Mal Brough (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The last few weeks have been a very exciting time on the Sunshine Coast. On 2 May we hosted the first ever Startup Weekend. This is a worldwide movement where young entrepreneurs come together to pitch their ideas. They get together with like-minded people and come up with new innovations which can create jobs and opportunities. The Sunshine Coast knows only too well we need that, because our traditional industries of construction, tourism, retail and hospitality certainly need a broader base. Everyone on the Sunshine Coast recognises that.

This Startup Weekend, which was sponsored by the University of the Sunshine Coast, Regional Development Australia through the Commonwealth government and the Sunshine Coast Regional Council, was hosted at the Innovation Centre. I congratulate and thank Mark Paddenburg for his work in helping organise this. Some incredible groups came together with some innovative ideas that will actually create the jobs of the future.

On top of that, last week I was fortunate enough to host Daniel Petre AO, the only Australian ever to be a vice president of Microsoft. These young business people were able to pitch directly to a man who has had more than 400 organisations pitch to him. The invaluable insights that they gained in doing so will lead some of these to the market, creating new opportunities.

I want to share with the chamber here today a couple of those. The first one is called newNRG. It is the world's first automated online lifestyle change company using a unique priority delivering model that combines evidence based science, multiple proven psychological theories, digital workbooks, online and off line support, social networking, game based record systems and 3D animated characters to drive long-term behavioural change so that we can start to address the great need in the area of movement and obesity. This is a first, and from the Sunshine Coast I congratulate the brother and sister team, Mark and Nicola McCalliog, who have put this together. They are meeting again next week in Sydney with Daniel Petre next week to take this idea further

A young student, Georgie Murray, has come up with an app that helps you to make friends in transit. It is the sort of thing that I can just see some of the best and biggest airlines in the world taking up. This is a gem of an idea from a young person who has got enthusiasm, and what we need now is the entrepreneurs to support her with angel funding.

We have a GP who started up GPnow with Moni Kami, but we will not go into his product. The final one in the brief time that I have got is Cloud DC by Gavin Keeley. This will bring together on the cloud for the first time all of the platforms which at the moment do not interact. If he is able to achieve this—and he tells us that he can—this will change the way small and medium businesses operate with the internet and the big data of the future and the way of the world, which of course is interconnectivity. This is a wonderful opportunity. The Sunshine Coast is growing, and I invite other people to participate with us in that growth.