Last Friday at the Maryborough Cricket Club grounds, I saw Australians at their very best.
 
I met some of the inspirational Queenslanders who have been cleaning up the city after last week’s damaging floods.
 
The professionals from the Queensland Fire and Emergency Service, aided by volunteers from the State Emergency Service and Rural Fire Service, had done a magnificent job helping businesses and homeowners clear away the mud and debris.
 
They were exhausted but still smiling, quite rightly proud of their extraordinary efforts. I encountered optimism everywhere I went over the past 10 days as I travelled through the state outlining Labor’s plan for a better future for Queensland.
 
From cane and beef producers to prawn farmers, factory workers and medical staff battling the pandemic, Queenslanders are doing it tough, but doing their best.
 
Businesses are struggling with serious labour shortages, particularly in the tourism and hospitality sectors so critical to the Queensland economy. Medical services are stretched to the limit. Parents worry about their children’s health and education.
 
While people retain their good humour, they are fed up. They are frustrated with Scott Morrison over failures on the vaccine rollout, the scarcity of rapid antigen tests and the sight of empty supermarket shelves.
 
They are also tiring of Mr Morrison’s incessant attempts to pick fights with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk for political gain.
 
They want governments to work together and focus on their needs.
 
But what they want most is a government with a plan to help Queensland prosper in the decades that follow the pandemic. Labor has that plan.
 
 Firstly, we must deal with our skills crisis, which was exposed when Covid forced the closure of our international borders, cutting off our access to foreign workers.
 
Entire industries, including tourism and hospitality, were thrown into chaos because we have allowed ourselves to become too reliant on overseas workers. It is not good enough that employers have to recruit staff offshore when two million Australians are either unemployed or underemployed.
 
A Labor government will fix the skills crisis by rebuilding our neglected TAFE college system and offering 465,000 free TAFE courses and 20,000 new university places in areas of workforce shortage.
 
Then there is wages growth. Under Mr Morrison, real wages are going backwards.
 
We must boost national economic productivity so employers can afford to pay their workers more. Labor will work with business, unions and state governments on a new productivity agenda, including infrastructure investment and regulatory reform.
 
The heart of Labor’s approach in government will be to plan and collaborate. Effective national governments deal with the problems of today, but also seek to shape the future in the national interest.
 
Take climate change and the rise of renewable energy. For nearly a decade in office, the LNP have resisted acting on climate change and ridiculed renewable energy.
 
But renewables are cheap as well as clean. Cheaper power bills will cut business overheads and boost profitability and jobs growth. They also offer a once-in-a-generation opportunity to revive Australian manufacturing, not just in traditional sectors, but also in emerging industries.
 
These economic drivers are motivating the Rio Tinto executives at the Yarwun alumina refinery in Gladstone to embrace hydrogen as a clean energy source.
 
Queensland has ample reserves of lithium, copper and other resources, which can make it a global player in production of batteries, wind turbines and electric vehicle components.
 
Labor will grasp these opportunities with our National Reconstruction Fund, offering support to existing businesses recovering from the effects of the pandemic as well as new enterprises in the growth sectors of the future.
 
Governments are big consumers.
 
They need defence equipment, medicines and transport infrastructure, such as trains and ferries. We should make them here in Queensland. A Labor government will unashamedly Buy Australian first to support local jobs and drive industrial growth.
 
 I want outcomes, not arguments. I want to work with Queenslanders to build prosperity, revive industry and build better lives for families.
 
Queensland has the resources and the people to prosper in the 21st century. It needs a new federal government to lead the way.
  
This opinion piece was first published in the Courier Mail on Monday, 17 January 2022.