The Darling Downs manufacturing sector is worth around $2.8b annually to the local economy with approximately 380 businesses focusing predominantly on food and metal related products. With some support, local manufacturing could increase substantially.
The Federal Government has launched the Modern Manufacturing Strategy to make Australian manufacturers more internationally competitive, help businesses scale-up and where possible adopt advanced manufacturing technologies to improve outputs. The strategy has chosen six industries based on Australia’s competitive advantage, which will become the manufacturing sector’s focus. These sectors include:
• Resources technology and critical minerals processing
• Food and beverage
• Medical products
• Recycling and clean energy
• Defence
• Space
Pixie Ice Cream have invested in packaging automation equipment from German-based company Schubert. This has significantly increased their production capacity to service the Australian and now international markets. Home Style Bake purchased machinery from Switzerland that will triple the output of their bread roll manufacturing. Wagner’s Composite Fibre Technologies recently introduced new robotic technology, enabling cross arms production to increase from 1,000 to 20,000 per month. Oakey Beef recently completed an automated cold storage facility and robotic palletising system.

Toowoomba for Climate Action is playing our part to keep global average temperatures in a safe, liveable range, so that all humans, other species, and living systems can flourish.

Did you know that Toowoomba Regional Council was the first in Queensland to capture landfill methane for energy production?

Council has both reduced the emissions it is responsible for by 80% and now saves ratepayers over $1 million/year in energy savings!

Council’s most demanding energy user, the Wetalla Water Reclamation Facility, is now 90-100% supplied with free renewable power.

Dozens of other Councils have been inspired by Toowoomba Regional Council to do similar projects on their own landfills.

As a cultural hub of the Darling Downs for more than 100 years, The Empire continues to serve our community with a focus on developing the arts in our region, delivering world class entertainment locally and telling the important stories.

Economic Development agencies include Regional Development Australia Darling Downs and South West and State Government agencies including the Department of State Development, Manufacturing, Infrastructure & Planning and Trade & Investment Queensland (TIQ), plus Toowoomba Chamber of Commerce, University of Southern Queensland (USQ), TAFE Queensland South West, the Toowoomba region’s Registered Training Organisations (RTOs), Tourism Darling Downs, Southern Queensland Country Tourism and regional business chambers and associations.

Apprenticeships and traineeships are excellent examples of pathways into work that have proven to be effective. But they are specific to certain occupations.

Apprentices and trainees made up about 10 per cent of the pathways people take into the workforce. He said policymakers needed to create better vocational education and training (VET) courses to give young people stronger options outside universities and apprenticeships.

3.9 million people were enrolled in vocational education and training last year, but up to 2.4 million of those were in short courses such as first aid and construction safety.

Toowoomba and its surrounding regions which include the Maranoa, Western Downs, Southern Downs, Goondiwindi, Burnett and Moree regions, is a food producing powerhouse for Australia.

The food capability of these council areas is driven by the diversity of fresh and value added products grown and produced in these locations.

Key agricultural outputs for this catchment include cotton, grain, beef, pork, poultry, dairy and fruit and vegetables. Aiding the regions food capability are the regions' research facilities, including the University of Southern Queensland’s Institute for Agriculture and the Environment which focuses on developing solutions for a sustainable and profitable future for the rural sector.

Is Australia’s housing crisis self-inflicted? If so, then we need a series of reforms to reverse it
The best long-term solution to the structural problems of the rental crisis is to build more public and/or affordable housing.

Make renting more Sustainable. Increase rent assistance or look at rental caps, similar to countries in Europe and some US states, long term tenancy agreements with incentives for all parties to the agreement.

Build to Rent
The Build to Rent property sector is growing in Australia – this new class of housing is focused on providing high quality purpose designed and built rental stock, creating an additional housing choice for Australian renters with greater security and service.

Build to Rent developments are typically owned by institutional investors for the long term and the owner could be the developer/ongoing building manager. The format provides tenants with the flexibility of renting with the security of home ownership.

Build-to-Rent developments are usually large-scale residential properties specifically designed, built and managed for long-term ownership and rental.

Social Housing
In the 40 years between 1981 and 2021 the percentage of all Australian households living in social housing (i.e. state owned and managed public housing or community managed housing) has ranged from 4.9 per cent in 1981 to 3.8 per cent in 2021. Such a drop in the proportion of social housing raises the question of has Australia achieved the balance right, and also just what is the right level of social housing for Australia?

In 2018 Statistics Canada said 628,700 Canadian households, more than one in ten renter households nationally (13.5% of 4,652,500), were living in social and affordable housing.
In New Zealand, as of 30 June 2021, there were 74,337 public housing households. This equates to 4.0% of households living in social housing.

In England (in 2018) 17% of households (3.9 million) lived in social housing, while the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development publishes that 1.2 million households live in public housing, which is 0.98 per cent of all housing.

The mining industry, (including; coal mining, oil and gas extraction, metal ore mining, non-metallic mineral mining and quarrying, and exploration and other mining services), has had a presence in Western Gas and coal-fired power stations feature prominently in the region with a total of six active thermal power stations.

Kogan Creek Power Station is one of Australia's most efficient and technically advanced coal-fired power stations. It is one of the greenest coal-fired power stations with the lowest environmental impacts of any coal-fired power station nationwide.

Dalby Bio-Refinery Ltd (DBRL) is Australia’s first grain-to-ethanol facility. The refinery converts nearly 200,000 metric tonnes of sorghum into 76 million litres of ethanol and produces 180 thousand tonne of Wet cake (WDG) or 65 thousand tonne of Dry DDG cake each year, employing approximately 50 people. 13

More recently, renewable energy farms have invested in the region with multiple solar and wind energy farms either currently under construction or approved for construction.

Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton, Gladstone, Bundaberg and Toowoomba all support a significant ADF presence nearby or provide port and freight access for Defence.

The University of Southern Queensland’s (UniSQ) Institute for Advanced Engineering and Space Sciences, based in Toowoomba, provides a dedicated facility for space and defence research. UniSQ’s unique capabilities and facilities include Australia’s longest duration hypersonic wind tunnel (>200ms); the only Australian university solid propellant rocket fuel manufacturing laboratory; rocket motor and fuel tank manufacturing with Australia’s most advanced industry scale robotic composite material filament winding cell; and Australia’s only capability in airborne diagnostics for re-entry observations of Space modules. UniSQ has significant capability in ultra-high temperature ceramic matrix composites for rocket motor components.

Toowoomba is the second largest inland Australian city. Home to a vivid music, café and restaurant scene, many of them in laneways tucked in alongside century-old landmarks, Toowoomba is loaded with theatres, galleries, great shopping and glorious parks and gardens.

Explore the First Coat art project – one of Australia’s most prominent regional arts projects. Artists from around the world have created a walkable gallery of street murals in the heart of the city.

What if we could turn our landfills into producers of renewable, clean energy – if the waste gas from our non-recyclable and non-reusable rubbish were a resource that had a second life?

That’s exactly what we’re doing in collaboration with the Toowoomba Regional Council. LGI is transforming the Toowoomba Waste Management Centre into a renewable energy superpower in the fight against climate change.

Our new renewable energy power station at this landfill is the first in Queensland to convert methane from landfill into electricity. Council’s most demanding energy user will now be mostly (90-100%) supplied with renewable power fuelled by waste gas the tip.

This new project at the Toowoomba Waste Management Centre is the first in Queensland to convert methane from a landfill into electricity to power a Council’s waste water treatment plant.

Deakin University is a public university in Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1974, the university was named after Alfred Deakin, the second Prime Minister of Australia. Its main campuses are in Melbourne's Burwood suburb, Geelong Waurn Ponds, Geelong Waterfront and Warrnambool, as well as the online Cloud Campus.

Deakin has a deep history of collaboration. We have forged partnerships with leaders in industry, government, and research to solve problems, share ideas, and inspire work-ready graduates. From developing community initiatives, connecting with global universities, to innovating with industry, Deakin promotes collaboration in everything we do.

Research at Deakin is about changing the world. Our innovative research centres help to solve global challenges, create smarter technology, and improve the health and wellbeing of communities. With a diverse range of research areas, close links with industry, and first-class facilities, Deakin research creates real-world, far-reaching impact.

Australia is building a robust, resilient and globally-competitive defence industry. It exports innovative defence technologies to key global partners and supports an agile and capable Australian Defence Force (ADF).

Some of our defence exports
• More than 70 companies share more than A$3 billion in contracts as part of the global Joint Strike Fighter Program investment. (Source: Australian Government 2023)
• Thales Australia Bushmaster Protected Mobility Vehicles, designed and built in Australia, are used by a number of countries including Fiji, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
• The Nulka Active Missile Decoy protects ships from missiles and has been adopted by several nations. Its concept of a hovering rocket decoy was initiated in Australia by the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) and developed in partnership with the US Department of Defence and BAE systems. It is currently deployed on over 150 Australian, US and Canadian warships.
• Droneshield, an Australian company that makes innovative AI-based counter drone systems, in July 2023 received a record A$33 million order from a US government agency. It followed a $9.9 million order from another customer among the Five Eyes community.

The Australian Government has adopted a policy of National Defence – the defence against potential threats arising from major power competition – as a new approach to defence planning and strategy.

The current defence industry policy was established in a very different environment to today. Risk of major power conflict was low, policy assuming a 10-year warning time, and industry capability was viewed largely in terms of supporting individual ADF programs.

The risk of a major conflict in the Indo-Pacific is real. China is openly using military and para-military forces to change the status -quo I the South China Sea, while in Europe Russia is continuing its war to annex Ukraine.

• The Australian defence industry should be considered a capability in its own right.

• Defence industry should be embedded within and managed as part of Australia’s broader national industry structure and policy.

• Defence industries should be strategically prioritised, then supported to achieve scale and surge capabilities.

• Government should use the full range of policy levers at its disposal to shape defence industry outcomes.

• Government should establish a Defence Industry Capability Manager.

Design has a primary role in shaping and fashioning the physical world for a human purpose.

All human artefacts are in some way designed. Design serves a multiplicity of human needs ranging from the practical and instrumental to the intuitive and emotional.

Design applies to cities, environments, structures, spaces, objects and electronic images.

The four key principles of design are utility, social relevance, sustainability and aesthetic satisfaction. Associated with them all are imagination and innovation.

Major areas of design are urban design architectural and building design, engineering, landscape planning and design, interior design, industrial and product design, craft design, fashion design graphic design, and design of the moving image.

The Digital Health CRC harnesses the power of data and digital technologies to improve health outcomes, increase efficiency in health and aged care delivery, and grow a competitive digital health industry for Australia.

We want to reduce harm caused by fire and floods by harnessing the collective power of communities, industry, government, philanthropy and the research sector to lift Australia to be the global leader in fire and flood resilience by 2025.

We see ourselves as an enabler, facilitating dialogue, orchestrating and convening groups (people, businesses, government, philanthropy and the research sector), and relying on ground truth from active community-focused programs, to identify the most important resilience-related problems and enable the most effective solutions to be delivered faster.

As a not-for-profit, we go where the evidence takes us. Finally, we are an impact investor. We will make investments when and where they are needed to lift fire and flood resilience. We have a strong balance sheet to ensure the program is a success.