Chris Ketter (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to inform the chamber about my recent productive visit to the town of Roma, which is part of one of my duty electorates, the vast electorate of Maranoa. I was very pleased to be able to visit Roma and St George on 15 and 16 March. I want to start by thanking all of the people who made my trip not only possible but extremely productive.

Firstly, I particularly want to thank David Bowden, a long-time Roma resident; a long-time Labor Party member; and co-founder of Labor for the Regions, a Labor association within the Queensland branch of the Labor Party that I will talk about a bit later on. Thanks also to Margaret Wright, the president of the Roma ALP branch, for coming out and assisting me in the mobile office that I conducted.

Thanks to Tyson Golder, the mayor of Maranoa Regional Council, for showing me around the Roma saleyards, which many Queenslanders would be surprised to know are the biggest saleyards in the Southern Hemisphere. I happened to be there on the Thursday, the day which they call the fat sales, on which we usually have the representatives from the meatworks in attendance. On other days we can see 12,000 head of cattle pass through the saleyards. The record is 14,000 head of cattle passing through on one day. I was impressed with the technology that is deployed there to ensure that the cattle get through the system as quickly as possible with minimised loss of condition. As large as the Roma saleyards are, they are looking at expansion, and I commend the Maranoa Regional Council for its initiative in that regard.

I also had the opportunity of speaking with Robyn Bryant from AgForce. I thank her for giving me a rundown on the local challenges facing farmers and producers in that region.

I had the opportunity of meeting with members of the Roma Community Men's Shed, and I thank them for hosting me for morning tea on the day.

I want to particularly thank Camille Johnson of Golden West Apprenticeships for explaining the difficulties associated with business and training in regional communities, and in particular for her assistance in organising for me to meet with members of Commerce Roma, a very dynamic group of local businesspeople dedicated to the progress of the town of Roma. Thank you to Cyril, Kate and Ann for attending the meeting that we held.

I also want to thank TAFE Queensland and in particular Jo Ruddy, the new manager, for allowing me the opportunity to visit the Roma campus. Jo certainly has her work cut out for her to increase the usage of the wonderful facility, which is unfortunately and tragically underutilised at the moment. I know they are working on a business plan to try to increase the patronage of that facility. They are marvellous facilities and I encourage local businesses to investigate how they can make use of those facilities for the benefit of the community. I urge the business community to get behind TAFE and make sure that young apprentices and trainees are getting the top-quality training experience that TAFE can offer.

I'd like to thank 4ZR, the local radio station, for having me on the program, and I look forward to catching up with Cameron, the host, on air again in the near future. And thank you to the other Labor branch members who came out to meet me while I was in town to make contact and discuss a range of issues. Finally, a very important thankyou to the locals who stopped to tell me their stories as I held a regional office in the main street—on McDowall and Arthur streets. I undertook to follow up a number of issues on their behalf, including matters relating to telecommunications; the NBN; state government related issues, including vegetation management; and the issue of country racing.

As I said, it was an extremely productive visit to Roma, and I have committed to getting back to the town later this year. I'm particularly excited about doing that because I do want to follow up on some of the contacts I've made. Firstly, there is the men's shed, which deserves special mention. They've recently redeveloped the men's shed there, and it's an outstanding facility for the town. The formal opening of the reopened men's shed was the week before my visit. It is an example of outstanding cooperation between the local council, the state government and the federal government all chipping in, together with local business people making a significant contribution to the facility. In fact, I was the first politician to visit the reopened men's shed. It was a great honour for me to be there for that—it's a wonderful asset for the community. I saw Anglicare and Blue Care clients and workers present there. The men at the men's shed are in the process of making park benches for nearby aged-care facilities, and there's a huge amount of pride in the work that they're doing. I made a small donation to the men's shed, and I've made a commitment to them that if they need assistance in the federal sphere I'm able to provide them with that and to support them in any future funding applications.

I mentioned the Roma TAFE and that it has a big task ahead of it to increase numbers. It is a wonderful facility. It currently has around 450 students from throughout the western corridor, which includes the regional areas of Merweh, Balonne, Maranoa and Quilpie, and it has a range of courses, including diesel fitting, furnishing, metal fabrication, health and community certificates, and engineering. I had the opportunity to see firsthand the teaching spaces for the nursing classes that used to run on the campus. Unfortunately, demand has dropped, and the space is not being used at present, but we know that the state government has invested $90 million in a new replacement hospital in the area. I hope that there will be an opportunity for those facilities to be used as part of that. There are challenges which they presented also: the difficulty in attracting teachers out to Roma, competition from internet based training providers, and the loadings for training in Roma versus more-rural areas such as Charleville. Labor recently announced that if we were able to win government we would commence a review of the tertiary education system in Australia within our first hundred days of government. I'm grateful for the knowledge I gained in Roma, which can feed into this process.

I will go back to Camille Johnson, in particular, from GoldenWest Apprenticeships, who was probably the inspiration for my recent visit to Roma to hear firsthand about the challenges for training providers and participants in regional areas such as Roma. Camille came down to Brisbane as part of a representation from GoldenWest Apprenticeships for a skills and training roundtable that I conducted with Senator Doug Cameron on 20 February. Camille has raised a range of issues, including the tyranny of distance in the Roma area being one of the issues for participants in the training sector and the costs and loss of work time for businesses when sending people to training.

So, a range of issues were raised with me. I learnt that in Roma the loading, as I indicated, is 15 per cent more than for a city-based training placement, whereas further west, starting after Mitchell, which is an hour outside Roma, the loading jumps to 75 per cent. That means that an internet provider servicing a student in Charleville can claim 75 per cent while a student attending Roma TAFE will be subsidised only an extra 15 per cent by the government for their place. These are issues which certainly need to be brought to bear. As I've said, I'm very pleased to talk with Commerce Roma about the major projects that are on track.

I want to close by thanking Alexia from The Western Star for speaking with me. There was a very constructive article in The Western Star yesterday. That article highlighted the fact that I see myself as an alternative voice for the people of Roma in federal parliament and that I'm also very keen to promote the organisation Labor for the Regions. It's a Labor association within our Queensland Labor Party that is designed to provide a regional voice within the party.