Premier's address to the Townsville Enterprise Business Breakfast

Thank you and good morning everyone. It’s wonderful to be here in Townsville, and we’ve got an exciting week ahead of us. But can I start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we gather and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. Can I acknowledge Kevin Gill, the Chairman of Townsville Enterprise, and Patricia O’Callaghan, thank you very much for inviting us here for your breakfast here this morning to meet with business leaders. It’s wonderful to accept your invitation, and I hope it’s a sign of many more things to come. Can I also acknowledge in the room the three local MPs for this region who I work with every day. Minister Coralee O’Rourke, Scott Stewart and Aaron Harper, thank you very much for all the work that you do for Townsville. Can I acknowledge the mayors that are here. A special happy birthday to Mayor Jenny Hill. She said don’t mention the birthday today, but since Patricia’s already done that, the cat’s out of the bag. And we’ve also got councillors that are here, we’ve got a large selection of ministers that are here, so can I acknowledge all of them, and MPs, and to each and every one of you, welcome and thank you very much ladies and gentlemen for coming here.

Well, as Patricia said, this is the start of a week where not only are we bringing the Parliament here, but we’re also governing from here as well. So, everything is going to be happening in Townsville. You are the centre of Queensland this week. But even when Parliament is sitting in Brisbane, let me assure you Townsville is always front and centre of our minds, and to bring the Parliament here is no easy feat, but I think it’s absolutely worthwhile, and it was a commitment that I gave when we were re-elected, that we would bring Parliament to the regions. And it’s been 17 years since it’s been in Townsville, and I actually think that each term of government we should have a regional Parliament. I think we should give that a big tick and we should make sure that that happens in years to come, because it has been a while since, I think it’s about 7 or 8 years, since the last one.

But you might have woken up to some good news, and I know Minister Ryan is with us here this morning, and the local MPs have been in my ear and also in Minister Ryan’s ear, I think, every single day, and we’ve been able to announce today that we are bringing forward the extra police that we promised. So we promised that we would have additional police here by 2022, we will now have those 53 extra police here by the end of 2020, so I really want to thank Minister Ryan for bringing that forward. So thank you very much, Mark.

This week we’re expecting more than 2000 school children to visit Parliament in the coming days, and I also hope that the community does get involved, as well. There will be an evening session of Question Time, but I do hope that members of the public do actually come and participate in the Parliament, because the Parliament is the people’s house and hopefully the questions will reflect what’s happening across our state, but importantly this week what’s happening across the regions.

So we know that Townsville is an important city centre in Queensland. We are backing Townsville, we are backing the economy, we’re backing Townsville infrastructure, and also, we’re backing Townsville jobs. But we’re also backing the people of north Queensland, as Patricia was saying, many of whom are getting back on their feet after the February floods, which I’ll touch on now. I wanted to touch on the region’s recovery. You know, it’s been about six months, just six months on from those flood events, and in fact Director-General Dave Stewart and I and the Mayor were just commenting then about the path to recovery. And what we saw here was something that was completely unprecedented, and as we know now the reports have come out that show it was a one in 500-year flood event.

It devastated people’s livelihoods, their households, primary producers and businesses. A lot of people were affected in this region, from Townsville right across to the north west. But even before the waters receded, recovery efforts were already well under way and the all too familiar routine of cleaning, repairing and rebuilding took place afterwards, and as you’d expect, everyone pitched in. Our defence force, emergency services, Ergon, RoadTek, Council, just to name a few, everybody was there working. And today I want to personally thank everyone who has played a part in these recovery efforts. And my Government has been there every step of the way and we’ll continue to be, working with the Commonwealth Government and the Townsville City Council, and I just want to make this point… Patricia sort of touched on it. When we get to issues around natural disasters, we work best when we all work together, and what we did see during that event is all levels of government working together regardless of politics. And it’s something I’ve commented on to the Prime Minister, and I know the Mayor has commented as well, these were unprecedented events and at the end of the day what was front and centre of everyone’s mind, including mine, was the people.

