Mr LINDSAY (4:21 PM) —Mr Deputy Speaker, I propose to be rather wide ranging in this cognate debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2002-2003 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2002-2003 this afternoon, and I thank you for the opportunity to address the Main Committee. It has been a sombre day in Canberra today and I think we all understand why. It has been a particularly sombre day for me. With so many Defence Force personnel in Townsville and Thuringowa, the possibility of war is something that I have deeply reflected on. Our community has about 120 personnel currently forward deployed in the gulf, and I think about them and their families back home. I would particularly like to say this to families of members of the Defence Force: there are some families who are not receiving any contact information from personnel in the gulf. They say to me, `The Americans and the Brits are allowing contact between servicemen in the gulf and home, but our soldiers are not being allowed to contact home.' That is true and it is untrue. The explanation for that is simply that those who are in the gulf are classified as `special forces'; for example, the members of 5 Aviation Regiment from Townsville are part of that group. They are on a very sensitive deployment and for security reasons they are unable to contact home so that there is no information about their location and their potential further operations in the gulf. That is regretted, but I am sure that families will understand that at this time it is better that we maintain proper security arrangements.

I would now like to turn to the matter of ATSIC. Some members in this parliament have a lot to do with ATSIC and have large ATSI communities—8,000 of the people that I represent are Indigenous Australians. Other members do not have a lot of ATSI people in their electorates and do not ever see the issues associated with ATSIC. I think that Christopher Pyne's address in Melbourne in the last week has probably been regarded by many in the Aboriginal community as being spot on. Christopher was saying that the relevance of ATSIC was in question, that what the organisation was not delivering was a scandal and that ATSIC should be replaced. I first heard that from, I think, the Hon. Wilson Tuckey, who suggested that ATSIC should be broken up and that regional councils much closer to where the demand for services was should be involved in distributing the funds to run those services. In my own patch, in the electorate of Herbert, I have Palm Island. I have been going to Palm Island since I was elected. In the seven years that I have been in the federal parliament, the federal government has probably put $100 million into Palm Island but you are hard-pressed to go there today and see where any of the money has gone. I am talking about $100 million. Yes, you can see a dam, a second water supply for Palm Island, but you cannot see much else.

All you can see is a community that is dysfunctional. It is dysfunctional not only in terms of how the number of different groups do not get on together but also in terms of community services, health services, education services, roads and sewerage. It is a disgrace. The peak body charged with delivering services on the ground and getting better outcomes for Indigenous Australians is simply failing Indigenous Australians; that is the scandal. Yet you see the much publicised goings on down here in Canberra, you see the terrible waste of taxpayers' money and you see a government which is trying to be at arm's length, trying to empower Indigenous people to make decisions for themselves and trying to be remote from that. But it is not working. I feel very deeply that Christopher Pyne hit the nail on the head: the government needs to move to solve that problem, to put every last dollar into the benefit of Aboriginal people on the ground, at the coalface, in terms of health, education, domestic violence, drugs and the whole range of things that I see when I go to Palm Island.

I would now like to turn to the issue of nurses and nurse education. I know there has been somewhat of a public debate about how best to educate and produce registered nurses. What I have been finding in feedback is that young men and women are going into the nursing profession but they do not last. They do not stay there; they move on. The thing seems to be that they do not get enough practical experience and do not understand what nursing is about before they finish their university degree. I have had some hospitals come to me in absolute frustration that they are continually battling to get nurses and cannot get nurses to stay in the profession. They are operators at the coalface.

Their solution is to maintain the university degree aspect of nursing training—they do not dispute that at all—but to increase the practical component. They want to see an increased practical training component that will benefit not only the nurses themselves but also the hospitals in our community and, particularly, at the end of the day, the patients. What needs to happen is something like a six-month internship in a hospital before a trainee nurse goes into formal education in a university and then, every year, six months of training on a rotating basis. This might mean that, for example, the university will have to schedule its courses on a rolling basis. You might not have the traditional going in in March and finishing in November; you might actually be operating over the Christmas break, for example. There are some possibilities there.

The benefit for nurses is, apart from the practical training, that they can be paid while they are working on the job. The hospitals have no difficulty at all with providing the funding to pay nurses' wages, and that is how it should be. No-one expects them to work for nothing. So the nurses would benefit and the hospitals would benefit. I think there needs to be a debate in this country. I am aware of some trials that are going on in Sydney that adopt this particular model. So far, so good; it is working very well. I would ask my community to consider supporting that kind of process—where nurses benefit, hospitals benefit and, ultimately, patients benefit.

Turning to the arts in Townsville, I note that the country's pre-eminent regional dance group, Dance North, has its headquarters in Townsville. The company is currently headed by Henry Laska, and I want to congratulate Henry because he has pulled off something that we have wanted to pull off for a long time. I have to say that he had a bit of backing from a member of the government who represents the electorate of Herbert. I was pleased to do that because Henry's long experience in the arts as a manager and financially stands him in good stead for his appointment to the board of Playing Australia. That is an appointment that has not gone unnoticed in Townsville. It has also not gone unnoticed in the arts community right across the country that finally we have a regional representative on the board of Playing Australia who knows what he is talking about. It is a big feather in the cap for Henry Laska. It is a big feather in the cap for Dance North, for Townsville and for regional Australia that Henry has been appointed to the board. I know that he will do well. I wish him well. He will represent regional Australia fiercely, as it should be represented.

