PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS

Mr MATT SMITH (Leichhardt) (11:53): I rise today to acknowledge the deep significance of the 29 June signing of the Australia-Vanuatu Nakamal Agreement. This agreement represents a new era in the Australia-Vanuatu relationship, reinforcing our shared membership of the Pacific family and our commitment to the rules based international order right across the Pacific.

I have the great privilege of representing Leichhardt. Once you leave the mainland of Far North Queensland, you get to the Torres Strait. The Torres Strait has its own unique culture in Australia, based quite squarely in Melanesian traditions, and this makes this agreement much more significant to my part of the world.

In fact, article 2 of the Nakamal Agreement recognises the shared Melanesian culture specifically of Torres Strait Islanders and Ni-Vanuatu and the way that it enriches the relationship between Australia and Vanuatu. There have been, it should be acknowledged, dark times in the history between Australia and Vanuatu. Some 150 years ago, people of what was then the New Hebrides were stolen from their families and brought to the far north to work in the sugar cane.

But their culture, family and communities live on in the far north, and our relationship is not consigned just to history. Today the 51st Battalion, a fantastic reserve unit right across the Cape and the Torres Strait, regularly engages with Vanuatu. In fact, since the early 2000s, the 51st has engaged in joint training exercises with the Vanuatu Mobile Forces, the Vanuatu Police Force paramilitary wing.

The chief of their police force trained in Weipa with the 51st Battalion, with men from Aurukun, Weipa, Napranum and Mapoon. Our connection to the South Pacific, particularly in Leichhardt, runs deep. We're very proud of this connection, and we're proud as a Labor government to deepen these connections.

As the world pivots north, the South Pacific becomes more and more important. We come to the people of the South Pacific as equals—as partners in trade, in defence and, over the last thousands and thousands of years between the Torres Strait and Vanuatu, in culture. Nothing is more important than our relationships in our region, and we're working every single day to strengthen them with agreements like the Pukpuk Treaty alliance with PNG, our closest neighbour, some 3½ to four kilometres north of Saibai; the Ocean of Peace Alliance and the Vuvale Union with Fiji; the Falepili Union with Tuvalu; the Nauru-Australia Treaty; and now, of course, the Nakamal Agreement with Vanuatu.

These opportunities give the people of Vanuatu access to Australia and what Australia can offer. We are positioning the far north as the hub for the South Pacific, be it through education or work opportunities. The PALM scheme allows workers from right across the South Pacific to come to Australia to work in our farms, and that is super-important for a region like mine, which has so much agriculture, including so many banana farmers.

It is not unusual to find entire families come across, make their fortune and then head home to build. I saw on TV that night someone with a Western kitchen; he was so proud. These kinds of opportunities are great now, but the future opportunities are where it's really exciting.

Cairns will position itself as an educational and intellectual hub for the South Pacific. We will take the best and brightest that the South Pacific have to offer, train them and return them as doctors, health workers, nurses, engineers and administrators. We are able to provide that support because of our location in the world, and that will only deepen these relationships.

That's real power. Real power comes in providing an opportunity and a hand-up to those around us. This represents a turning point for Australia's relationships with the South Pacific.

The work that has been done by our prime minister, our Foreign minister and our ministers for the South Pacific has been second to none. We've reached out. The former coalition government threw nothing but sand in their faces.

We will continue to deepen these relationships within the South Pacific and right across Asia. We will continue to advocate for our region. We will continue to provide economic, educational and health opportunities to our part of the world, because that is the Australian way, because that's what makes Australia great and what makes the South Pacific great.

I couldn't be prouder to be a part of a government that has delivered this treaty.