Manager of government business Tony Burke said that in the last parliament the Northern Australian Committee only dealt with First Nations issues.

"There are negotiations happening with the Senate right now in setting up a specific First Nations joint committee that will be able to deal with all of those issues," Mr Burke said,

"Regional Australian issues are still able to be dealt with through the appropriate committee."

Mr Burke's comments came as several opposition MPs criticised the decision not to continue the committee.

Senator Susan McDonald said northern Australia matters to the 1.3 million people who call it home and the decision to abolish the committee has thrown the region's future under a cloud.

"Only people who don't appreciate both the potential and the challenges of the north would make such a decision, thinking that northern issues are just the same as southern issues," Senator McDonald said.

"The arrogance and ignorance of this attitude is truly breathtaking. We in the north pay more, and in many parts we can't make a mobile phone call. Our children's schooling is hampered by slow internet. We have unsealed roads that isolate communities for months in the wet season. But despite all of this, through sheer will, attitude and hard work, the north protects, feeds, clothes and enriches the whole country."

Senator McDonald said the resources sector, much of which is based in the north, poured $39 billion in royalties and taxes into government coffers in 2020-21 and added $390 billion to our economy, funding roads, schools and hospitals used by all Australians while the northern beef industry is worth more than $5 billion.

"All these people and these critical industries are relying on Labor to look out for them, but they've been abandoned at the very first step," she said.

"Under the coalition government, we built momentum for developing the North, and I'll be moving a motion in the Senate that the committee be re-established and give the North the specialised focus and policymaking it deserves."

Nationals leader David Littleproud said the committee was about the growth of northern Australia, where we have an extra $2 billion investment pipeline through the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund.

"Every Australian should have the opportunity to have their voice heard in this parliament through important committee work, and this government, which trumpeted that it would govern for every Australian, has now turned its back on 1.3 million Australians," Mr Littleproud said.

In the last parliament the committee completed two inquiries both of which were Indigenous related, one into the Juukun Gorge caves destruction, the other into the "Opportunities and Challenges of the Engagement of Traditional Owners in the Economic Development of Northern Australia."

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