Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, I offer my congratulations to the member for Griffith on her maiden speech. It is with great honour that I stand in this House for a second term having been re-elected as the member for Forde. Forde is an electorate that sits halfway between Brisbane and the Gold Coast and covers two local government areas—Logan City Council, the heart of the great south-east, and the Gold Coast City Council. It has been a privilege for the last three years to represent the community of Forde, the community that I grew up in, that my kids have grown up in and where we have raised our family.

Having grown up in Forde, I wish it to be a place where those in our community can enjoy the opportunity to work locally and retire locally and, more importantly, have fun in their local community, whether it is through their involvement in various sporting and service clubs or through other activities they wish to undertake. In particular, I want to see our small businesses grow and prosper, as they are the major employers in our electorate, creating local employment opportunities and, through that, family security.

I have had the privilege for the last three years of working with our local community to ensure that Forde is a place that is safe for our families and focused on the community. It is through building strong and resilient communities that we create a strong foundation for the future of our country. Nothing is more important to that than our children and their ability to get a great education and to get out and play sports or take part in other activities, secure in the knowledge that they can go out and do that.

Forde is a rapidly growing area that is suffering from many of the issues that other members in this House have touched on in their addresses. Infrastructure failing to keep pace with population growth, loss of housing affordability, increased costs of living and a lack of services are just some of those major problems in my electorate. There are problems with infrastructure projects, such as the M1 from Loganholme to Daisy Hill. This has been a bone of contention for many years, so much so that the Howard government had previously committed $500 million per annum for up to 10 years to finish that particular project. But the previous Labor government sought to ignore this local issue and, as a result, motorists continue to face lengthy delays during peak hour.

Unfortunately, as has become all too evident and all too common in this place, the waste and mismanagement that we saw over the past six years from the previous government has put us in a position where fixing this major infrastructure problem has been put further off into the distance. However, as I committed to in the election campaign and as I will restate today, I will continue to push this local issue onto the federal infrastructure agenda until it is completed.

We also have a major issue in Upper Coomera with exit 54. There was nearly $1 billion of planned development in and around that area, yet we still have an overpass and interchange that is only two lanes. We also have six schools in that area. Businesses and parents complain that in the mornings and afternoons they can sit in the traffic for up to 45 minutes to get across that single interchange. But I did have a very productive meeting with the federal Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development the other day, along with my colleague Stuart Robert, to discuss this very important issue for our local community.

We also need to plan for the future public needs of our residents, particularly in the western part of Forde. During the previous term, I had the pleasure of having the now Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development come out to the western end of the electorate to have a look at upgrading rail lines for passenger transport and also building a freight corridor using the Mount Lindesay Highway. These are all to service the great growing areas of Yarrabilba and Flagstone, which are just outside of my electorate. But, again, as there are some 200,000 people to go into that area, we need to ensure that the infrastructure and services are in place.

Another issue in our electorate is telecommunications infrastructure. It needs enormous improvement, especially in the Yatala Enterprise Area, which is now one of the major industrial hubs in the south-east of Queensland. There we have a growing number of innovative businesses that are looking to expand not only locally but globally, yet they suffer from poor internet access and speeds, which has a negative impact on their ability to carry out business.

It is not only businesses but also residents in our community in various areas who struggle with slow internet speeds. This is why it is so important with the revamped NBN rollout that we get control of the expenditure and the planning of this massive project—so that the electorate of Forde can have the services it needs in the areas where it needs them, because there are also plenty of areas that have good internet coverage. That will benefit not only the electorate but the nation as a whole.

Aside from infrastructure, the biggest issue in the electorate is cost of living. We have seen that the previous government's spending over the past six years has contributed greatly to those costs. For the edification of the House, although it has been repeated here many times already, we have seen six years of chaos, waste and mismanagement which have resulted in delivering higher taxes, record boat arrivals, and debt and deficit as far as the eye can see.

It is interesting to note that the previous government inherited a $20 billion surplus, yet left behind a projected $30 billion deficit. The previous government turned nearly $50 billion in the bank into projected net debt of well over $200 billion—the fastest deterioration in debt in dollar terms to the share of GDP in modern Australian history. This debt from the previous Labor government is already costing us more than $10 billion a year in net interest payments alone. Under Labor, the jobless queues grew by over 200,000, and more than 50,000 illegal boat people arrived under Labor's watch, creating a $1.6 billion blow-out in border protection costs. Finally, and to top it all off, there are accumulated deficits in the forward estimates of some $123 billion in gross debt, heading towards some $667 billion. The constant borrowing by the previous government has not done us any favours, and when we look back at the legacy of Labor's government we see debt, we see waste and we see increased regulation and red tape. We see anything but positive changes for the future of our country; it is all negative. In many cases, these negative changes were done without proper stakeholder consultation, and, to top it off, we have been left with the world's biggest carbon tax, which has made little if any difference to emissions or global temperatures.

