Mayor wants a bigger pie slice

TEL labels it broad milestone strategy

TOWNSVILLE Enterprise has labelled the federal budget as one of the most important in our history while Mayor Jenny Hill has criticised the lack of capital investment.

With key schemes like the reinsurance pool and the National Recovery and Resilience Agency announced before the election, the city was left wanting more when the budget dropped on Tuesday night.

Herbert MP Phillip Thompson told the Bulletin it was a budget for everyone, but it’s a sentiment for which he has since been criticised.

Treasurer Cameron Dick slammed the federal MP in state parliament yesterday, saying he did not represent Australia, but the seat of Herbert.

“We saw how the federal budget went from bad to worse: half-baked, half-priced infrastructure that was halved again,” Mr Dick said.

However, the budget has been given some support on the ground in Townsville.

“This was one of the most important federal budgets in our history, focusing on supporting businesses and communities through the pandemic as we move into the next phase of Australia’s economic recovery plan and our path forward,” new Townsville Enterprise chief executive Claudia Brumme-smith said.

“We are encouraged by the continued measures to support all Australians through infrastructure investment, essential services, skills development, extensions to tax relief initiatives, and boosting digital connectivity, with the overall aim to continue to grow jobs.

“We await further detail on the $1.2bn digital economy investment as we firmly believe a strong digital connection is critical in how world trade and services will be delivered, and we have a forward-looking focus on ensuring North Queensland is at the forefront of these opportunities.”

Ms Brumme-smith said there were also key investments in tourism that would benefit the North.

“There were some welcomed announcements in this budget with extensions on the aquariums and zoo funding, business tax incentives, amendments to student visas to help with workforce shortages and $14m towards GBRMPA,” she said.

“This is also off the back of more than 12 months of industry support – Jobkeeper kept our businesses running during the height of the pandemic and the half-price flight subsidy has generated a boost in interstate visitation for the region.”

However, Cr Hill was a little less positive about the Federal investment in the North.

“This is a budget about providing funds for people in our community.

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a big spending budget around capital infrastructure and capital in North Queensland and Northern Australia,” Cr Hill said.

“This is a budget about winning votes, and I mean it’s pretty clear that was the rhetoric leading into the budget,” she said.

“The issue for me is if you want to create employment, you’ve got to invest in infrastructure.”

Cr Hill added that the roads funding allocated in the North, were not enough. She said the disparity between the road spend in New South Wales and Queensland was huge.

“We’ve got a hell of a lot more roads than NSW,” she said.

Katter’s Australian Party state MP Robbie Katter described the budget as “uninspiring” and said it would give little hope to Australians about the future.

Mr Katter said he was trying to understand why the Commonwealth would not invest more money into opening up the resource-rich North West Queensland.

“It’s not just about the cash – it’s about driving projects to completion so that outcomes are actually delivered,” he said.

“Our message is that if you’re going to talk about developing Australia and give people some hope for the future, get ready to get your hands dirty and make things happen.”

Mr Thompson said thousands of people in Townsville would benefit from budget incentives. “I think the 68,000 people in Townsville that will get a tax cut of up to $2745 may disagree that this budget doesn’t support the people of Townsville,” he said.

“This is a very significant tax cut that is good for people that have been doing it tough.

“We’ve seen significant investment in childcare, mental health and aged care … we’ve got 10,600 small and medium businesses who can access the instant asset write-off.

“We’ve got a reinsurance pool that is tackling market failure of an essential service.

“We’ve got over 31,000 ADF and veterans and their families which will receive benefits if they’re putting in claims through DVA, where we’ve invested $460m.

“And because of Townsville, we’ve a royal commission into veterans suicide.”