At the end of the day, it’s about people and the impacts that it has on them and how we can help them. We provided some $78 million in personal hardship and disaster recovery assistance. Grants of up to $10,000 were provided to restore business confidence and increase future resilience, and to date small business and not-for-profit organisations in Townsville have had 607 applications for disaster funding assistance approved, totalling $8.2 million. And while so much progress has been made since February in rebuilding and recovering, I know that there is still a long way to go, and we will recommit our efforts to that. Part of rebuilding and recovering is making sure that the local economy is stimulated. That’s one of the reasons why we’re backing Townsville infrastructure, investing $1.5 billion over the next four years supporting over 1200 local jobs and providing a consistent pipeline of civil construction work, infrastructure that is designed to boost the overall economic capacity of north Queensland for the future. Water security, an expanded port, the ring-road, a better Bruce, a repaired and improved Mt Isa to Townville rail link, a critical piece of economic infrastructure setting Townsville up for the future. Infrastructure that will help support and attract new industries and new investment from here and abroad. And the thing about this infrastructure is that it’s all happening right now. You can see it rising from the ground.

And nowhere is it clearer that it's rising from the ground than the Townsville Stadium. Who’s impressed with how good that is looking at the moment? Isn’t it wonderful? It is. Everyone should be proud in north Queensland because it was people’s power, honestly, it was the people coming together that said they wanted a new stadium. And if I go back to 2015, it was the key piece of infrastructure that we promised going into that election, and the fact that it’ll be finished, completed by next year, for all of Townsville. I had Todd Greenberg in the other day, and he said ‘have you seen that stadium?’ and he thinks that it is just going to be sensational. So I’m looking forward to being up here for the opening, and the stimulation that’s provided into the local economy is good, too. To date an estimated 481 north Queensland businesses have been part of the supply chain, and it’s a $290 million project. So it’s 750 jobs. I know that is going to absolutely generate that precinct as well, so I think you’ll see a whole movement of businesses that will spring up from around there as well, and I think everybody in Townsville should be proud when that opens. Because if it wasn’t for you and your advocacy, that would not have happened.

Of course another key issue is water security, and it’s an issue that has been talked about here for many years and we tackled that head on. What we did do is put in the $225 million to fund that pipeline project, so that’ll be a thousand direct and indirect jobs in the region, and 90 local businesses have been involved with the project so far. The local members and the Mayor and I went out and we actually saw the pipes that we’ll be putting in there, but of course, that’s also, too, a commitment of my Government saying we back water security for your city. We’re investing $180 million into the major upgrade of the Townsville Port. Tenders for the works and dredge material, offloading jetty are expected to be called next month, with dredging works to commence in 2020, and the major upgrade will increase the capacity of the Townsville Port for more exports helping to drive local industries. Keeping the local economy moving means keeping the people of Townsville moving, and the city is a key player in our state’s regional road network.

To ease congestion in this important tourism and freight corridor, we’re investing in the Townsville Ring Road Stage Five project, with our investment of $36 million. This $180 million project will duplicate the remaining six-kilometre, two lane section of the 22-kilometre Ring Road link with an interchange to provide access to Beck Drive. 200 jobs will be supported over the life of the project. And after the critical Mt Isa to Townsville rail line was impacted by the floods, a great team effort – and this was a mighty team effort, and I’ve thanked everyone involved with this – we were able to get it repaired in just 11 weeks, rather than the nine months initially estimated. So if you think about that rail line and what it means for the local economy, that $50 million investment saw more than 400 rail workers and contractors clock up 160,000 hours to make this happen. And I tell you, it was not easy for them and they did it through these harsh conditions to get it up and ready for the continuation of the industries that it supports.

Friends, one of the great strengths of the Townsville economy has always been its relative diversity. The economy has always been anchored by defence, resources, tourism, government, education and health, in fact as Australia’s largest garrison city, each defence job is supporting another job in the broader economy. That said, I know that things have been very tough in recent years, and we all know this because we lived and breathed it with the closure of Queensland Nickel and all the jobs, and the supply chain that went through that. However, in Townsville and the surrounding regions people picked themselves up, and we worked together to stimulate the economy and to press ahead, and the green shoots are clearly there. Townsville is always at its best when its looking ahead with confidence at the new frontiers on the horizon. And one of these frontiers is, of course, the partnership being developed between your region and Singapore, an exciting partnership that brings with it so many opportunities for new jobs and local economic development.

Today I can announce that our government is in the final stages of an agreement with the Commonwealth to provide land at Greenvale and Shoalwater Bay to support the Australian-Singapore Military Training Initiative. The provision of this land will help to secure over $2 billion of investment in North Queensland under the Australian-Singapore Military Training Initiative. This will mean a boost of over $36 million to the Townsville economy each year of the life of the training facility, it also will mean more good, secure local jobs and I have just been assured by Minister Cameron Dick that that signing is not months, but weeks away, so I think that’s a great announcement coming for the start of our Townsville Parliament.

