Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I recently attended a Queensland Cancer Council fundraising event at RSL Fairways, on the north side of Bundaberg, with my wife, Alison. This event was organised by local resident Margaret Crabb, ably supported by Peter Carey from the Queensland Cancer Council. One of the great parts of this event was a mad hatters tea party. I am not sure whether you had to be mad to wear a hat or just a mad hat, but eventually my wife and I judged the mad hatters event. The winner was Berice Moody, and the reason for Berice getting up was basically that she had built her hat out of teabags which were completely recyclable—after the event she used them for afternoon tea. We thought that was a fantastic opportunity to recycle those things.

In my electorate of Hinkler what is desperately needed is more aged-care beds. My biggest demographic groups are the over-85s, with 3,141 residents, and the over-65s, with 30,414 residents. That is an enormous amount. I have had a number of meetings with aged-care providers recently which have been very encouraging, but we need to ensure that we build more of these facilities locally and we need to build in the very near future. They tell me they have opportunities after we get the bubble through from the baby boomers to use those facilities as a cheap way of providing residential accommodation. I would encourage people to get into those things and build them as quickly as possible because we need them now.

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