Weipa

We could import it from somewhere else.

But see, if you reduce your economy to only being a raw materials exporter, what you're actually doing is giving up the scales of wealth that most people will find mind-blowing, right? Because there's a multiplier effect with manufacturing, right? And the figures I like to use, I've used them on your show before, they came out of the biography of John Gorton, who was the Prime Minister in 1970 when they set up this institution called the Australian Industry Development Corporation, right? to invest in value adding for bauxite, to create an aluminium industry for Australia, because Australia had the biggest bauxite reserve in the world in Weipa.

And in the figures that were submitted to it in a cabinet document to the government, so these are 1970 figures, but just think about the proportions.

That document showed that when we exported 1 million tonnes of bauxite in 1970, as a nation, we earned $5 million.

I learned a lot from that lady and she was great.

I mean, I was commissioning a treatment plan up in Weipa when I got a phone call that she wasn't going to last the night.

So I jumped on a plane pretty quick and got back to Brisbane.

And I remember the last night she was alive and she was disgusted that I'd actually left this work site.

And these investments will support communities including Galawinku, Lajamanu, Millingimbi, Raman Gining, Niu and the Urupanja homelands.

In Queensland, we'll be supporting Marpoon, Napurnam, Weipa and Laura, Senator Watt.

And in WA, I can let you know that laundries are coming to Moonland and Fitzroy Crossing.

And importantly, I can tell all Senators that these are community-led solutions.

while building other government buildings, schools and that.

And when they finished in Weipa, John and Peter, his two sons, had young families, so they decided to get out of Weipa because it was a closed mining town at the time.

And they came back with all the building equipment and that.

And there was 40-odd builders in this town.

The boarding school is quite impressive in creating a safe environment for the students to come in from community.

They come in from over 29 remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities all across the Top End, Cowan, Weipa, Arrokoon, Dumanji, all across the Torres Strait as well.

And they are provided with three meals a day.

They're taken to school.