Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Successful projects under round 5 of the Building Better Regions Fund have been announced, and I'm very excited to share that my region will benefit from more than $5 million in funding.

An opposition member: Another rort.

It's wonderful to hear Labor put down, as they always do, the efforts of the hardworking people who fought to get this funding, the community members who did the hard work to get this funding! I want them to hear that because that's what Labor thinks of them. It thinks everything should be controlled in some other way. These are people who have reached out and done the hard work for it, and I'm going to recount some of them. It's absolutely shameful that the work of these people is being spoken down by Labor like that.

We've got the Great Divide Mountain Bike Destination. This is a project that has come from the community. The Toowoomba mountain bike community slowly built up the case for this project, bit by bit, over 20 years. They made these paths themselves, working very closely with the council and with the local environmental groups to get the paths agreed to and to get them in place. They built up a community that supports them, and I'm very happy to have stood beside them on the day the announcement for the funding came through for them. This is a community-led project. These are community members who have fought to get this funding for their project, and they absolutely deserve it. It's fantastic to see. And it's mountain biking, not motorbiking, Deputy Speaker Llew O'Brien! It's very safe.

Another great project that we have is the Darling Downs Health Museum. This was fought for by the Toowoomba Hospital Foundation to have on the Baillie Henderson Hospital site. Toowoomba has a fantastic reputation for its long history of providing great health care throughout a huge part of Western Queensland and right down into northern New South Wales. In fact, people from Delungra and Moree, where my family came from, who needed big operations were sent to Toowoomba first. Toowoomba has a great history, and it's wonderful for this museum to get a place to bring together those memories on the site of Bailey Henderson. We're now looking forward to the Premier of Queensland coming on board and funding the new hospital that Toowoomba needs—$1.2 billion. I'm sure that will happen any day now.

It's also great to see $1 million going towards the construction of an indoor bowls at Club Toowoomba. This is a great project that has brought together small clubs that were struggling across the region with the debts required to keep these assets alive and keep them open. Club Toowoomba brought them together in one place. They fought for, and I'm very happy they got, this funding for an indoor bowls arena. These bowls clubs have huge histories in Toowoomba. It's an incredibly popular pastime in our region. It's wonderful that the future of these clubs has been secured with his great piece of infrastructure, with $1 million going to Club Toowoomba. It was a great job from everybody there.

The last one is quite exciting—Meatstock 2022. This is a Toowoomba Regional Council project, which will receive $25,000 to keep them on track.

Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Groom. I'd just advise him that I'm good at crashing mountain bikes as well as motorbikes!