Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

You may wonder why I am speaking to this wonderful motion about the G20 meeting put by the member for Brisbane. My electorate of Page is but a beautiful two- to three-hour drive south of Brisbane. I have been working with my local businesses, with my local chambers of commerce and with the tourism bodies in my electorate to ensure we gain some leverage out of this wonderful conference that has been organised. As the member for Brisbane said, this is not only a major responsibility; it is a major opportunity. I will run through some figures that have already been quoted. At this conference, we will have 85 per cent of the global economy represented and 75 per cent of the world's population. There will be 2,000 people from the media there and 4,000 delegates—and spouses as well. So there is great opportunity for us. Obviously, and as we would be well aware, these are not just ordinary people, in the sense that they are global decision makers; they are great people to impress and great people to sell our areas and our communities to.

As the member for Brisbane put so articulately, there is going to be a tender process for procurements for this as well. That is a great opportunity, and I will certainly be working with my local chambers and business networks so that they, too, will tender for parts of this.

An honourable member: In Kyogle, I think?

Absolutely! The important part of this is not only, as I just said, that these people will be here but that they are people of great decision-making abilities. Again, there are huge opportunities and we know the partners as well.

Can I just talk about the conference itself? We have a great opportunity. As the previous member just said, our global economy has great challenges right now but also great opportunities. I know that this government will take a leading role in being the host of this conference to articulate a message to the world of the important position we are in. I have always been very intrigued when I look at history to see why countries become leaders at any point. If you go back and look at any example, whether that be Portugal, Spain, Britain or Greece, when any country was a leader in the world they had a relatively open economy. They were countries or economies that were very much into trading and they were very open to other people around the planet.

We can look right now at economies in our world that are doing well or not so well. This is an exaggerated example, but unfortunately a very true one: North Korea. It is a very closed economy in many senses of the word—not just in trading but in lots of other ways as well. We can see that the people of that country are not in a good way. I always see Hong Kong as a good comparison. It was quite separate from China before they got together again late in the last century. Hong Kong always had an open economy and quite a prosperous economy and people, where economies next door did not if they were closed.

This is not only a good opportunity for us, and a great opportunity for the people of Brisbane and other parts of Queensland, but seriously very much an opportunity for people, businesses and tourism bodies in my electorate to leverage off this to sell the great country that we are, the great culture that we have and the great produce that we have. I know that the Treasurer and the Prime Minister will also be articulating a case and an economic thing at this conference that the world needs to get its policy settings right. As a previous member said, this is not just domestically but also as a global economy. We speak for the wellbeing of 20-odd million Australians in this chamber; the people at this conference will be speaking for three-quarters of the world's population. We need to make sure that we get the policy settings right at this; that we remain open economies and that we remain economies that are in open dialogue with each other, trade with each other and share many cultural and other things with each other so that we continue to grow economically for the benefit of all our constituents. Thank you.

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