Jan McLucas,
Senator for Queensland
First Speech - 10/8/1999It is an honour to stand here this evening and to deliver my first
speech to the Senate. I thank the people of Queensland for their support, as well
as the members of the Australian Labor Party, without whom I would not have been
elected. To them I say: I will repay your trust with hard work and a commitment
to respond to those issues that we all care about. I am fortunate to have spent
four years in local government as a councillor with the Cairns City Council. This
experience has provided me with a clear understanding of the responsibilities
that elected representatives have for their communities as well as the knowledge
that successful representatives have to stay in touch with, and reflect, the needs
of their constituents. I applaud the efforts of local government in Queensland
and acknowledge its contribution to the career development of many women. Local
government operates as a highly democratic level of government, delivering essential,
if often unglamorous, services. However, the reality for local government is that
there are two masters. One, quite appropriately, is the constituents who elect
them. The second is the state government, which has the ability to dismiss the
authority and appoint an administrator. For this reason, I support the inclusion
of the third tier of government within the Constitution. I
come to this chamber well aware of the precedents that have been set through the
work of Senator Margaret Reynolds and, before her, Senator Jim Keeffe. The Labor
Party has a proud tradition of ensuring regional representation in the Senate
which stretches back more than 30 years to 1965, when Senator Keeffe took his
place as a Queensland Labor senator based in Townsville. Labor has long recognised
that Queensland is the most decentralised state and has responded by nominating
senators who are regionally located. I am honoured to continue this tradition. Currently,
more than 55 per cent of Queenslanders live outside of Brisbane: 35 per cent of
them in regional centres and a substantial 20 per cent classified as rural and
remote residents. This population profile provides governments with the challenge
of ensuring that programs developed reflect the realities of delivering services
to people scattered over a large and diversified state. Over
the last 33 years of ALP representation in North Queensland, we have seen significant
improvements in the quality of life experienced by the people of our region, but
there is still more to be done. Geographically removed from large population centres,
North Queenslanders will always want increased access to transport and communications
services. Our industries are located great distances from their markets, and our
road system has to respond to this reality. During the last
federal election campaign, the Better Roads Action Alliance was formed in response
to the loss of $640 million of road funding over the past three years. In Queensland,
this was a loss of $160 million. The alliance is a grouping of highly respected
organisations, including the Local Government Association of Queensland, the freight
industry and the RACQ. Their request is simple. They want more of the money that
is collected from the transport sector to be put back into road funding. The government's
Black Spot Program and Roads of National Importance may seem to be providing some
of these funds. However, I am concerned that these programs lack a strategic approach
to building an integrated road network. Whilst there is consultation
with local authorities in determining priorities for the expenditure of these
funds, the result is that money is being allocated to local intersections and
traffic lights rather than providing a coordinated and planned road network for
regional Queensland. One particular project that requires immediate attention
is the construction of the Douglas arterial section of the Townsville ring-road.
It is projected that around 2003 the capacity of the existing national highway
will be reached. The federal government has a responsibility to provide an efficient
road network as a part of the national highway program for the residents of Townsville
and Thuringowa. Similarly, residents in the southern suburbs
of Cairns are looking to the alleviation of the congestion on the Bruce Highway,
another national highway. On the Atherton Tablelands west of Cairns, the growth
in the sugar industry is impacting significantly on the roads. Residents of the
tablelands have, in recent years, worked hard to turn around what was a looming
economic slump by developing this new industry. Here is an opportunity for the
federal government to provide practical support to a rural community which has
shown a great deal of initiative. They require a comprehensive roads funding package
to be delivered in conjunction with local government. In the
same way that roads provide the physical link to the rest of Australia for the
people of Far North Queensland and North Queensland, so our national telecommunications
carrier has provided an essential link for families and business in our region.
