Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to inform the House of the latest proceedings unfolding in the electorate of Wright, in particular in the Lockyer Valley, after the devastating floods that we had on 10 January. I am very proud to inform the House that one of the little businesses there, the little service station, the cornerstone of the Grantham community, which was a pub, a service station and a corner shop, proudly reopened its doors on the weekend. I was at the official opening where we cut the ribbon. It is significant for the community to have that business back and operational. It just means that the mums and dads of that community no longer have to travel a 30- or 40-kilometre round trip to go and get fuel for the car. The small incidentals that go with that service station mean that we are starting to get people back into a routine—a routine of going down and getting the papers or going down and getting milk, a routine which has been absent from their lives for a number of months. At the opening, we had 94.9 radio there to run it over the radio for the weekend. We had face painting for the kids. We had the rural fire brigade there and a number of other stalls that came out in support of the community.

In a wider and significant step forward, the community has also been granted, with the wonderful support of the Lockyer Valley Regional Council, headed up by Steve Jones, a 30-acre portion of land—some higher land. The council has broken that up into house lots. Mums and dads are coming to the realisation that the original houses that they lived and grew up in have been condemned as a result of the devastating floods, and their lives are at a stalemate because the insurance companies are not going to give them their money unless they have somewhere to rebuild a house, depending on the terms of their insurance policies. So the council are on the front foot, taking those houses back and doing a land swap. They are saying: 'Get your insurance money and rebuild up on top of the hill.'

I want to take this opportunity to commend the way that the council have treated this situation in a proactive manner. The amount of compliance that has been sped up from a council perspective in that area is overwhelming. A similar subdevelopment could have taken as much as two years, but this community got together on this priority and is working well. I will continue to keep the House updated on improvements as they come to hand.