Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to take this opportunity today to recognise a group of up-and-coming young innovators from my Dickson electorate for their outstanding achievement. The group from Pine River State High School known as the ‘Razorbacks’ last week represented their school and the state of Queensland at the national final for the Schools Innovation Design Challenge F1inSchools project, conducted at Parliament House. This worldwide competition is an initiative of Re-Engineering Australia Forum Ltd, a not-for-profit public company established to raise awareness of careers in maths, science and engineering and to ensure that Australia has a pool of future top-quality engineers. The competition requires the students, through state-of-the-art technology, to design, manufacture and race a miniature F1 car down a 25-metre track whilst at the same time working with business and management principles, including marketing, promotion, and data collection and analysis. The competition’s procedure is similar to that of a full-size formula one race car team.

The Pine River State High School students, under the guidance of teacher Corey Gieskens and with volunteer assistance from Judy and Michaela Reilly, were Chris Mills, the team manager and resource manager; Jenny Muller, graphic artist; Sam Bryant, assistant engineer; Chris Woodrow, design and manufacturing engineer; and Jasmine Smith, aerodynamic engineer. While they were not the overall winners and missed out on the opportunity to take their car to London for the international competition in 2009, the Razorbacks should be extremely proud to have won the Australian Grand Prix Corporation’s fastest car award in the Australian competition, with the time of 0.985 seconds—a remarkable engineering achievement.

To obtain this great result required assistance from sponsors and a number of generous local companies, who formed part of a sponsorship team to help get a great result. The sponsors include BP; Legend Racing; Nordon Cylinders; Mick Young’s Smash Repairs; Signs and Designs; The Best Music Shop; Autobarn Lawnton; Fat Pipes; Ultimate Performance Exhaust; Andersens at Lawnton; S and K Embroidery Creations; Let’s Choose Colours; Provide Print; Prolube; GMF Automatics; C&L Corporate Clothing; Stumers Sewing Centre; Mathers Hydraulics; The Hole Image Group; Concentric Asia Pacific; Create it, Make it, Live it; ALPS/Freeway; and the University of Queensland. I offer all of them my sincere thanks for their support of this wonderful initiative.

I was present in Parliament House with other members last Wednesday to witness these remarkable engineering displays, with many of us having the opportunity to test and race the cars on the track. Some of us were successful; others of us were not. I would again like to congratulate all teams of students—and, in particular, the Pine Rivers State High School Razorbacks—who took part in this program on their dedication and enthusiasm in achieving such remarkable results. Pine Rivers State High School is certainly a remarkable school, producing wonderful, talented students, and this was only reinforced by the example that these students set in undertaking this adventure.