Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I rise to reflect on several great activities that are taking place in the electorate of Brisbane. Recently, I had the privilege of attending the opening of the new Comscentre head office at Milton. The opening of this office—and I note that Deputy Speaker Slipper also attended this opening with me—coincided with the official opening of the office in the Philippines by the Australian Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner, Mr Ross Bray. These new offices are in addition to the existing offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

Comscentre had humble beginnings. Ben Shipley started the business in his local garage. Eight years on, Comscentre is run and managed by Ben Shipley and has an incredible record. It regularly gets praises from BRW and other industry professionals. Among its achievements, Comscentre was recently awarded the Brisbane City Lord Mayor’s Business Award for business growth and can proudly say that it has again been named by BRW as being among the top 10 fastest growing companies. I am proud to say that Comscentre calls the electorate of Brisbane home. This great teleconference and communication company is doing fantastic work in that leading communication technology area and it has a very high reputation for customer satisfaction. I have no doubt that it will do greater and bigger things in the years to come and I want to congratulate the people of Comscentre on their outstanding achievements to this point.

Secondly, I want to support a great initiative of my friend and colleague in this place, the member for Fadden. I refer to Treasures for the Troops. Australia has 2,350 uniformed defence personnel in the Middle East, including 1,550 in Afghanistan as part of Operation Slipper. There are 400 troops in East Timor, 80 in the Solomon Islands and small numbers in the Sudan, in Egypt and in Sinai. These committed men and women are serving our nation and will miss out on spending Christmas at home with family and friends. The aim of Treasures for the Troops is to provide an Aussie Christmas for our deployed forces through the provision of care packages that contain donated items, including magazines, lollies, toiletries and all sorts of things. More broadly, this program will help demonstrate the coalition’s appreciation of Australia’s troops serving overseas and raise community awareness about the free care package service that Australia Post offers.

I know how important Christmas is to families in our local suburbs. Not only is it a time of togetherness with our loved ones; it is a time when we think about those who cannot be present with us. Our loved ones might not be in the same room, but at Christmas time we can all make sure that they are not forgotten. Many of these troops come from my electorate of Brisbane and that is why I really want to champion this great cause. Whether it is as near as East Timor or the Solomon Islands, or as far away as the Middle East, these brave men and women deserve our thoughts, our prayers and our thanks. That is why I am letting them know we care by organising gift packages to be sent from my electorate office this week. Australia Post will send these packages free of charge and I am looking to the community to come together with gift donations for these soldiers.

On 12 November I also went to a function at Officeworks in Windsor in my electorate. I was very pleased to be part of the Buyequip Recyclathon, for the recycling of unwanted office and computer equipment. The launch represented a really important initiative regarding our community’s disposal of the ever-growing amount of e-waste. E-waste, also known as electronic waste or e-scrap, is discarded and obsolete electronic devices and related broken material. There is a growing amount of such material and waste. As rapid changes in technology occur, low-cost mass production results in more and more electronic waste in our society. Many thousands of tonnes of this e-waste are being produced in Australia each year, with a high number of discarded computers and phones making a real environmental problem. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that only 15 per cent of e-waste is recycled, with the remainder going into landfills and incinerators, with devastating consequences for the environment. I want to commend the great work that Officeworks are doing and to commend this particular initiative. As we have seen in recent times, there have been collection days with old televisions put outside on the footpath. Officeworks are taking a problem and providing a real solution, and I commend them for that. (Time expired)