Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's my great pleasure to rise and discuss tonight the incredible turnaround we have seen in the Geelong regional economy in the almost five years since we were elected in September 2013. At the time we were elected, things were looking fairly bleak. A few months previously Ford had announced—under Labor, of course—that it was closing shop and ending manufacturing in Australia. This was a real blow for the people of Geelong. The Q&A program came down a short time after I was elected and we did a program. Q&A regrettably tried to paint a fairly bleak picture of Geelong as a city on its knees. I have to say that through incredible hard work, investment, a great vision for the city and the Corangamite electorate and incredible effort investing in job creation programs we are seeing a city transformed.

We've just announced that we've reached more than one million new jobs in five years, and that is a wonderful achievement of the Turnbull government. It comes some five months earlier than we had promised. In the Geelong region between September 2013 and February of this year the number of people in work increased from 124,000 to 141,000—an increase of 13.2 per cent—and Corangamite's unemployment rate has fallen to just 3.4 per cent. We're also seeing some really important ground being made up in youth unemployment in Geelong's north, which is in the adjoining electorate of Corio, where unemployment, and youth unemployment in particular, is coming down.

As I say, this is all because of the incredibly hard work we are doing, backing small business with tax cuts, encouraging exporters with new trade agreements, investing in congestion-busting road and rail infrastructure, working to make power bills more affordable and fixing the budget to get Labor's debt burden off our backs. We're also working very hard encouraging people to move into work. We believe, of course, that the best form of welfare is a job, so we're investing in all sorts of programs encouraging people to seek work. Some incredible projects are happening in my electorate and in the Geelong region, projects like the NDIA headquarters, which is now under construction. Even WorkSafe, a state government enterprise, is coming to Geelong—following a Liberal commitment, I might add. It is being funded by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to the tune of $68 million. Thousands of new jobs are being created, particularly in manufacturing. Companies like Air Radiators, Boundary Bend, AKD Softwoods, Australian Lamb and Carbon Revolution are going from strength to strength, all of which have been supported by our government. Carbon Revolution is an incredible story. It has just announced a carbon fibre wheel supply agreement with Ferrari in Italy. It is supplying its wheels to Ferrari and becoming a global leader in carbon fibre wheels. Backed with $7.5 million from our government and another $10 million in equity from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Carbon Revolution is now on track to become bigger than Ford. It's an incredibly exciting story.

We are growing. We've put $150 million into local rail infrastructure for the duplication of the South Geelong rail track between Waurn Ponds and South Geelong. We are hoping to see some money from the state government. It is very disappointing that there has been only $10 million from the state. Other parts of the electorate like Torquay and Ocean Grove, Queenscliff and Colac and all through the Colac district and the Otways—all of those areas—are booming through tourism, through our investment in incredibly important infrastructure projects like the Princes Highway duplication, which is in total more than half a billion dollars.

We are opening up new markets and bringing new industries to the region and, of course, supporting tourism, backed by our strong belief in investing in the Great Ocean Road. We're incredibly proud of the way in which we are seeing our local economy transformed through very strong investment backing small business and building a stronger economy. (Time expired)