OPPORTUNITY LOST – NORTHERN TASKFORCE REPORT

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The opportunity for an economic blueprint to harness the potential of Northern Australia has failed to materialise with the release of the Northern Australian Land and Water Taskforce Report.

Federal Opposition Spokesman on Northern and Remote Australia Senator Ian Macdonald said that the long awaited report was a fizzer.

“What Northern Australians were looking for was a clear direction forward.

“What they have got is a series of motherhood statements and bureaucratic recommendations looking for more investigations, additional data, more reports, new processes, more committees, and analysis.

“Clearly with the change in focus in the Taskforce once Labor took it over, the report has now become a radical environmental blueprint to lock up Northern Australia and to consign Indigenous and other Northern Australians to a future of welfare and government handouts.

“And whilst much of the report deals with indigenous issues, the most important issue for Indigenous Australians in the North is the way the Queensland Government’s Wild Rivers legislation has locked up their lands. The report made not one mention of this restriction on the way indigenous people use their lands.

“Recommendation 13 is typical of the sort of recommendation which shows the Taskforce lost its way. The Taskforce has recommended “investment in communication, social marketing, education and knowledge brokering… to deepen commitment of principles of ecologically sustainable development”

“No-one in Northern Australia wants anything other than sustainable development, but what we were seeking from the Taskforce was some leadership on how economic opportunities could be taken advantage of.

“And to ensure that the report is consigned to the scrapheap of history, recommendation 14 recommends the establishment of yet another Authority to ‘advocate the needs and interests of Northern Australia’. I would have hoped the responsible Minister and local Members of Parliament could do that without being assisted by another committee of bureaucrats.

“The Taskforce Report completely overlooks the need for new sources of food for Australia, and indeed the World, as what were previously prime agricultural lands become less so with removal of water licences and the predicted drying of the southern part of our continent.

“The report is lightweight with a political focus towards green and indigenous issues. It has no plan of action, it is not strategic and never went to the next step of actually recommending action. It is full of motherhood statements and repeats a lot of information that was already well known, for example most Northerners know that the wet season does not continue throughout out the whole 12 months of every year. Predictions of one third of the North being in the National Reserve Systems, no new dams, and an emphasis on carbon trading, all indicate more of a political wish list rather than recommendations for sustainable development.

“The report makes motherhood statements about infrastructure needed but nowhere does it provide any leadership as to what might be done and when.

“The comment that the ability to “capture and store surface water for consumptive use is constrained by climate and topography” is again just words. I am aware of two very sensible and sustainable projects for capture and storage of water at the time it is available, which can then be sustainably and economically used, while it is there.

“All in all the report is a major disappointment, and an opportunity lost”, said Senator Macdonald.

END

8 February 2010

Media contact Gordon Terry      (07) 4771 3066   or   0427 960 255                                           

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