George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to associate myself with the remarks of the member for Wills and congratulate him on the excellent work he has done. Certainly the Coptic Christian community in Egypt has been under siege. We saw the Palm Sunday bombings, bombings last year and many other atrocities. These people are in great need—

Mr Hawke interjecting—

Yes, I acknowledge the member for Mitchell as well on that. But what I really want to talk about this morning is the announcement of the rollout of the Bowen Basin communities Regional Jobs and Investment Package, something I have fought long and hard for this government to deliver for communities throughout the Bowen Basin, including the Mackay regional area, the Whitsunday regional area and Bowen. It has gone down to the coalfields, the hinterland of Mackay, Rockhampton and Gladstone. There has been $30 million allotted by the federal government to go to businesses and organisations that successfully apply for that funding. It is going to be used to transition their businesses into new markets and new processes. Perhaps they are going to buy new capital equipment that will allow them to do new things.

This is an extremely practical way that local businesses can diversify. We talk about diversifying economies a lot in my part of the world. A lot of paperwork, study and research has gone into it, but we do not see too much on the ground. This is practical stuff. It gets government out of the way, apart from just handing over some incentivisation funding. What happens then is that businesses can decide where they want to put that money. They have to match it as well, so this $30 million will be an injection of $60 million into local economies throughout that part of the world, my part of the world. We are ultimately going to see out of that the creation of new jobs and the sustainability of existing jobs.

We have had over the previous three to four years an economic downturn in the coalmining sector and we know how important it is for our region to diversify. I am very pleased that the local advisory group that has been looking at this has worked on different areas—tourism, health, education and the resources sector—and looked at what can happen in diversifying there. All of those areas will be looked at for funding. I encourage local businesses that think they can do something new and create new jobs to apply for these funds that are now available.