Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to talk about one of the greatest regional towns in Australia.

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, but I'll give you a second guess.

Honourable members interjecting—

No, I'll give you a third guess. I'm talking about the town of Nambour. There's so much about Nambour that people would naturally love. I'm talking about a town that has historically been the centre of the Sunshine Coast region. I'm taking about a town that has own railway station, a town that has both private and public hospitals, a town that has some of the greatest schools in the region and an enormous, fantastic RSL. It's a vibrant town centre. We've got the Big Pineapple in Nambour, we've got a golf course, we've got a zoo—you name it.

But it's not the assets, no matter how good they are, that make Nambour so good. The community of Nambour has made it very clear that, as much as they are part of the broader Sunshine Coast region, they have their very distinct identity. They are part of Nambour, first and foremost. Nambour has had better times economically, but it's that pride, it's that determination, it's the cultural DNA of the people of Nambour that has allowed them to work cooperatively—three tiers of government, the business sector and the community sector—to map out a path to Nambour's future, something referred to as Reimagine Nambour.

Nambour's future has indeed been reimagined, and I have been delighted to play my role in that reimagining and come through with some serious funding: half a million dollars to get the tram back on the tracks, and half a million dollars to help with streetscaping. I was delighted, only a couple of weeks ago, to make an announcement, standing shoulder to shoulder with the state member and the local councillor, Marty Hunt and David Law, about a $60,000 rebranding exercise for the town. The time has come, now that the economy of Nambour is starting to move, despite all of the struggles with COVID-19, for the town to rebrand itself, to tell not just the rest of the coast and not just Queensland and Australia but indeed the world what Nambour stands for. It will be a stamp on what Nambour is. It will show a clear line from the past, all the way through to the future. And like the Reimagine Nambour project itself, it will be done with a cooperative spirit of the community, led by Peter Boyce and the new Reimagine Nambour Inc. Let's see where this takes us. I for one am excited and enormously optimistic.