News

Picture a part of your own country so full of promise it could lift the living standards of every working household from Darwin to Alice, Townsville and Cairns, to Carnarvon and Kununurra — and yet our north sits three quarters dormant, its potential smothered under rules written by people who have never worked there.

That place is Northern Australia, the Northern Territory, and above the 26th parallel.

And the quiet tragedy is that we’ve known how to wake it up for over a decade.

Most of us in the cities seldom think about the north.

The people who live and work there —throughout the Northern Territory, in the Pilbara and Kimberley’s, the cattle and mining country of Queensland — feel forgotten by governments that don’t understand their lives, the difficulties they and their businesses face, and don’t seem to want to.

When Canberra makes the rules from almost four thousand kilometres away, it too often gets them wrong.

Approvals that should take months take years.

A marina in the Whitsundays waited two decades for a green light.

Meanwhile, international mining giants pour billions into Argentina, USA, and even Guinea rather than our own backyard, because we’ve made ourselves unwelcoming to investment and uncompetitive.

The solution isn’t complicated, and it isn’t radical.

It’s called a Special Economic Zone — an Integrated Development Zone.

More than 7, 000 of them operate successfully around the world.

The idea is simple: in a defined area, you cut the tax and cut the tape.

You create a one-stop prompt shop for approvals, a sensible regulatory system administered locally, that draws investment and skilled ones in rather than pushing them away.

This works.

China’s astonishing rise began with a single zone in Shenzhen in 1978.

Our neighbours, Singapore and Malaysia are now building one together, twice the size of Singapore.

Italy’s stagnant south is stirring back to life after opening eight of them.

Three-quarters of the world’s nations use these zones.

Why not us?

Here’s the part that should reassure middle-of-the-road voters, who may be concerned that this is just a handout to big business.

When you lower taxes and free up investment in these zones, opportunities flourish, and take home pay would be free of personal income tax. Stamp tax and license fee costs, would disappear.

More investment means more jobs, more production and revenue, higher living standards. Win, win, win.

This isn’t ideology.

It’s been proven across continents for nearly 50 years. And, for those who want to work and save for better lives, this provides the opportunity if they want to move north to work.

Why deprive Australians of this opportunity, including an opportunity to save and buy their own home, which many otherwise know they now will be unable to do.

And it isn’t a new fringe idea, either.

Back in 2013, all three major parties took ANDEV’s northern development policies to the election.

A House of Representatives committee recommended a full investigation of special economic zones in 2014.

A white paper was drawn up.

Then it was quietly shelved.

Now, with a trillion-dollar national debt, falling investment, record failing businesses, struggling agriculture, decreased international cost competitiveness effecting our exporting nation, falling real investment, falling living standards, and cost-of-living pressure squeezing far too many families, we can no longer afford to keep this successful policy on a shelf.

Northern Australia has what the rest of the world wants: land, water, agriculture, energy, and a front-row seat to the growing markets of Asia.

What it lacks is a federal government willing to genuinely consider its voters and get out of the way.

For anyone who wants to understand how this could work — and how it could benefit our country, — the case is laid out at andev-project.org.

Read it.

Then ask your local federal member a simple question: when the whole world is doing this so successfully, why isn’t our government implementing special economic zones?

Our government sure has proven what has been proven around the world, that socialism doesn’t work.

Look at all the crisies it has helped to create, or created.

Australians simply aren’t as well off as they used to be.

Isn’t it time we let our politicians know, enough is enough.

It’s time to bring in policies that work, and give us the opportunities special economic zones bring to millions of people around the world.

Dr Gina Rinehart AO