Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tenders for Townsville is about jobs. Tenders for Townsville is about how we make business work locally. Queensland is a decentralised state. Townsville is 1,400 kilometres from its capital city and there is a population of over 200,000 people. We have viable and vibrant industries and suppliers. We need to make sure the government business that comes into our town is done by local businesses, with training opportunities and jobs done locally, so that the profit from those jobs is reinvested in our city by our people.

Recently my office sent out a survey to gauge what people wanted out of a tender process. These are some of the responses we received:

The size of many tenders prohibits locals from tendering and [we] have to be content with a subcontractor role, which has its own issues with payment terms.

Too much red tape makes it hard for small business to meet requirements or supply at all. One business owner sent in a response saying:

Government tenders, especially for small local companies, can be very confusing and very labour intensive … less red tape is the key.

Another one said:

Tendering is more about completing the 100-plus pages of jargon and not about the quality, local skills, services and goods on offer.

Surely, this is where we should be when it comes to driving home what we want to do with government work. Government work is more than just providing the service. Government work is more than just providing a lovely piece of infrastructure, which we all want. Government work is about being able to facilitate trade, being able to facilitate commerce and providing the settings around which business can operate and profit.

No government creates wealth. What government does is assess the circumstances around which private enterprise can operate and provide that wealth. What we are seeing with the way businesses are operated at the moment, the way tender opportunities operates at the moment, is that too many training hours are being wasted in non-employment generating facilities. When it comes down to where tenders are going at the moment—the big end of town—they no longer employ tradespeople and they no longer build anything. All the work, the debt and everything seems to be carried on by the subcontractor, who then must provide the training opportunities for apprentices.

In this country we go through boom and bust cycles when it comes to apprenticeships and trades. Shifting the focus of where we want to deliver tenders by making it more local and being able to deliver it to local companies who are providing the opportunities for people is the way we will provide skills for the future, jobs for the young, jobs for first-generation migrants. That is the way we will build a community and a society.

Tenders for Townsville is a fantastic opportunity and I will be driving this all the way through to the election.