The update of a 10-year-old policy document directing development of northern Australia has focused on overarching policies rather than actionable items.
The update of a 10-year-old policy document directing development of northern Australia has avoided making clear commitments in favour of highlighting overarching policies.
Calls to action under the five-year northern Australia action plan released on Monday include working with state counterparts, enabling Indigenous economic participation, and assisting economic transition.
The six priority areas for the next five years will be economic growth, infrastructure, defence, workforce shortages, liveability, and cultural and environmental heritage.
Federal Northern Australia Minister Madeleine King said social infrastructure would also be a focus.
“Things like emergency accommodation or emergency evacuation centres which can be used as community centers as well,” she said.
“They are not big flagship programs or anything, but I think they are a real priority to make sure there is more resilience across the north.
“[The action plan] is sort of taking advantage of other portfolios of government that that are clearly doing a lot of work in the north, but making sure they really serve the benefit of the people of the north.”
On housing which was identified as the biggest issue in the north, Ms King said the Liberal and Greens parties were exacerbating the problem by failing to support the federal government’s housing measures, most recently a push to reduce tax for developers of build-to-rent projects.
“It is a conundrum,” she said.
“It is hard to move forward when you have the alternative party of government and an activist group that are kind of holding the nation to ransom on solving some of these problems.
“The other [issue] is, of course, workforce requirements, but we are working on that as well within our immigration and visa system to make sure we can have the workers.”
Ms King said replicating the camps in Western Australia’s resources industry could be a solution to help bring large construction workforces up to the north to work on housing projects.
Addressing the Developing Northern Australia Conference in Karratha on Monday, shadow northern Australia minister Susan McDonald outlined a raft of priorities for northern Australia should the Coalition gain office next year.
That included sealing roads, building bridges, improving emergency response times, beefing up biosecurity measures, competition among airlines, and treating rheumatic heart disease.
“These are everyday issues that southerners don't ever have to fight for,” Ms McDonald said.
“The irony is apparent: politicians who represent southern cities and towns who enjoy state of the art, hospitals, schools, art galleries, road systems and 5G connectivity do so largely thanks to the work and tax revenue of northern Australians who enjoy very few of those facilities.
“Instead of production tax credits, we need to urgently consider reformation of the zonal tax offsets for northern Australia to offset the higher costs of living and doing business.
“We need to urgently extend the mandates of the NAIF and the CRCNA to… strengthen Northern Australia, but also position the nation as a key driver of economic growth, diplomacy, defence and biosecurity protection throughout the whole region, ensuring that we remain competitive in the global market.”
Aside from the six priorities, the action plan has outlined 17 other focus areas which piggyback off federal government measures such as the Future Made in Australia agenda and First Nations economic empowerment.
The federal government has committed to publicly reporting its progress on achieving goals set out in the plan.
The action plan was designed as an update to the 2015 white paper released by the Abbott government in the year the Pilbara resources construction boom crashed.
That white paper set down a raft of policies around agriculture, Indigenous affairs, infrastructure, resources, land use, and water.
Objectives which were achieved from the 2015 paper include the following:
- Undertaking feasibility work on stage three of the Ord Irrigation Scheme
- Simplifying Visa applications for Indian and Chinese visitors
- Funding commitments for roads, freight, live export, and water.
- Enabling migrant worker intake for non-mining employers in Western Australia
- Removing caps on Pacific Island seasonal workers and allowing tourism businesses to partake in the scheme.
- Establishment of the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, a northern Australia cooperative research centre, and an Indigenous reference group.
Among policies which have not materialised or were wound back include:
- Opening up 10-year Visas for Chinese visitors
- Ceding Indigenous cultural heritage matters to state and territory governments (the federal govt started work to possibly play a larger role in response to Juukan Gorge)
- Enabling banks to loan against native title by making it a transferrable asset
- Settling all existing native title claims and speeding up processing of future claims
- Creating a standalone office of Northern Australia reporting to the deputy prime minister (rolled into another department and not reporting to deputy PM)
- Forming a northern Australia Strategic Partnership with the PM and state premiers (replaced with reference groups and ministerial representatives)
- Forming a standing committee on northern Australia (replaced with a select committee)
