John McVeigh (Groom, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to bring to the attention of the House that this weekend, on Sunday, 23 October, my home city of Toowoomba will see a history-making event, and that is the departure from our relatively new Brisbane West Wellcamp Airport of a business delegation direct from our city of Toowoomba to Shanghai. We will see well over 200 delegates from our local business community, from agriculture, resources and other interests across our region, leave on a Qantas chartered jet to go and look at opportunities in China—in Shanghai to start with and throughout China, for a period of quite some days.

This is a very exciting event for our region. It has been organised by Toowoomba and Surat Basin Enterprise and entitled the Access China 2016 business delegation. I take the opportunity to congratulate TSBE, Toowoomba and Surat Basin Enterprise; its board and particularly its executive chairman, Mr Shane Charles; and Dr Ben Lyons, another senior executive from this organisation, who has significant Chinese experience in his own career over quite some years. The delegation will be led, as I have suggested, by leading businesspeople from our region, including our mayor, Paul Antonio, the Mayor of the Toowoomba Regional Council, and other leading citizens.

I want to mention in particular Dr Mary Wagner, the matriarch of the Toowoomba community—sometimes she is referred to as 'the Queen of Toowoomba'. It is her sons who established, over just the last couple of years, the Brisbane West Wellcamp Airport. This airport is the first greenfields development of an airport in Australia in many, many decades, totally privately funded and developed by the Wagner family. It will be tremendous for them and our whole community to see Dr Mary Wagner leading the charge on this particular delegation.

The delegation itself will offer the delegates the latest business and industry updates from experts in the Asian—and particularly Chinese—marketplace. It will provide them with prequalified Chinese business matching and networking opportunities—really ramping up their market research and then, all going well, their entry into various market opportunities in the great country of China. As well as that, of course, they will have networking opportunities amongst themselves and, most particularly, business planning and development opportunities with those on the ground that they will need to speak to.

The target industry sectors for this delegation include agriculture. In my electorate of Groom, in the Darling Downs surrounding our city of Toowoomba, we enjoy the fact that we are amongst the most productive and diverse agricultural production regions in Australia. I know, Deputy Speaker Coulton, that you are proud of your region for similar reasons, and I am particularly proud of the Darling Downs. The delegation will provide opportunities for those involved in the health and aged care sector—keeping in mind that Toowoomba is a regional hub, if you like, for Northern New South Wales and Southern Queensland, from an inland perspective, for so many health services for families right across those areas.

Energy and resources, particularly out of the Surat Basin, west of Toowoomba, is a sector again targeted in this delegation. Another sector is sustainable design and manufacturing—of course, largely for agriculture, food manufacturing and so forth. We will see a number of delegates interested in that sector. Education is another major industry for our region. The University of Southern Queensland, TAFE Queensland South West, boarding schools and excellent secondary schools in our region have opportunities throughout Asia in terms of future students and staff as well. Lastly, is tourism; we are particularly proud of the fact that our annual Carnival of Flowers and southern inland Queensland tourism opportunities—of course, all facilitated by this new airport—provide significant opportunities for our region going forward.

I congratulate TSBE on arranging this delegation. In particular, I wish all of the delegates all the very best for this experience in AccessChina 2016. I look forward to hearing of the opportunities and the stories that they will bring home in the coming weeks.

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