David Jull (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Perhaps I am fortunate to represent an electorate that covers the northern end of Gold Coast City, because misery obviously exists in other parts of Australia, such as Newcastle. I find the reaction to the budget that was given by the previous speaker almost hard to conceive, because the exact opposite is true in my particular division. In fact, the reaction was very good from all sections of the community, but particularly from the aged, the retirees and, indeed, our younger generation, who are looking at their education at the moment.

I will spend a few minutes today, if I could, highlighting some of the things that have happened as a result of previous government investment in the Gold Coast. I will look at this budget, the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2006-2007 and cognate bills, and what may be required in future reckonings to look after this dynamic part of Australia, which is still the second fastest developing area of Australia—an area that is projected to have a population in excess of 880,000 by the end of 2020, not so terribly far away.

Over the last few years there have been some quite dramatic changes in the Gold Coast area, and the image that the Gold Coast has had for so long—all froth and bubble, white shoes and fast developments—has almost completely gone. While the tourism industry is a most important part of the Gold Coast’s infrastructure, the Gold Coast is now developing into a very important export area for Australia. It is really quite interesting: just a week or two ago at the Sanctuary Cove boat show, orders in excess of $150 million were received from overseas for new pleasure craft. That is an industry that is already, despite its short existence, employing something like 2,700 people. With regard to the requirements of labour markets, it is quite interesting that there are companies within that complex, which is located in my electorate, that have got to the point of importing labour from interstate. Engine experts from South Australia—more than 100, I think—were brought in to try to pick up some of the slack. This government has made significant investment in the provision of the technical training school for the Gold Coast, and a lot of that is going to be focused on the boat-building industry, and rightly so.

We have tremendous demand for labour in the building and engineering fraternity of the Gold Coast. I was interested to hear some of the comments of the previous speaker. I was at a Housing Industry Association meeting not so terribly long ago and was quite surprised to learn that in the building industry, particularly in areas like electrical engineering, a good fourth-year apprentice can now receive $100,000 per year. If things are so desperate, may I suggest that those parts of Australia that are suffering from the dreadful unemployment problems that seem to exist in some of these southern states—if we are to believe the speeches of the opposition—look towards the Gold Coast and south-east Queensland for career opportunities, because there is a labour shortage there. The comparative unemployment figures that were released yesterday put the unemployment rate in Fadden at something like 4.2 per cent, which I know is dramatically below the average. But there is a real demand for all sorts of workers in that area, certainly in terms of trades and high-tech areas but also in areas such as food processing. This is where the Gold Coast really has been absolutely unbelievable in recent times in its diversity and concepts.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, through Austrade, recently gave an award to a Gold Coast company for the export of pate to France. Who would ever have thought a few years ago that a small Australian company that was making pate, basically for a supermarket audience in Australia, would gain an award such as this? But it has happened, and the story of how it happened is quite interesting. Some of it went to Noumea—they come to the Gold Coast for a lot of their holidays and medical services—and the French population of Noumea got to like it. Somebody went back to Paris and said, ‘This is good stuff,’ and so this export market started. After working in conjunction with the CSIRO on the vacuum packing, the pate now has a shelf life of about nine months, and its transportation and distribution is relatively easy. It has been an outstanding success.

In a place like the Yatala industrial estate, which in itself is a remarkable concept and one that is well supported by the government and Austrade, there is a small goods company that is exporting sausages to Japan. There is another company that is making, basically, steel bolts—I am not quite sure how you would describe them—that hold down houses and buildings. They went into the export market and, all of a sudden, they are receiving huge orders from overseas, particularly from the Gulf States where such rapid building is going on.

This whole sense of innovation is good. The government have made an investment in the technical education side and they have also made a big investment in the Gold Coast campus of Griffith University, which is in my electorate. The medical school in Southport, which is not in my electorate but in the electorate of Moncrieff, is about to get under way. We were delighted to see the extra places that they were granted last year and that have been provided for over the coming years in the budget, providing further opportunities to expand their facilities and their courses.