This will become even more crucial as technology broadens opportunities for online
business. In the past, people in regional areas have been able
to rely on public ownership as a safeguard to service equity with people in more
populous centres. As we move into an era of privatisation, people in my region
have made it very clear that they will not tolerate any downgrading of services
through any Telstra ownership changes. I take these concerns very seriously. Regional
Australia must not be denied access to new technologies. It
is no secret that we live in a time of immense cynicism toward government, politicians
and the major political parties, a cynicism which is in part fuelled by the pursuit
of privatisation and competition policies, policies which sound good in theory—increased
productivity, greater efficiency, tailored and targeted services—but which
in their delivery have often had profound effects on regional and rural economies.
While we often point the finger at the banks for pulling out of the bush, it is
also the case that government is guilty of centralising services and moving jobs
out of regional centres. These job losses impact significantly on the economies
of a small town. The loss of just three or four families and their incomes can
lead to the loss of a teacher or a police officer, and so the spiral of decline
continues. In People and places—a profile of growing disadvantage
in Queensland, a document produced by the Queensland Council of Social Service,
an arc of rural disadvantage is identified in the Central West extending from
Croydon in the Gulf of Carpentaria to Paroo on the New South Wales border. These
are the most vulnerable non-indigenous townships that clearly need government
to rethink how it delivers its services. The report concludes: .
. . the task is to address this reality and move beyond description and analysis
into an active response that will alleviate the economic hardship being experienced
by a growing number of Queenslanders in many places around the State . . . It
is possible to address this if there is the will to do so. Governments
must change the rhetoric of competition to include sound analysis of the social
impacts of their decisions. Our communities are demanding it. Country people are
tired of trading off their economies for so-called better services usually delivered
over the phone by someone in another city who has no personal knowledge of local
circumstances. The public benefit test needs to be focused at a very local level.
It must include an understanding of the local economy and, if service level or
delivery style is to change, the community and the government need to know the
real impacts of that change and how to limit the adverse effects. I
am concerned about the recent discussion of what is being called mutual or reciprocal
obligation. The argument seems to be about asking recipients of government support
to earn the assistance that government is providing them. This is rewriting the
notion of what government support is and always should be: assistance to those
people who are in need, who do not have the financial capacity to survive. It
is about keeping families together. It is about the community's obligation to
those in need. It is insulting to me to suggest that people who are recipients
of welfare need an incentive to move to self-sufficiency. Many
indigenous people have been dependent on government assistance through either
CDEP—the Community Development Employment Program—or unemployment benefits
for long periods of time. The reason for their reliance on these benefits is that
there are few jobs available for them in their communities. There are, of course,
communities which have been able to generate employment, usually through the activities
of councils or indigenous organisations, but in my experience it has always been
directly associated with that community's access to the natural resources at their
disposal, either the land or the sea. The work of Margaret
Reynolds over the last 16 years is well known to senators in this place and members
of the Australian parliament. She has been a tireless advocate for indigenous
peoples. I wish to place on record my personal thanks to Margaret and the thanks
of the many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations across North Queensland
for her work. In her first speech in 1983, she spoke of the inextricable link
that indigenous Australians have with the land and the relationship between dispossession
and health. It is of great concern to many Australians, myself
included, that the efforts of many in the health sector over the last 16 years
have not resulted in health outcomes for indigenous Australians that are equal
or close to those in the non-indigenous community. There have been some wins.
In the Cape York region, deaths from infectious diseases and some forms of heart
disease are on the way down in Aboriginal and Islander communities as are the
mortality rates for children under the age of four, but the rates are still far
higher than for the non-indigenous community. Those wins, however,
are dwarfed by the scale of the task still ahead. Mortality rates in the region
are 15 per cent higher than for the rest of Queensland while hospitalisation rates
for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are between 60 and 90 per cent
above those of the rest of the population. Diabetes, pneumonia, influenza and
lung cancer rates are high and climbing. Injury admission rates are up to 40 per
cent higher than the Queensland average and admission rates for preventable infections
are extremely high. Most of these statistics reflect continuing
poor living conditions and inadequately developed services in Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander communities. We have to respond to these statistics. We also have
to listen. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people want healthier communities.
