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

I congratulate you on your ascension, Deputy Speaker O'Brien. I have two issues. The first is the Queensland health department's tendering of dairy, turning to Lactalis instead of Maleny Dairies—what awful treatment of a local provider! State Labor instead chose for all the profits to filter back to a multinational, overseas. They could have split the tender and made sure that both providers were winners, but they chose not to, despite their 'put Queensland first' policy in tendering. Just two weeks later, Lactalis decided to close their Queensland operations. That's right: phase it all interstate the minute they secured the contract. Was that considered in the tender process? No. It's slack Labor tendering again, costing Queensland, costing jobs and costing Maleny Dairies and making it absolutely clear that Queensland Labor cannot manage tendering.

Let's move to the Queensland Rural Fire Service. Five years ago, on 10 September 2015, the community got together for a rural fire service in Mount Cotton. Who would kill it off? Don Brown MP and his Labor union mates. They didn't want a rural fire service in Mount Cotton. What did we get? We got a fire the following year: water bombing, 26 fire crews and still no rural fire service in Mount Cotton, because of union opposition to having rural fire services. Four years on and Mick de Brenni walks in, in a classic 'What happens if I press this button?' moment, and says, 'Why don't we have a rural fire service here?' It's too late; it's out of the box; it's all happening. Congratulations to the community: you've flipped Labor again. We have rural fire services for Mount Cotton, where we deserve them. (Time expired)