Small to medium businesses, many of which are family businesses, are, as I said earlier, the core employers in my electorate. They have been finding it increasingly costly and difficult to access new capital and to expand. The introduction of the carbon tax and myriad new regulations have done nothing to improve these conditions for small business. Small business was largely ignored by the previous government. They could not even keep a stable minister in place. But I am pleased to say that there has been a change. We have a Minister for Small Business who is focused on addressing the issues of small to medium businesses. We have a minister who readily recognises that small to medium business is the engine room of our economy. His door is always open to speak to small business people and to hear their concerns. I thank the minister, who happens to be at the table, for his willingness to speak with our small business communities on a regular basis.

In Forde there are also issues with the protection of high-quality remnant rainforest flora and fauna, including the protection of the Ormeau bottle tree, which is now on the critically endangered species list. We have wonderful community organisations, such as the East Albert Landcare Group and VETO, who are putting in significant resources to fight projects that will adversely affect our community. The electorate also contains a significant number of federally and internationally recognised wetland areas in Carbrook, Eagleby and Cornubia that connect to the Logan and Albert rivers. As part of our campaign, we announced the Green Army project for the revegetation of the banks of the Pimpama River.

In Forde, we are blessed with a wide range of strong and active community and sporting groups, and over the past three years I have enjoyed sharing their stories and achievements in this parliament. We have strong and active chambers of commerce in Logan, Beenleigh Yatala, Coomera, Ormeau and Browns Plains. These organisations and their members work tirelessly to promote small business and to represent the interests of local business to all levels of government.

There are many people in Forde who have chosen to be involved in voluntary work and activities to give back to their community. This electorate is blessed with groups such as Nightlight, Rosies, Lighthouse Care and the Twin Rivers Co-op. They provide food parcels and low-cost but quality food to the community. In addition to food, they provide furniture and clothing where necessary.

As with all my election campaigns, there are many people who deserve thanks and recognition for assisting me in my re-election as the member for Forde. I would like to take this opportunity to firstly thank the constituents of Forde for placing their trust and confidence in me to represent them for the next three years in this House. I acknowledge that I have been elected to represent all of the constituents of Forde, and my team and I will do this to the best of our ability. I am absolutely committed to the people, communities and businesses in my electorate, and my winning this seat was achieved by having a tremendous team behind me during the campaign.

I would like to acknowledge and thank my wife, Judi, for her tireless efforts during the campaign. If it were not for her support and encouragement and hard work, I would not be here. Her assistance and encouragement are the main reasons for me being able to pursue my goal and for me being here today. I also acknowledge and thank our two sons, Zac and Josh. My role often takes me away from my family—as we all well know as members of this place—and there are many sacrifices that we have had to make as a family. I treasure the time I have with them when I am at home, and I am very proud of both their efforts at university and their activities in the community.

I wish to thank my campaign team: John Broadhurst, Paul and Joel Prokic, Shane Von Senden, Cathy and Jeff Charlesworth. I also wish to thank my staff: Nathan Kucks, Amanda Ainsley, Tracey Woodland, Kylie Keleher, Grady Rodgers, Daniel Heapes, Elissa Wentworth, Bill D'Arcy. And I also wish to thank their families for putting up with the rigours, and absences of their loved ones, during the campaign period. All in all, there were more than 350 volunteers who assisted me during the campaign. I would love to be able to mention everyone involved, but they know who they are, and I very much value their support and encouragement. For many of them, this was the second time they have helped me in a campaign, and it was a tremendous blessing to me. I was also blessed in having the support of a number of local business owners, and I would like to thank them for their continued support. I would also like to acknowledge the LNP for their support and commitment to my campaign. My thanks go to Bruce McIver, Brad Henderson, Nigel Everingham, Mark Gorter and the entire LNP team for their support.

On a federal level, I would like to thank Brian Loughnane, Julian Sheezel and the federal secretariat for their support during the campaign. I would also like to thank Tony Abbott, now Prime Minister, his leadership team and the various shadow ministers at the time, now ministers, who came to the electorate to support us during the campaign.

During the campaign, I fought to secure funding for a number of local issues, and I look forward to working with the local community on delivering these projects. We sought funding and obtained $3 million for the Beenleigh Town Centre development, which is very timely given that this year we also celebrate the 150th anniversary of the settlement of Beenleigh; we sought and received funding of $1 million for CCTV camera projects; we received $20,000 for two of our local SES branches, to provide new equipment; and, as I mentioned earlier, there is the Green Army project on the Pimpama River.

I feel passionately about Australia and our position in the world. I believe that we live in the best country in the world. As a nation we are blessed with many things: abundant natural wealth; sporting talent and opportunity; an attitude which looks for a solution to a problem rather than to simply whinge about the problem; and a spiritual heritage which we should not dismiss and which we should look to in these uncertain times for wisdom and guidance, for it is, in part, the foundation upon which our nation was built. No amount of progressive thinking can or should change that. To quote Thomas Jefferson:

God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God?

I believe this is the foundation of the Judeo-Christian principles upon which our nation was built and which will allow it to continue to grow and prosper. I also believe we ignore these principles at our peril. I feel not only humble but also seriously committed to my responsibilities as a member of this House.

My focus will be directed to continuing to make Forde a better place to live, work, raise a family and retire. I will also work for the betterment of the country, for our children and for future generations of Australians to come.

Debate adjourned.