Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak about a far more positive topic and the centre of the universe, which is my electorate of Groom, particularly Toowoomba and the Darling Downs, an area that I have grown very fond of since I moved there to take up a position with GrainGrowers for three years in 1991. As my time as the representative of that wonderful seat draws closer to an end, I would like to say how proud I am of the way that region is performing. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have the sort of people who make a town, a city or a region great, but Toowoomba is endowed with people and companies that seem to think that there is no other place they would ever want to invest in to see the city grow.

The long-established Wagner family, who started in business by making gravestones out of granite, recently completed a $200 million airport. Not only has it been operating flights to Sydney during most of last year, but flights to Melbourne have now opened. Toowoomba is now being connected to the whole world through those direct flights because, if you fly to Sydney or Melbourne, you can then fly anywhere in the world. But the real economic drive out of that airport will be the opportunity to export Australia's clean green produce from those farmers who I was so proud to represent before I came into this House and who, in fact, I still represent.

There is an investment of half a billion dollars being made to build a new shopping centre in Toowoomba. When I talk about that in cities and country centres around Australia, people are just amazed that anyone would make an investment like that. In fact, the Queensland Investment Corporation probably has more confidence in the Toowoomba and the Darling Downs region, and more particularly in the shoppers of that region, than I do. My wife is one of those expert shoppers, and she has trained her daughters well, so I can vouch for the opportunity that is presented! Seriously, to see that sort of investment going on in a city of 130,000 people is mind-blowing. Of course, as they say in the ads, there is more!

This government has committed almost half a billion dollars in the two decades going forward in the recent defence white paper to ensure that the Defence installations—the Army aviation base, or Swartz Barracks as it is known, and the Cabarlah signals unit, and I will not tell you what else they do—have the equipment, the opportunity and the facilities to make sure that Australia's defence is sound. Those two facilities, which have a history that goes way back into the pre-Second World War era, play an important role not only in the nation's defence but also in ensuring we have high-calibre people brought into our region whom we can then poach from the Defence Force and keep to grow our own economy when they feel they have had enough time playing a very important role in defending this country.

Of course, no discussion of Toowoomba would be complete without mention of the Toowoomba Second Range Crossing, which has probably been talked about in Toowoomba for some 40 years. In reality, it took a coalition government, state and federal, to make the commitment to build it. It is a $1.7 billion project and the largest inland road project ever built in Australia. Forty-two kilometres of greenfield road will take 4,000 to 5,000 heavy vehicles a day out of the main street of Toowoomba. It will change the whole complexion of Toowoomba, but again, in an economic sense, it will make a vast difference to the way in which our region can develop economically. By 'develop economically', I mean it will continue to drive the amazing amount of growth that is going on in our region.

About $1.5 billion a year comes to Toowoomba from the coal seam gas industry, an industry which has transformed the economic make-up of the rural areas I used to represent. Those sorts of economic changes are going to continue.

Toowoomba does boast—and we do boast a little, occasionally—an unemployment rate of four per cent, which is a rate that most cities in Australia would give their eye teeth for. But it has not come easily. It has come not only through strong government policy from the coalition but from families and individuals who have been prepared to put their money where their mouth is and make Toowoomba and the Darling Downs a better place.

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