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

I want to begin by updating the Senate on a matter I raised yesterday. The Qantas job cuts mean that 30 Jetstar jobs will be lost in Cairns and a further 105 jobs will be affected. That's because 45 Qantas ground crew jobs are now under review and 60 aircraft staff will be transferred to Victoria. My thoughts are with those workers and their families who now face an uncertain time. Can I just say this: it is deeply disappointing that Qantas, an airline born in outback Queensland, is pulling jobs out of regional Queensland. It is a kick in the guts for Cairns. Qantas has received, and continues to receive, an enormous amount of taxpayer funding. It is unacceptable that the Morrison government hasn't placed conditions on that funding that prioritise keeping jobs in places like Cairns. Labor has been calling on the Morrison government to deliver a national aviation plan to protect these jobs, but they haven't listened.

What regional Queenslanders need right now from the Morrison government is a jobs plan so they can have some certainty about what will happen when support is taken away. But, instead of a jobs plan and instead of actual funding, there are just announcements and no delivery. You always have to check the fine print with this government, and you always have to check the delivery because that is where they have let Queenslanders down.

When it comes to NAIF, it's been five years since the $5 billion fund was announced, and only $1.7 million has been released in Queensland. In Far North Queensland, where the NAIF HQ is based and where they have a very nice corporate office, not a single cent of NAIF funding has been released. When it comes to infrastructure, the Prime Minister said that he would fast-track 15 projects across the country, but only one of those projects is in Queensland and not a single project is north of Brisbane. The inland rail project, the majority of which is in New South Wales and Victoria, won't start construction in Queensland until 2022 or 2023—the officials weren't quite clear about the details of when the one single project will begin. Despite announcements today about bringing defence upgrades forward, upgrades to HMAS Cairns which have previously been announced won't actually start construction until 2022.

But delivery of Indigenous housing has to be the biggest failure of this government in Queensland. During the final days of the 2019 federal election, the Morrison government and the member for Leichhardt, Warren Entsch, promised a re-elected Morrison government would directly deliver $105 million in funding to remote Far North communities to build social housing. We are now 15 months on from that announcement and the LNP has only delivered 4.7 per cent of that funding. What is clear during COVID is that housing is necessary; it is a basic human right and it keeps people safe. I visited Aurukun and Wujal Wujal in the last couple of weeks and I was shocked to find out that people in those communities are living with 30 to 40 people in their houses. Thirty to 40 people, and sometimes more, are living in a three-bedroom house in Australia in a place that was promised funding by the Morrison government. This was a one-off payment; it is not recurring funding. The federal government has a responsibility to deliver this funding, but they've passed the buck. They haven't delivered. That is absolutely disgraceful at a time, during a pandemic, when we know that overcrowding in houses will lead to a health risk to First Nations people.

The Morrison government can give itself as many pats on the back as it likes, but right now, under this government, there are First Australians who were promised safe and secure housing 15 months ago and they are still living in conditions that are putting their health at risk. That is not good enough. The other reason that this funding is so important is the extreme health risk that COVID presents to people living in those communities.

The previous speaker, the senator from Queensland, said that the Palaszczuk government had shown reckless abandonment when it came to protecting Queenslanders. These are high stakes, because the federal government has failed to deliver housing funding to remote communities. This means that if there were a COVID outbreak in those communities it would be devastating.

Debate interrupted.