Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the great privileges of being in here in the nation's capital and the nation's parliament is that we can often cast our eye over the performance of the relative states and territories. While Queensland, my home state, is a proud, parochial, large and disperse state population wise, things haven't been going so well in the last couple of years. The state of Queensland has slipped to No. 5 in the State of the states report by the Commonwealth Bank. While I congratulate Tasmania—if for no other reason than having a Liberal government—moving in front of Queensland, it's quite foreign for Queensland to regard itself as a state that isn't leading the nation. We regularly touch up your state in State of Origin, you would recall, Deputy Speaker Coulton. We proudly have more crocodiles than the Northern Territory. We have a more profitable commodity sector than WA. So coming fifth out of eighth isn't a pretty picture. It is incumbent on the government of the day to be sorting that out. My great frustration is that that's just not the case.

The Queensland Labor government is focused on employing more and more public servants and it has become an increasing part of the state budget, which is a great concern. In my city, one very close to Brisbane City Council, unemployment in the last two years has gone from five per cent to seven per cent. That's a massive concern when you have a state Labor government obviously soaking up some of that unemployment in public service positions, but ultimately you can't keep funding a growing public service. It's worth comparing that with New South Wales, which actually reports each quarter its decline in the size of its public service. Queensland now has an even larger per capita public service than New South Wales—and New South Wales reports that proudly with a great big bar graph. Queensland of course doesn't report it because it's all bad news. You can keep employing public servants but that's never a solution to unemployment. What you need to do is activate the private sector and activate the economy, not just watch on as a stunned, paralysed observer who's frozen at the wheel.

We saw last week's decision, which the Queensland Labor government celebrated proudly, to hand a 30 per cent advantage to Queensland firms when they were tendering for government work. That sounds like protecting jobs for Queenslanders—according to a Labor government of whom almost none have studied economics—but, self-evidently, if you start providing your own domestic providers a 30 per cent advantage, you are by definition disadvantaging by the same percentage of providers from other states and territories and even those from overseas who are going to tender for government work. If we start seeing this as a reverse 30 per cent tax on Queensland, ultimately if your state were to do this to Queensland, it would be a diabolical situation. It wouldn't save any jobs at all. It would have the reverse effect. So Queensland's very short-sighted decision in thinking that they're giving a leg up to their own domestic firms is actually hurting them with the risk of reciprocation and other states doing precisely what we are doing to them. It brings us back to that golden rule: don't do unto others that which you wouldn't want to see done to yourself.

So in Queensland we have seen, first of all, a real lack of focus on inspiring the private sector. Secondly, we are not seeing a lot of investment in roads infrastructure, at the expense of public transport. In my city we now have three new bus stops but there has been almost no road work in the last three years. You have to almost be in denial not to understand just how irrationally connected all of us are to driving our motor vehicles. Let me just say one very, very simple thing: bus stops will not decongest our roads. You're simply building a bigger, fancier one for more millions of dollars, but it is not changing the public transport experience, unless in public transport you have a dedicated lane, expressways or something that reduces the transit time. Quite simply, bus stops alone are not going to do it. I'm deeply concerned about where Queensland Labor is heading in that respect.

Lastly, I'd note that, in my city, they've just succeeded in reviewing the SEQ regional plan. They have removed from the footprint a large 80-hectare area of Commonwealth space which has been transferred to council. When that's transferred, we can initiate a conversation about how to use that land. Labor has removed it from the footprint—effectively closing off every use of 80 hectares, of which nearly half is already cleared fields, with the remaining half utterly koala and bushland protected. But we can't have a discussion about a university, a convention centre or a major piece of infrastructure because of this very short-sighted removal from the urban footprint.

This land, close to a large city, is incredibly valuable. We had a consultation period where all of the Labor MPs said nothing. The consultation period closed. There were four months and the report was written and was about to be sent to the printers, and the Labor MP, I believe, was tipped off by the minister to start a petition to save the bushland. And 44 days later, with no further conversation about this topic, it vanished from the plan. That may well be a political game that might suit the interests of a Labor member chasing Green preferences but it does long-term harm to the ability of a great city like Redland to secure a major piece of regional infrastructure that can attract economic activity to my city.