Mr IAN MACFARLANE (1:00 PM) —It is a great honour for me to address the House today as the representative for the seat of Groom. Groom is located in the south-east corner of Queensland and is one of Australia's smallest regional electorates, covering an area of 6,417 square kilometres. Groom is not my birthplace nor where I grew up but, having lived there for almost a decade, it is where my family and I are proud to belong. It is a region of great diversity, beauty and bountiful natural resources, and its industries, medical services and education facilities are world-class.

I feel extremely fortunate to be able to represent the people of Groom, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank those who assisted me in my election to this House. In particular, I would like to thank my campaign organisers, Neville Stewart, David Watts, John Harbison and Nicole Eden. This quartet was more than ably assisted by a group of dedicated Liberal Party members, supporters and friends who worked to ensure that Groom remained a blue-ribbon Liberal seat.

I also congratulate state president, Bob Carroll, state director, Greg Goebel, and national director, Lynton Crosby, and their staff in Brisbane and Canberra for their part in the Groom campaign and thank them for their support and confidence in me. As well, I am grateful to Victoria's Premier Jeff Kennett for his campaigning on my behalf in Groom, as did my Senate colleagues Warwick Parer and Ian Macdonald. I would especially like to thank the honourable member for Ryan and Minister for Defence for his unfailing encouragement, faith and support since I took my first steps towards representing Groom 12 months ago.

I would also like to thank my parents, parents-in-law, my sister Louise and her family, and my brothers for their support during the trying and challenging period leading up to the election. Most importantly though, I would like to thank my wife, Karen, and my daughters, Kate and Laura, for their support and understanding during the past six months. Their undying faith in my pursuit of a political career and their understanding of my ambition to play a leading role in Australia's future made the unbearable bearable and the near impossible easy.

I come to this chamber as a new member but as no stranger to this parliament. In my previous life as an agripolitician, I regularly visited this House to see both members of government and opposition and to enlist their support for issues of great importance to my rural and regional constituents. In the main, that support was forthcoming and the solutions were generally found in a bipartisan and cooperative atmosphere. My seven years leadership of the agripolitical farm lobby group, the Queensland Grain Growers Association, required me to put aside my personal political sentiments and work with the government of the day both at a state and federal level in order to achieve the best possible outcomes for Queensland farmers. While I now relish being part of the Liberal Party, I have to admit that I did enjoy working in that bipartisan atmosphere—that is, working without fear or favour or political allegiance with both Labor and coalition members to achieve positive outcomes not only for rural producers but for Australians as a whole.

Across this chamber at question time, I see people like the member for Griffith who, in concert with the state Premier, worked tirelessly with me to bring assistance to the state's drought stricken farmers; in front of him sits the member for Hotham who, in his role as federal minister for primary industries, provided the early part of that assistance; and to his right sits the member for Dickson who, in 1990 along with Senator Bill O'Chee, stood with me in 45 degree heat on a steel-decked semitrailer in Emerald, Central Queensland, calling for greater recognition of the enormous challenges facing rural and regional Australia. As the newest member of any political party here today, I reflect fondly on those times and consider this type of bipartisan approach to be a hallmark of a successful, mature political system. However, after sitting in this chamber for two weeks, I am wondering where this bipartisanship is or if it really ever existed in Australian politics outside war years.

As a novice of the political gamesmanship which now dominates Australian politics, I can do little but lament at my lost innocence and ponder if the wonderful and enormous resource that sits in this House will ever be fully harnessed to the complete and absolute benefit of the people we represent and the nation as a whole. For my part, I will continue to do what I can to foster a good relationship not only with the members of this parliament but also with the likes of the Peter Beattie government and his ministers, such as Henry Paluszczuk, as well as my local National Party MLAs and local government representatives in the seat of Groom.

I believe that one of the fundamental roles of government and politicians is to lead—to lead both the communities they have been elected to represent and the nation as a whole. This role as a leader involves government as a facilitator and a catalyst to develop business and industry growth as well as community spirit and a sense of wellbeing. Government has to be active and a public participant but only in a constructive way. In turn, I believe it is the role of those communities in the private sector, more particularly, to both accept and expect this role of government—that is, facilitation, assistance and leadership.

