

Now we have Aboriginals in cape communities telling us that a new group of Aboriginal elites outside the cape control taxpayer funded agencies that choke Aboriginal communities. Aboriginal elites damage. Locals tell us that a few Aboriginal elites in the Far North have hijacked Indigenous issues and are on a fat money grab. People repeatedly told us these modern elites siphon money from those that need it. They're seizing control of the cape, locking it up, and seizing control of peoples' lives, choking peoples' spirit and futures. For example, one Aboriginal council CEO told us about $50 million that was promised for Indigenous housing in his community, but after the middlemen, the consultants and the heads of government agencies took their slice, only $26 million was spent on housing—half!

Far North Queensland is an expensive place to do business, and economic opportunities—pastoral, agricultural, mining, cultural or tourism—will not survive there unless we set the cape and its people free. Getting government out of the lives of individuals and businesspeople on the cape is crucial to the cape's success. People are hungry to seize opportunities for economic development, social development and community development. Local communities want to restore culture and connection. People want a fair go. My firm commitment to the people of the cape is this: One Nation will be your champion. With people like Jen Sackley, the One Nation candidate for Cook, our party will fight for the cape and work our hardest to give everyone in our wild north a fair share. All the people on the cape want is to be heard and get a fair go.