TRANSCRIPT: INTERVIEW ON 4CA 846 AM CAIRNS, 30 SEPTEMBER 2020
9:50AM
E&OE
Subjects: Regional Recovery Partnerships, Regional Connectivity Program, Resilient Regional Leaders initiative, Coronavirus, Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund;
JOHN MACKENZIE
He is the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development, Michael McCormack. Good morning.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Good morning, John.
JOHN MACKENZIE
Actually, we were just having a chat about rural matters. You would have been interested, but we haven’t got time to do that now. Let’s go to this article. I’ll just read from the Courier Mail version today, “Regional Queensland earmarked to be a major winner from a $135 million funding boost designed to help the bounce back – the bush bounce back – from drought, bushfires and the recession brought on by COVID. Now the Deputy Prime Minister set to announce funding for three new programs today in a pre-budget speech to the Regional Australia Institute. Queensland’s a big winner under the showpiece Regional Recovery Partnerships Program, which will deliver $100 million over two years for areas hardest hit.”
My God, Michael, you want to hear what people are enduring up here, people in the tourism industry. They haven’t been employed since virtually 23 March, six months up now and they’re still wondering if they’ll ever get a job again. It’s dreadful, Michael. It is just dreadful.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Very hard and in many ways unnecessary, because there hasn’t been a COVID case in some of those areas for many months, if at all. And yet despite that they have had to endure a rule put in place in far off Brisbane whereby the borders were closed and of course, people from the southern states, including my own in New South Wales – I know how many of my friends love to get up to sunny tropical north Queensland at this time of year and of course, they haven’t been able to. They have been able to from the ACT, but New South Wales is a big, big part of it and of course, Victoria. And the same goes in Victoria, they’ve had restrictions brought upon them by Melbourne.
But look, these announcements today are very good – $135 million, it’s a vote of confidence in regional Australia particularly, as you say, regional Queensland. And so, for the $100 million Regional Recovery Partnerships, we’ve got the Mackay-Isaac-Whitsunday region, the Gladstone region, Cairns and tropical north Queensland region. So, they’re all going to benefit. They’re all going to get a slice of that action. The regional connectivity program, an additional $30 million in funding for those areas outside the NBN footprint. That’s going to be good for them. And indeed, the $5 million for looking out for resilient regional leaders to get up and speak on behalf of their areas to make sure that their voice continues to be heard.
I’m in there loudly and proudly shouting about it all the time, as I know your Warren Entsch up there the Member for Leichhardt is, George Christensen, Kenny O’Dowd and Michelle Landry and all the rest of them. They all love their Queensland and they all love their north and central Queensland, and we’re there to support those areas and those people who are doing it so tough at the moment.
JOHN MACKENZIE
Now here’s a quote and I just think this is very important. These partnerships you’re talking about will support existing regional plans by developing a package of “targeted initiatives to deliver jobs.” And this is what we’re going to need up here. People won’t all get their old jobs back. They’ll need jobs and it’s just an agony watching people really suffer wondering if they’ll ever be able to be employed again.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
That’s right and I don’t disagree one iota with what was just said. And we do need jobs, we do need infrastructure. Next Tuesday’s budget is all going to be about those two components to get the economy back to some sort of pre-COVID levels. We’ve already invested $314 billion into the economy. It’s been needed. I’d like to have seen the States do more. There’s still that opportunity for them to do so. I know Deb Frecklington has a plan for water infrastructure, for the Bruce Highway – four-lane all the way. We’ll work in partnership with any State Government. I don’t care what political colour or stripe they are – we want to make sure that we rebuild Australia the way it needs to be and particularly the regions.
I’ve got every faith and confidence in the regions. They have led the way through COVID with the resources, the mining, the agriculture. We want to grow it to $100 billion, at the moment it’s about $61 billion. But even despite everything thrown against it, it grew by a billion dollars in the last 12 months. So, there’s hope there. There’s potential there. And there’s the people there. And I thank them again for what they have done through this situation, through this global downturn. Thank them for, you know, exercising the social distancing and self-isolation and downloading the app. More work to be done. We’re backing regional Australians. We’re backing Australians generally and we’re certainly backing Queenslanders.
JOHN MACKENZIE
Now there’s also the other information – I don’t know whether you want to comment on this – we’re talking fundamentally about this new process allowing more projects to get off the ground, creating jobs that would aid economic recovery from the COVID-19 recession. It’s the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund and the people up here have been particularly disappointed about its performance over the years.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Keith Pitt has tweaked the NAIF – the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund – such that we’ve been able to and we need to get more money out the door to help that. The Coalition Government’s committed to developing Northern Australia. We’re the first ones who’ve actually had a Northern Australia Minister. Once upon a time it was Josh Frydenberg, and at the time I thought it was actually a good move, to get somebody well removed from even indeed Queensland, to be able to get him on the ground so that he understood and knew exactly how important north Queensland is to the economy. And look at him now – he’s the Treasurer and about to unveil the budget, albeit a different sort of budget given the fact that it’s normally held in May, it’s now being held in October and given the fact that we are significantly in debt.
But this measure, the NAIF arrangements, supports the Government’s JobMaker plan. We want to get more Australians back into work. I know Keith Pitt’s doing an enormous job there with this Assistant Minister, Michelle Landry. We want to build, there’s so much potential in Northern Australia, whether it’s through water infrastructure, whether it’s through roads. All those sorts of things to be able to get our product, your product, north Queensland product, to port and therefore to our trade opportunities quicker.
JOHN MACKENZIE
Michael, as soon as you’re allowed into this State, can you come up and pay us a visit?
MICHAEL McCORMACK
I will be up there in a fortnight. I’ve made sure, I’m in Canberra. I’m making sure that I’m staying here for a fortnight. So, I’ve left my south west New South Wales electorate for a fortnight so that I can do the necessary qualification of isolation or quarantine or whatever you like to call it. And I will be up in Queensland and very much looking forward to coming up to north Queensland and spending some time with George and getting out and about and talking up regional north Queensland. I don’t talk it down like Anthony Albanese and Labor does. I believe that our best days are ahead of us and I want to talk up. Great potential, great future. We want to unlock more of it.
JOHN MACKENZIE
See you very see soon. Thanks Michael. Michael McCormack is the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development and Leader of the Nationals.
ENDS 9:57AM