In our modern and at times highly materialistic society, all too often people expect government to fix everything and, when we don't, they complain bitterly about the failure of governments and politicians to deliver. This has bred the culture of complaint—an environment where people's expectations that a government can solve all their problems all the time can never be met.

Australia and its people have a very proud history of achievement and innovation, unreliant on long-term political involvement. Now as one of this nation's leaders, I am committed to fostering the further realisation of this great heritage—of fostering a relationship between good government and good business to achieve great outcomes in an environment where governments govern and the business sector runs business.

Another critical role for government is to bring about reform. The Howard government has already established a proud record on reform and will continue to pursue a range of reforms for the betterment of all Australians and future Australians. Reform, particularly with regard to the role of government—whether procedural or absolute—will always be viewed with a measure of fear and caution by the electorate. But reform is merely a bureaucratic term for change, and change, as we know, is part of everyday life. If managed properly, change represents an opportunity for a better future for all involved. Change is about keeping what is good, removing what is bad and adding what is necessary. Change is something we deal with every day of our lives, yet it is something that people resist almost blindly. Those who adapt best to change and take advantage of change are our most successful. Bringing about successful change in turn requires courage and determination to see it through. It is not about populism or politics; it is about true leadership, the sort of leadership we see by the bucketful every day from the Howard government.

I am no stranger to hard physical work, long hours and getting dirt under my fingernails, but I am also no stranger to the cut and thrust of business and industry and the intensity of lobbying, and I have grown to understand now the complexities of urban life. In the end, though, I am a regional person with my roots firmly dug in regional Australia. Wherever I have lived and worked, the importance of our regions as the lifeblood of our nation has always been obvious.

With Toowoomba as its hub and a cluster of small towns servicing primary and secondary industry in our region, Groom provides an excellent example of regional Australia's significance and potential. Regions like Groom are a homogenous mix of city and country, urban and rural, and make an enormous contribution to Australia's standard of living and our nation's export earnings. Given the right level of encouragement and investment, Australia's regions have the potential to bring even greater wealth to our nation.

That potential that lies in regions like Groom can, however, only be realised when people work together. There is no room for division or sectarianism. For those who wish to divide this nation—be it along cultural, ethnic, professional or political lines—they are not only doing us a great disservice but deliberately overlooking the relationship between all of Australia's sectors of business and social community.

People are people wherever you go and linking the city to the bush and our business hearts to our natural resources is the way of the future. As every political leader knows, unity is strength and division is death. I can therefore only hope that those parties and politicians who seek to gain political power by promising specific groups special treatment are seen for what they are—political opportunists of the worst order. These are the people who promote the politics of division and envy instead of the politics of a cohesive, honest government.

Rural and regional people have different needs from people who live in urban areas, but we are not, as some would like to believe, special. Our needs can best be met not by sectionalising regional Australia but by including us in the overall plan for the nation.

The Howard government has a bold plan for regional development, which I am sure members of this House will applaud. The Liberal Party is, of course, well placed to pursue its agenda of revitalising regional Australia. We hold more seats in regional Australia than any other party, and, as we have seen again in the 3 October election, when given the opportunity and the choice, regional and rural Australians support Liberal candidates in preference to the simplistic or historic alternatives.

This level of regional support provides a tremendous opportunity for the Howard-led coalition to accelerate regional development as we approach the next millennium. In Groom alone, four projects totalling $2 billion must be brought to fruition. Firstly, the antiquated, treacherous and slow road descent from Toowoomba to Brisbane must be upgraded. A new range crossing is on the drawing board, but its completion date must be brought forward to 2005 if our region is going to be given a fair chance to develop.

As if Toowoomba and western Queensland are not disadvantaged enough by a poor-cousin highway, this situation is exaggerated by an outdated rail crossing, in which locomotives crawl up and down the range at a snail's pace, traversing in two hours what a motorist can travel in 10 minutes. This rail corridor must also be upgraded to a highspeed, standard gauge, electric link if Groom is to play its key role in inland Australia's development.

