New Northern Australia minister David Littleproud has heard first hand some of the issues facing the region in a visit to Mount Isa on Thursday.
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Accompanied by special envoy for Northern Australia, Senator Susan McDonald, Mr Littleproud held a session at Mount Isa City Council chambers with local business leaders who spoke of many issues, particularly around the vaccine mandate, staff shortages, education gaps, energy costs, tax failures and telecommunications problems.
Mr Litttleproud, who picked up the Northern Australia portfolio in June's cabinet reshuffle, said he was hearing similar issues around regional Australia.
"We are seeing that exacerbated because of COVID-19 particularly around labour," Mr Littleproud said.
"We had international borders shut which means our migration levels have dropped and we've had state borders shut which has taken away confidence and now we have state governments mandating vaccinations for freedoms which goes against the national plan and the Doherty institute modelling."
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Mr Littleproud said the federal government had responsibilities about how to bring sustainable migration into the regions.
"We've done that with the ag visa that will make sure you have to do three years before you trigger the first juncture to permanent residency, you'll then have to do another two or three years on top of that," he said.
"We believe if you do five to six years in a regional area, you'll stay, you'll put your roots down."
Mr Littleproud said there was more work to do in education to make sure younger generations don't leave regional areas.
"That means ingenuity around things like country university centres," he said.
"We've got to be honest with people, you're not going to get an university on every street corner, but can we provide new technological ways of providing tertiary education, training and keeping them out here and giving them clear pathway and keeping that lifestyle."
Mr Littleproud said there was no silver bullet but it would require a suite of measures to address.
He also said energy costs was a significant local issue with connection to the national electricity market an important gamechanger for North West Queensland.
"We're waiting on the Queensland government around Copperstring 2.0 to give their decision around the supply agreements," he said.
"That will be pivotal to whether this gets up or not and we're hoping by Christmas we'll have that and there's every indication the Queensland government will provide us that by then and we thank them for that."
Mr Littleproud said other factors included helping supply chains through infrastructure and derisking projects through insurance and NAIF.
"We then have to deregulate and work with states to make sure we do and work with local governments to roll it out."
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