Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Ipswich is not in the seat of Longman, but I am sure that they look after the member very well. In particular I want to talk a little about the delivery of health services in my area and the hopes that we have locally that the health and hospital reform process will provide us with better services. It is a rapidly growing area, currently with about 360,000 people in the Moreton Bay Regional Council area alone, and it is the second fastest growing area in the world or the second fastest growing area in Australia, depending on who you talk to. We certainly expect rather large numbers of people to be moving into our area over the next few years.

The Minister for Health, Nicola Roxon, recently attended two events in our area that were important in relation to health services. The first of those was at North Lakes, where we had the official opening of the 12-chair dialysis unit at the North Lakes Health Precinct. This was able to be built with a $7 million funding grant from the federal government, and the state government has now opened that facility and it is serving people on the north side of Brisbane. We all understand that kidney disease is increasing, and the need for a dialysis unit in our area was becoming critical.

I also have a personal interest in the Caboolture Hospital, having been the state member of parliament many years ago responsible for getting the hospital built. Interestingly, they are now talking about a $600 million price tag to extend that hospital to have approximately twice the number of beds that it currently has. The hospital itself is now about double what it was in the first stage, and the first stage cost $19 million. The price tag for these things has certainly escalated, so we can understand the magnitude of the challenge both for the state government, who has responsibility for hospitals, and the federal government, who really is the group that funds most things that happen. I do want to mention the fact that the Queensland state health minister, Paul Lucas, paid a low key visit to the hospital late last year and spent several hours at the hospital talking to the staff and looking at the need for expansion. Notwithstanding the need to double the hospital, I still believe that the north side is very shortly going to require a further hospital to join with Caboolture, Redcliffe and Prince Charles in dealing with the needs of the community.

The other event that was attended by the health minister was not actually in my electorate but just to the south, in the electorate of Dickson. The minister opened a GP superclinic, which of course was an election commitment of our candidate at the last election, Fiona McNamara. The GP superclinic at Strathpine will serve people from the southern end of my electorate. People in the suburbs of Dakabin and Kallangur look naturally towards Strathpine for their services, and I am very grateful that that superclinic has been constructed and is now open and will serve those people. I understand an invitation went to the opposition health spokesman, the local member for Dickson, who declined to attend the opening service. This is an interesting thing because, whilst his party is opposed to this kind of establishment, it really is the parliament, through bills such as these appropriation bills, that decides that the money is going to be spent—and in this instance spent substantially for the benefit of his own constituents. I would have thought, on that basis, he ought to have been able to attend.

Education is an important issue for us, and in recent days we have heard the argy-bargy back and forth about the My School website, where there is a rating for each school based on its socioeconomic educational advantage or disadvantage. The majority of the Longman electorate is a relatively low socioeconomic area, and education is very important if our children are going to be able to improve their circumstances in the years to come. Through the Building the Education Revolution projects—which were, again, opposed by the coalition—schools in my electorate have had $109 million invested in them. Schools coming into the electorate from the electorate of Fisher after the redistribution takes place at the next election have had a further $15 million of investment. And schools just outside my electorate which serve children of families who live in my electorate have received another $5½ million. That is roughly $130 million worth of education expenditure in the area that I represent. People are very grateful for that.

Towards the end of last year, and I do not wish to sound like a martyr but I did drag myself out of my sick bed to go, I went to a year 7 speech night at the Bribie Island State School. The reason I wanted to go to that event in particular is that it was the first activity held in my electorate in a hall that had been funded under Building the Education Revolution. It was a sports hall, but obviously a hall which could be used for other purposes. I commented at that time to the people there that anyone who believed that halls of this nature were unnecessary and of no benefit to the schools needed to spend some time at the schools and spend some time talking to parents. This hall at that school is going to make an enormous amount of difference to the way teachers are able to deliver programs to the children who are entrusted to them.

To open shortly this year is another school hall, and quite a different one. This one is at the Banksia Beach State Primary School. Banksia Beach State Primary School did not build a sports hall; they built a hall that you might call a performance venue. That primary school is quite a large school. They have built a hall with 800-seat capacity. It has acoustic panelling and a stage the size of the stages at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. Some people might say that is a bit over the top for a primary school. But this particular primary school prides itself on its arts and simultaneously last year had a state champion primary school choir and a state champion primary school band. Part of the Building the Education Revolution is to provide community benefit as well as school benefit. In relation to this particular hall I wanted to make the point that in the Caboolture district of the Moreton Bay region that is the best performance venue available for the entire community.

In the late eighties and early nineties when my wife and I had three young children there was a children’s entertainer by the name of Peter Combe based out of Adelaide. He was very much, although a solo performer, a precursor to the modern group The Wiggles. He was very popular with young children. We sought, with his management at that time, to promote a concert of his in the Caboolture shire. We discovered that at that time there was no venue in our shire as it was then suitable for holding a children’s concert. There was no venue in our shire suitable for holding a children’s concert. And nothing had changed at all until the building that has now been completed at Banksia Beach State Primary School. As an afterthought, I notice that Peter Combe is now performing in nightclubs for the young adults who were his fans as children when he was younger and he is still doing the same songs. I guess what goes around comes around again in that sense. He is now able to make a living out of his earlier repertoire. To those young people listening today I recommend that they look out for him.

Last Sunday I was very honoured and privileged to attend St Pauls Lutheran Primary School church service at St Pauls Lutheran Church in Caboolture for the installation of Anton Prinsloo as the new principal. While I was there I was able to check on the progress of their new library building, which is indeed magnificent. I was told last year, when it was being planned, that it would be a substantial benefit to the school in enabling it to better educate the young people that our community entrusts to them. This year is the 25th anniversary of St Pauls Lutheran Primary School, a year they have been planning for. They are now moving down the path of triple streaming their school, and the library building and associated facilities will enable them to achieve those goals a whole lot easier.

We have had some discussion in this place about the Bradley review of universities. I have mentioned a number of times that it is a desire of mine to get the ball rolling towards having a university campus on the north side. The Moreton Bay Regional Council area has some 360,000 or 380,000 residents. A small campus of the Queensland University of Technology serves the community very well; however, the courses they have on offer are limited. It would be my desire to see the university expanded or a new university created to provide our young people with a broader range of study options. As most members would have done, at the end of last year I signed more than 1,000 letters of congratulation to students who completed year 12. I am sure that the members for Dickson and Petrie, who hold neighbouring seats to my seat of Longman, signed a similar number. Three thousand students completed year 12 in our area last year, and that is a pretty good population base on which to start to develop a proper university in our area.

I want to touch briefly on some other spending the government has made in the area. The State Equestrian Centre that the Moreton Bay Regional Council is building at Caboolture is a joint project between the federal, state and local governments. It is very important to the equine industries in our area, where we have training, spelling and breeding facilities for thoroughbreds, standardbred and quarter horses and activities in dressage and western riding. This is as you would expect in an area that is on the urban-rural interface, where equine activity is rife. People will appreciate that facility once it is opened. We have also invested $36 million in new social public housing—or a lot of the $36 million, because the housing is not all built yet—and over $1 million in repairs.

The bottom line is that this government is using the money that it has raised through various means from the population of Australia in an appropriate way that is benefiting the community, particularly my community. These bills, which move towards making a few adjustments around the edge where money has been allocated, are very worthy of our support. I commend them to the House.

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