I would now like to turn to a visit that the federal Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Brendan Nelson, paid to Townsville last Tuesday. It was a very successful visit for a number of reasons. Dr Nelson is responsible for schools, higher education, science and training. Each of those particular facets of his portfolio received attention while he was in Townsville. I was particularly pleased to see Brendan visit the Australian Institute of Marine Science and James Cook University. Anyone in the marine science field anywhere in the world will tell you that AIMS and JCU are the standout institutions. From anywhere in the world, if you want to go to the best centre of excellence in marine science, you go to Townsville—either to the Australian Institute of Marine Science or to James Cook University. Professor Stephen Hall, the CEO of AIMS, is a first-class scientist and manager. Professor Michael Kingsford, Professor of Marine Biology and Aquaculture at James Cook University, is a first-class leader of his team. Dr Nelson told us that he was recently at a meeting of Fulbright scholars who had come to Australia from the US. One of them said, `I am going to James Cook University,' and Brendan said, `Why are you going to James Cook University?' The scholar said, `If you want to go to the best place for marine science in the world, you go to James Cook University.' Once again regional Australia has a course that leads the world, and we will continue to do that.

I am also pleased that Dr Nelson spoke with Gerry Smith, the manager of TADEC, which coordinates the Jobs Pathway Program for the city. Gerry raised an interesting issue with Dr Nelson—other members may have come across the same issue—which is that Jobs Pathway providers are only funded on an annual basis. This causes some uncertainty among staff because they do not know whether they are going to get funded for the next year. Gerry spoke to the minister, and it is a great country that we live in where somebody 2,000 kilometres from Canberra can have the opportunity of buttonholing a minister and saying, `Minister, when you are down in Canberra, this is what you need to do.' Gerry told him, `You need to give us more certainty; you need to perhaps extend the funding cycle to make it a two-year funding cycle.' To his very great credit, Brendan is a minister who listens and takes action. I know that he came back to Canberra and instructed his department to have a look at the possibility of doing this. If we can achieve that, providers like TADEC right across the country will benefit from the fact that we were able to buttonhole the minister and make a sensible suggestion and have that suggestion taken up.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is getting much more customer focused these days. Under the leadership of Russell Balding, the ABC's focus is certainly more strategic. Russell is a very impressive leader, in my view. He knows where he is taking the corporation, and he is taking it in a very positive direction. He proposed in the current triennial funding that NewsRadio be extended to a number of areas across the country. I see that it could go to Grafton and Kempsey, as well as to Townsville. I would like to see NewsRadio come to Townsville, although it is on the Net if people really need to listen to it. My interest is in Russell's focus on the rollout of regional television news. The debate about the commercial stations removing their news services from aggregated areas has raged over the last year and a half, and it is refreshing to see that the ABC is proposing to bring back local news services to regional areas. That is a mighty step forward, and it has my absolute support. I entered the television industry in North Queensland before some people in this room were born—

Ms Roxon —That is for sure!

Mr LINDSAY —I am probably referring to just the people on the other side; I am certainly not referring to Mr Charles! At that time, the ABC had local news services and a local current affairs show, all run out of Townsville. With the effluxion of time, these things disappeared, and the viewing audience—the customers, if you like—were disadvantaged by that. It is great to see the ABC proposing to bring back to North Queensland a local news service—like the one they now have in Canberra—and to run it out of Townsville, right up to Cairns. Why shouldn't we have a local news service? Townsville is Australia's largest tropical city. It now has a population of 150,000. The proposed news service, when it extends up the coast, would service a population of about half a million people. The ABC is asking the government for additional base funding, which I strongly support. On average, about $2½ million is required each year, which would be a great investment to put choice back into the delivery of news in local, regional viewing areas. Choice is important.

The ABC has to be mindful of its responsibility to broadcast fair and unbiased news services. It has been under some pressure in that regard, and I think the ABC is realising that it needs to get its credibility back. I must add that the current staff of ABC News in Townsville, who primarily run the radio news services, are as professional as you can get. They ask the hard questions and they do not put bias into their reporting. You can be sure that, if you hear it on the ABC in North Queensland, it must be so. It is great to be able to say that, and I pay a very great tribute to ABC staff.

Finally, I would like to finish my speech with the matter of the Douglas arterial road in Townsville. For about 40 years the community have been asking for this road to be built. The road will put another bridge across the Ross River and it will cut seven kilometres off a journey from the Upper Ross to the university, the hospital or the Lavarack army base. A huge amount of work was done to bring the state government to the table and to get a funding agreement that would be satisfactory to the federal government and the state government so that this project could be built. I was pleased to announce last week that finally, after 40 years, we were able to declare that a request for tenders would be made this week. The Upper Ross community in Townsville will be delighted to see that this project has got the green light. It has not been with the help of the local Labor members, who felt that this should be fully funded by the federal government even though it is a state government road. Good try! We were not going to be in that, but we have now committed $37.4 million for a new road in our city. When it is built, it will be a lasting monument to the tenacity of the federal government to get the project up and running.