Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Earlier this month, I was delighted to host a Blair economic reform roundtable at Jets Leagues Club in Ipswich to workshop ideas on how to boost productivity and economic resilience in the region. The event brought together around 30 local business, union, community and government representatives as well as experts to discuss shared economic challenges and opportunities in Ipswich, the Somerset region and surrounds. It canvassed a wide range of issues: the value of volunteering, cutting red tape for local charities, cracking down on tax evasion and sham contracting, the importance affordable insurance and disaster resilience, and the economic sustainability of our local area. We had a terrific video from the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, who set out the Albanese government's broader growth and productivity agenda, and renowned seniors advocate, philanthropist and author Everald Compton entertained us with an engaging talk about the value of intergenerational partnerships and tapping into the human capital of older Australians.

After the well-received forum, I wrote to the Treasurer with the key outcomes to feed into the national economic reform roundtable held here in Canberra last week. We've seen that this has already delivered a number of initiatives that participants at my roundtable were calling for, and that's very pleasing. Part of the motivation for holding a local roundtable was that we had seen strong local economic and jobs growth in recent years powered by a number of major developments, such as the new Suntory drink manufacturing plant at Swanbank and the Rheinmetall military vehicle facility at Redbank, and by big employers like JBS meat processing at Dinmore and Kilcoy Global Foods at Kilcoy. This is all very welcome, but we want to keep good, secure, well-paid jobs for locals now and into the future. This means continuing to back local industry, to attract new investment and to build the skills that people need to succeed.

Ipswich is growing very rapidly. At the same time our region is experiencing growth pains. We need to invest more in housing, infrastructure and skills to meet the needs of a booming population. We have had to contend with a number of challenges in recent years. These have included increased congestion on the roads, housing affordability, floods, workforce shortages and an ageing population. You may have heard the Treasurer talking a bit about the Abundance agenda lately. It's based on a recent book, and it's really informed the government's thinking about productivity. In a nutshell, it means that a rich society like ours should be able to meet people's basic needs in terms of land, housing, education, infrastructure et cetera, but in recent years some institutional barriers have arisen which makes it challenging. So we need institutional reform to address this and improve productivity.

In my electorate, an example of that are the federal environmental laws under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the EPBC Act, which was well intentioned but neither protects the environment—for example, threatened species like koala—nor facilitates good housing development, and it exacerbates road congestion. At the forum, we heard that some housing developments in the greater Springfield and Ripley areas were held up for years by the so-called green tape of EPBC Act approvals, and the National Construction Code has also been increasing the costs. So it's wonderful to see the Minister for the Environment and Water and the Minister for Housing announce this week that the government's taking decisive action to cut through red tape and delays in approvals that are holding up construction of more homes and other projects.

The government will work with the states and territories for further improvements, such as pausing the changes to the National Construction Code. While this is underway, we're going to streamline that code in consultation with stakeholders, and we're also going to make changes to fast track assessments for more than 26,000 homes currently under the EPBC Act consideration and speed up those new applications in terms of assessment. Ultimately, we want to see the local economy work for local people, and we want people to be able to raise a family, enjoy a good quality of life and live where they need to live.

That's what the economic roundtable in Blair showed. It was a very productive exercise, if you excuse the pun, but it was good to see local voices being heard loud and clear and feeding into that national conversation on economic growth and living standards. I want to thank everyone who attended and contributed with good will and amity. It was fantastic to see businesses and unions working together. At its core, productivity is about people, fairness and intergenerational equity. It's about delivering better, secure, well-paid jobs, affordable housing and better infrastructure and making sure no-one's left behind.

House adjourned at 20:00

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