Tamworth Business Chamber hosts annual "State of the State" leaders' lunch at the Tamworth Jockey Club. Video by Peter Hardin
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00:00that I think Tamworth is continuing to track very well.
00:03There's strong economic growth and development,
00:06and I believe there is real confidence in our region.
00:10Construction continues to be strong,
00:12both in commercial development and domestic housing,
00:15and we're seeing business invest
00:17in either upsizing locally,
00:19and you can see that at the Global Gateway,
00:21or new businesses taking a punt
00:23and starting up or moving to our region.
00:27The confidence in our region
00:29has been built off the back of private
00:31and government investment over the last few years.
00:35And the primary goal of our government,
00:37the previous government's investment,
00:39was to promote economic and regional growth
00:42through public infrastructure, hospitals,
00:45roads, schools, emergency services,
00:47transport, communications, and so on.
00:51At a very high level,
00:53New South Wales hosts
00:56about 55 operating mines across the state.
00:59Around 40 of those are coal mines,
01:01thermal and coking coal mines,
01:04mainly in the Hunter and in the Illawarra,
01:06and there's around six operating coal mines in this region,
01:08as many of you know.
01:10We also have around 15 metals and minerals mines
01:12across the state,
01:13mainly in the central-west and far-west of New South Wales,
01:16and they are mainly mining, you know,
01:19copper, gold, nickel, cobalt, ferrous,
01:22mineral sands and those sorts of things.
01:24I'll come back to that in a moment.
01:26You know how important mining is
01:28to the New South Wales economy,
01:30providing that economic activity,
01:32the investment, and tens of thousands of jobs,
01:35mainly across regional New South Wales.
01:37The mines in this region,
01:38the six operating mines in this region,
01:41support around 3,000 jobs.
01:43Gunnedah is the heart, but right across the region.
01:47There are in Narrabri and Wearis Creek
01:49and across Liverpool Plains and in Tamworth as well.
01:53We have around 3,000 people
01:55working directly in the industry in one form or another,
01:58and then there's all the indirect jobs
01:59in the supply businesses as well.
02:02So we're operational in 160 locations
02:05around Australia and South East Asia,
02:08and plenty of activity over in New Zealand.
02:11We've got now,
02:11we've just actually ticked over 10,000 employees,
02:14which is a pretty good run rate
02:16considering we started in 2007 with 1,200.
02:20So the growth has been pretty significant.
02:232019, we had 4,500,
02:25so considerable growth in what Qube's doing
02:28and all of our infrastructure that sits behind that.
02:33Qube itself is divided into two key operating divisions.
02:38We've got our logistics and infrastructure,
02:41which we sit in as more of a containerized solution,
02:44and then we have our Qube ports involved
02:47that looks after the mining,
02:48the energy, the renewables,
02:50the forestry activity and the automotive sector.
02:53So we pretty much touch everything that comes into
02:57and out of Australia and New Zealand.