They also tell us time and time again that the health of their people will not
be improved until there is a measure of local control in the delivery of essential
services to their communities. I wish to pay tribute to the
Apinipima Cape York Health Council. The council has been in operation since the
end of 1994. It works in collaboration with other agencies, including government,
to ensure that the health programs being delivered to Cape York Peninsula residents
are provided in a culturally appropriate manner. It is a process that has consistently
achieved the best possible outcomes for the health dollar. It is a model that
is worthy of study and one which could be used in other centres. In
her first speech in 1983, Margaret Reynolds referred to the need for indigenous
peoples to access their own land. Since then, we have had the High Court decisions
of Mabo and Wik. I am very fortunate to have known some of the claimants in the
Mabo case and have been given an understanding of the sadness they felt when challenged
about their traditional rights of ownership. I am also fortunate to know many
people from Aurukun, the Wik people, and have been invited to be part of their
way from time to time. Their focus was then and is now on finding a positive and
healthy future for their families. I am also fortunate to have
lived my life on the doorstep of what is one of the most spectacular and challenging
places in Australia, Cape York Peninsula. It is a place where some 18,000 indigenous
and non-indigenous people live and a place where it might just be possible, for
once, to manage growth and development sensitively. I was fortunate to have been
part of a process of developing a total regional land use plan for the Cape as
a member of the Cape York Peninsula Land Use Studies Regional Advisory Group.
CYPLUS, as it was known, grew from the pressures of sometimes maverick proposals
for the development of Cape York Peninsula. In the late 1980s
we faced the potential of a space base on Wuthathi land, an enormous tourist resort
near Lockhart River on the east coast of the Cape and sandmining at Shelbourne
Bay, just to name some of the proposals before us. These projects were all intended
for land where Aboriginal peoples continue their custom and lore. It was a recipe
for disaster. The governments of the day responded, through the instigation of
CYPLUS, a planning process which included all the people in the Cape. The regional
advisory group, of which I was a part, included the grazing industry, the mining
industry, Aboriginal people, the fishing industry, the tourism sector and people
committed to conservation of the natural heritage values of Cape York Peninsula.
You would be forgiven for thinking that this group was headed for disaster. It
is to the credit of the individuals involved that when we sat down we moved from
our points of difference to our points of commonality and realised that our differences
were not greater than our shared aspirations. The final report
of our group, delivered after 18 months of hard work, provides a scaffold for
governments to deliver a sustainable future for everyone in Cape York Peninsula.
I am quite sure that this process would not have been so successful if it were
not for the Cape York Heads of Agreement signed on 5 February 1996. The agreement
was historic in that it acknowledged the different interests of the Aboriginal
peoples, the grazing industry and the environment sector and laid out a process
for resolving land use conflicts through negotiation and not litigation. It can
be done. I am proud to say that the people of Cape York, indigenous and non-indigenous,
are showing us how. It is possible to overcome fear and suspicion. It is possible
to set aside the rhetoric of those who would wish to divide communities for their
own political ends. It is not easy, but it can be done. Graziers and indigenous
people know that it is worth it. The next challenge for our
region may well be the transferring of these processes from the land to the sea.
Many people in the Torres Strait wish to broaden the native title debate to include
recognition of traditional rights over the sea and its resources. Those of you
who have been lucky enough to travel in the Torres Strait will know that the islands
are small and the opportunity to harvest a land grown food source is extremely
limited. The sea has, and always will be, the farm for the people of the Torres
Strait. They have managed it well and have a legitimate right to expect a continuing
economic return from it. The resolution of sea rights is essential if people in
the Torres Strait are to achieve their aspirations for a greater degree of autonomy
in the future. There is an opportunity here for both the state and the federal
government to assist the people of the Torres Strait to develop a system of governance
that allows their culture to grow within economic security. I
turn now to the tourism industry of Queensland. The figures speak for themselves.
