Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think the member for Fadden needs to talk to his constituency and find out their particular views on that project. I should also talk about the ability of different developers and investors in our region. You would also be aware of—I have spoken about them in this House before—the future residential development of Yarrabilba and the residential development of Greater Flagstone.

To give you some idea of the size of these projects, Yarrabilba—which many people might remember as the old Hancock pine forests—is some 2½ thousand hectares of essentially greenfields site for development. It will give the developers, planners and governments an opportunity to do something right in terms of development. I spoke to Rob Moore the other day, the man who is responsible for pulling this project together, from Lend Lease. It is a 30- or 40-year project, and it is expected that there will be some 70,000 residents, bringing billions of dollars of investment. He said that, given the notions of the ETS and CPRS, this is an opportunity to build a carbon-neutral urban community. It is a challenge that we as a government certainly support, as do companies like Delfin Lend Lease and people like Rob Moore, who are committed to providing investment to that region. The Greater Flagstone project is even larger. Some 80,000 people are projected to live there over the next 25 years. It is being done by a company called Tre Developments. They have said to governments and local authorities that they are willing to provide public infrastructure to ensure that economically we can drive these projects forward. I applaud Dave Cooke, the man who has been presenting this as part of the solution for the region.

Mr Deputy Speaker, you have heard me talk in this chamber about the great south-west and the notion of cross-border relationships from South-East Queensland down to Coffs Harbour. This is essentially a major project that brings rail, road, freight, passenger transport and those communities together into one major infrastructure project.

In conclusion, when we are talking about these appropriations it is important to have safeguards against events that may come our way. For a government to respond in the way that we have is certainly commendable. During the time of great economic growth, the lack of skilled workers was a major issue for employers, and we all know that it had a major impact on many businesses. That is something on which we as a Labor government have proven our ability in the past. We have made sure that we have provided appropriate training to get the skill levels of future workers to a point where they will benefit future employers and will certainly benefit our economy. Anyone who loses their job needs support. Anyone who finds themselves in a situation of concern about their future should know that we as a government will support them financially to retrain and that we will offer them a level of support during a redundancy period. We will certainly prepare people for the future and the time when the economic cycle turns. With that, I commend these cognate bills to the House.

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