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

I rise to speak of the magnificent community of Highfields, which is just north to my home city of Toowoomba. It was settled many years ago by originally largely German families as a rural area. It has grown over the years and through the decades as a dormitory suburb of Toowoomba city and nowadays is very much a standalone, independent and self-sufficient community that is continuing to grow at the rate of about three per cent per year. Highfields has a current population of roughly 13,000 people and it is projected to grow by another 10,000 over the next 15 years. That is quite significant. It places Highfields up there with other regional communities in my part of the world such as Warwick and Dalby, for example, which are going to be very quickly surpassed by Highfields in terms of population growth in the coming years.

This is a community that I was fortunate to spend part of my childhood in, and my wife, Anita, and I certainly had very enjoyable years in the Highfields community when our children were younger as well. I can recall very clearly waiting for the school bus on a dirt road, surrounded by paddocks and acreage that now accommodates a Catholic primary and secondary school in the form of Mary Mackillop Catholic College, a pub and a shopping centre. Whilst that might make me sound a little old, who would have thought?

Thank you for acknowledging that I'm probably not that old, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Over the last 12 months, as the federal member for Groom, I've attended numerous meetings in the Highfields community as it grapples with this growth. They are largely led by the Highfields and District Business Connections group. Their president is Jim O'Dea. That group and his efforts have brought the Highfields community together to consider its future growth options. Later this month, I will be attending a roundtable meeting looking at the business and community heart of Highfields and its options going into the future. I launched those discussions just recently with the assistance of Toowoomba Regional Council, led by Mayor Paul Antonio, and my good friend and colleague the state member for Toowoomba North, Trevor Watts.

When a community, local government, state government and federal government come together to talk about community growth and managing that growth in the years to come, I believe it lays down a vision and, certainly, an example for the rest of regional Australia to consider. It is for that reason that, along with the member for Paterson, who is on our Select Committee on Regional Development and Decentralisation, I will put forward Highfields as a model for consideration.

Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If no member present objects, three-minute constituency statements may continue for a total of 60 minutes. I call the member for Paterson.