If the decline in inland Australia is to be seriously addressed though, the solution not only lies in high-speed road and rail arteries to our seaboard. For two centuries, regional Australia's development has been hindered by an ineffective, if not non-existent, rail system. If we are to overcome the pre-Federation legacies of three different rail gauges, which fail to link the eastern seaboard in a north-south direction, the construction of the Melbourne to Darwin rail line is imperative.

If we are to give truth to the rhetoric that successive governments espouse regarding the importance of regional development and the great tragedy of the decline of our communities west of the Great Divide, then we as a parliament should show the courage and commitment to build this line.

For those who scoff or who are deterred by the enormity of this project or its cost, may I simply echo the words of one of its great advocates, Everald Crompton, and simply ask: what has been done in the past 50 years to promote development in regional Australia, and what project is there that could make regional development in Australia a reality?

A standard gauge line linking all mainland states will allow industry to move off the coast and for regional Australia to prosper and thrive like never before. Regardless of whether an industry were to operate at Charlton, Goulburn or Longreach, it would be as competitive in the domestic and export markets as those industries in Melbourne, Sydney or Pittsburg.

These three new transport links are also the basis of a proposed thousand hectare industrial estate to be located at Charlton on the western fringe of Toowoomba. This site has the potential to develop into one of Australia's great industrial areas and bring true meaning to the word `decentralisation'.

Another of our great disadvantages to the people in rural and regional Australia is the lack of a reasonably priced telecommunications infrastructure. If our regions are to realise their full potential, we must provide an efficient telecommunications system for all Australia, not just for those fortunate enough to live within 150 kilometres of the coast. Untimed local calls are the right of every Australian; access to a mobile phone system that works is the right of every Australian.

Groom abounds in natural resources and rich farmland, but we are in short supply of one commodity: water. Toowoomba sits on the Great Divide, and it is the watershed of the eastern and western river systems in southern Queensland. While rain on my roof takes the short journey to the coast and Brisbane, rain on my neighbour's roof ultimately finds its way through three other states and to Bass Strait. In fact, most of Groom feeds Australia's greatest river system, the Murray-Darling.

The Murray-Darling is a great resource, yet farmers and communities who rely on it know it is a river system that is no longer able to provide sufficient water for those who live along it. My region is no exception. The search for alternative water supplies, spearheaded by a local group, Vision 2000, has identified the waste water of Brisbane not only as a solution for our water shortage but also as a possible replenishment of the Murray-Darling system. Instead of polluting the environment and the beautiful waters of Moreton Bay, treated effluent could be pumped through the rich Lockyer Valley and over the range to the Darling Downs.

Initially, 130 billion litres of water would be available, to the value of the people of Groom, and to Australia as a nation. This proposal has tremendous opportunity, and the Darling Downs region has been shown to be one of the most efficient water users in the world—in fact, second only to Israel. Current figures indicate that 130 billion litres per annum would earn our region in the vicinity of $120 million per annum. When the multiplication factor is considered, such earnings would be worth in excess of half a billion dollars per annum to Australia.

But all is not rosy in Groom. Primary industry in the region, as it is everywhere, faces its own challenges. Not only have unseasonal weather conditions recently provided devastation to our farmers' winter crops, but industries such as pork and peanuts are also facing challenges. In Groom there are also the urban related problems of youth unemployment, youth crime, drugs, the never-ending squeeze on small business and retailers by the large shopping centre complexes, and the domination of our retail sector in Australia by the very large but very few players.

In conclusion, we all face different and difficult challenges as we move into the next millennium. While I personally have enjoyed my success as an agropolitician, I realise the enormity of the challenges now presented to me by my move into mainstream politics. I am looking forward to learning the ropes and thus being best able to serve the Howard government and those who have elected me.

Ultimately, it is my ambition to ensure that the many challenges that will confront Australia in the next millennium are turned into opportunities and that the future will be made special not only for the people of Groom but for all Australians.