The tourism industry in our state contributes $8 billion to the state economy
annually. That is 10 per cent of our gross state product. It employs one in 12
of our work force and its export earnings are some $2,380 million. That exceeds
those of wheat, beef and sugar. It is a dynamic and growing industry and one which
is now recovering from the impacts of the Asian economic crisis. Needless to say,
the industry operates in an extremely price sensitive market. Our competitors
in South-East Asia, Hawaii and the South Pacific continue to develop their tourism
products and our operators work hard to remain competitive. Understandably, the
industry has significant concerns about the impact of the GST. They campaigned
during the last election to have overseas sold tourism products deemed as exports.
This sector accounts for one in eight export dollars earned by Australian industry.
I will make it my priority to ensure that a future Labor government will recognise
that this vital export industry is GST free. In North Queensland
our tourism industry depends on our natural environment—the reef and the
rainforest. I pay tribute to those in the environment movement who worked to have
both of these wonderful natural resources protected through their listing on the
world heritage register. It is now our responsibility to ensure that these special
ecosystems are protected and enhanced through sound management. However, it is
not always a straightforward matter. Recently Greenpeace released a research report
on coral bleaching, a phenomenon causing corals to die, lose their colour and
turn white. It predicted that bleaching could become a regular occurrence on the
Great Barrier Reef by the year 2030 resulting from a rise in ocean temperature
of just one degree. While scientists may not agree as to whether
ocean temperatures will rise at the rate predicted by the Greenpeace report, the
link between ocean warming and coral bleaching is not in dispute. As we know,
the key contributors to global warming are greenhouse emissions. The body charged
with the management of the Great Barrier Reef, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park
Authority, has no control over greenhouse reduction targets; neither does the
tourism industry or the fishing industry, which rely on the reef. We do. The plight
of the Great Barrier Reef and the many jobs that depend on it is an illustration
of why governments and parliaments must have a commitment to tackling the hard
decisions—decisions which will determine the future of our communities, decisions
like how to manage environment and industry sustainably. Much
as I would like to think that today will be remembered for my first speech, I
must say that I feel slightly overshadowed by the magnitude of the debate which
has begun in this chamber today. As a committed republican I look forward to the
opportunity to vote for a change which I believe is both timely and necessary.
I also believe that the people of Queensland want the Queen replaced by an Australian
head of state. That is how they voted in the election of delegates to the Constitutional
Convention last year. Given clear and accurate information about the choices before
them should the referendum proceed on 6 November, I believe it is the way they
will vote again. As someone who appeared before the Joint Select
Committee on the Republic Referendum, I express my disappointment that the recommendations
which I thought fair and well considered have not been acceptable to government.
I regarded the report as an opportunity to move the debate away from party politics
and to enable all of us to get on with the business of informing our constituents
about the proposals before them. I urge the government to seriously consider and
respond to the committee's report in its entirety. It contains many recommendations
and observations which could help us engage the community in this vital debate.
If, at the end of this week, we have a referendum on 6 November, the task ahead
of us is to assist the population to an informed vote. I am
proud to be a woman elected to this chamber and I note that the last Senate had
two more women than this Senate does, as I was the only woman among the seven
new senators elected last October. I would like to think that this is just a statistical
blip and that the debate about equal representation has been won. Unfortunately,
this may be my optimism showing. I take my seat in this chamber as a proud feminist.
It is behoven upon me and all senators to use the authority of this office to
identify and remove obstacles that prevent the full participation of any person
in their community. I commend the work of the members of Emily's List, who have
supported the aspirations of many women in the Australian Labor Party. Finally,
I wish to thank a number of people who have assisted me to be present here today.
To the many members of the Labor Party who have supported me over many years,
providing advice and friendship, my thanks. My thanks to my parents, who have
encouraged me over the years. To my staff, Colleen, Stephen and Suzanne, thanks
for your terrific work and thanks in advance for what is to come. My thanks go
to Sally, Chloe and Jack, who are always there when we need them. And most importantly,
to my husband Steve and our daughter Alice, who missed her athletics carnival
to come to Canberra this week, thank you for your trust in me and for your encouragement.
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