Now I just want to talk to you just briefly about some opportunities that I see here. What my Government has been doing, is we realise that if we are going to build the economy that Queensland wants for the future, we need to work with business. My government has always had an open-door policy, but we can’t do it alone. We also know that we need to make sure that our young people have the skills that they need to get the jobs that are coming. We back our traditional industries in this state, but there are also new and emerging growth industries that we need to be ready for. So we value our traditional industries – there will always be jobs in those traditional industries and my government backs them – but we also need to be ready for what’s coming on the horizon. So what we’re going to be doing, and what we’ve announced previously – and I notice that there are some young people here today – that if you are in year 12 and you want a career from TAFE, we will fund you to go to TAFE for free, that is my commitment to jobs in the TAFE sector. Secondly, what we just announced is that we will back apprentices. So if you are a business here - and we have identified 139 skills that we need, we are going to have a skills shortage in this nation and Queensland is first out of the starting gates to make sure that we are looking at what we need for the future. So we’ve identified 139 skills and I would ask you to have a look at our website and look at all of those skills that are needed. So things like engineering, hospitality, aged care, there’s just so many opportunities in advanced manufacturing as well. So what we’re doing is we want to give 60,000 young people, under the age of 21, an opportunity for an apprenticeship and my government will pay up to $3000 for that training component. I think that’s a great deal because if we are going to get young people the skills that they need for this skills shortage, we need to act now. As I said we’re the first state to do that, we’re going to grow the economy.

Now, there is so much potential in this region, I’ve had some discussions recently, and we all know how important Sun Metals is and we’ve seen what they’ve done with solar, helping to reduce their electricity costs and I’ll talk a little bit more about that later, probably. But also, there are huge opportunities in the North West Mineral Province and the amazing minerals that you have that can actually foster new industries, such as the battery industry which we have been talking about at length in this town. I know the Mayor and the local members are passionate about that. But there are so many opportunities even to the extent of hydrogen. Now you may say to me ‘what’s this hydrogen she’s talking about? This is something that they talked about 20-30 years ago’. The world is moving towards hydrogen, and there are two key centres that they’re talking about as being potential for export hubs. The first is Gladstone, but I honestly believe that the biggest opportunity for the second one is Townsville. Townsville has a huge opportunity, especially the Asia region, and we know that Japan is land-locked in terms of not having the land to produce hydrogen. They have been very dependent on coal resources but in the future, they are looking at opportunities for hydrogen, and Queensland is well placed. The same can be said about Korea. Minister Dick and I just hosted our first hydrogen forum in Brisbane, and I think it would be wonderful if Minister Dick could bring that hydrogen forum here to Townsville with the local MPs to also showcase the potential of this industry to the region, as well.

I honestly believe that what this Parliament will show this week is the key levels of investment that our government is making in this city and surrounding regions. And it is not just the big infrastructure projects, I mean I can talk at length about the stadium, the port, the pipeline and the roads and the schools, and I will be, I’ll be doing that during the week. But sometimes it’s those small things that count as well, helping those people who are vulnerable. But also - I know there’s a number of mayors and councillors in this room - our Works for Queensland project, that was an idea that came out of Townsville. After the collapse of Queensland Nickel, I got our local members and our key economic ministers in a room together, and I know that Mayor Hill was there as well, and we sat down and we thought what could we do to help stimulate the economy. We talked clearly about the opportunities that Works for Queensland could generate. i.e. the councils would identify key projects, the state would give the councils that money to stimulate local work in those regions, and more than $600 million has gone out to councils far and wide, right across this state to help with that.

So friends, with those few words, I might end on this note: there has been a lot of talk recently as well about the possibility hosting an Olympics and next week I will be travelling with a delegation to talk about the potential of that. I have made it very clear that it cannot be an Olympics based on the south east, it has to be a Queensland Olympics that has opportunities for Townsville and Cairns and Mackay and other cities up and down our coast because if we’re going to share in the Olympic glory, we’ve got to share in it together. So over the course of this week, I’d like to hear your views. I had conversations last week with members of the business community, I’d like to hear from you whether you think it is a good idea to support that Olympics bid. And as I said, this is just the start of the conversation, my government is doing the work on the value assessment to work out the true cost of it, but the only way that I would commit to it and my government would commit to it is if it stacked up, and if it involved Queensland.

So friends, thank you very much for coming along today, I hope you get the opportunity to come and enjoy the parliament, and I am looking forward to showcasing what the investment my government has made in the Townsville region has brought to the region. I thank each and every one of you for coming along today. And enjoy the breakfast, and thank you TEL for hosting today, thank you.