While the member for Newcastle was complaining about some of the investment in education, Griffith University—and particularly the Gold Coast campus—is interesting because the ratio of would-be tertiary students to the population is less than half of the percentage of that offered to the locals in Newcastle and, indeed, half of the opportunities that are given to the people of Wollongong. Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, through your own electorate you would know that that campus of Griffith extends well beyond the Queensland border to the south, and there are young people coming from as far away as your electorate—from Lismore—to attend the courses there. It is providing a number of opportunities that are not uniquely Gold Coast but have been brought on by the dynamism that exists there.

Can I cite you another example: Movie World, which is located in my electorate, contains quite a number of sound stages, and is used in the production of both Australian and overseas movies—a lot of which we never hear about but it all just happens there—and some high-class television production. Griffith University, at their Gold Coast campus, have a faculty of music. When I first heard of this, when I gained the Gold Coast campus in my electorate, I thought, ‘Not another one,’ because Griffith has the Conservatorium of Music in Brisbane. But the reality is that this department specialises in electronic and digital music. It is backed financially—very much so—by the film industry, and that industry is providing lots of opportunities for young people to go into it.

For some of us from the older generation who used to enjoy movie soundtracks played by the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra and the like, there is very little of this in today’s movies—most of it is electronic. Already a number of university graduates from Griffith, through the local production facility, have found themselves with jobs in Hollywood—so that in itself is becoming an export industry. The other area that comes into it is electronic games. Quite an industry has developed at the back of Southport in the production of electronic games, and this in itself is providing some great opportunities for exports and for the young graduates from Griffith University. One particular company I am aware of employs something like 250 people, including 170 graduates from Griffith University, who come not only from the music department but also, of course, from those technical areas that work so closely with computerisation.

What this all leads to is the dramatic expansion of the Gold Coast. While I was speaking of an estimated population of 880,000 by the year 2020, already we are seeing growth rates of 14 per cent year upon year in that northern section of the Gold Coast. That is putting huge demands on our schools, on the provision of tertiary infrastructure and on a lot of the basic necessities. While it is all very well for members of the opposition to get up and talk about a neglect by the federal government to invest in infrastructure, one must also ask: what are the responsibilities of the Queensland state government at this stage? Unfortunately I think the Gold Coast has been neglected, and I would sincerely hope that in the upcoming budget of the Queensland government we may see Mr Beattie addressing some of those concerns.

In the area of health my Queensland colleagues and I receive a great number of letters from the Queensland Premier asking us to provide more medical places and more doctors. We see him on television, we see page after page of full page ads of what they are doing for Queensland Health, but he never tells you that there have been literally hundreds and hundreds of specialist medical staff, including doctors, who have left the system—who have resigned from Queensland Health.

I hope that in the coming weeks we see more from the Queensland budget than just the full-page advertisements and that a concerted effort is made to clean up that system. I am not going to repeat them here, but we have had some tremendous examples of neglect in the area of health in Queensland, and the demands for health on the Gold Coast are enormous. We read day after day that the Southport hospital, which is a state government instrumentality, is on bypass, sending emergency patients off to Tweed Heads, Logan Hospital or other hospitals in Brisbane. Up to 27 patients have been counted lined up on the ramp going into the hospital, waiting for admission. This is just not good enough, and obviously there is going to have to be some tremendous investment made in health facilities on the Gold Coast in coming years. Much of that is the responsibility of the Queensland government.

There is also our road system. While we have a magnificent freeway system between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, the state government has badly neglected the provision of feeder roads into the Gold Coast to make that system work. We now have a situation where traffic jams are the norm, with three lots of peak hours twice per day. Frankly, there has been very little investment. In rail, the fact that the Gold Coast is also a dormitory suburb for Brisbane has seen the state rail facility there dubbed in recent years ‘the Bombay express’ because you cannot get enough people on it. While duplication of that rail system has started, obviously transport both between Brisbane and the Gold Coast and within the Gold Coast is going to have to be a major priority of the state government.

While the Gold Coast is booming, can I just repeat that the people of the coast seem to be reasonably happy with the way the budget has gone. In fact, in some sections they are very happy. While we talk about this investment and the job opportunities for young people, the reality is that the Gold Coast still has a very high percentage of retirees. I think I am correct in saying it has the highest percentage of recipients of age pensions of any city in Australia. So may I congratulate the government on all it has done in the budget and urge it to continue to look at the Gold Coast as one of the greatest growth areas in Australia.

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