2022 award recipients

The Queensland Energy and Jobs Plan (Plan) was developed and launched on 28 September 2022 by the Department of Energy and Public Works. The Plan is for the future of Queensland’s energy system and outlines how Queensland will transition from traditional energy sources to renewable energy and deliver clean, reliable and affordable power for generations.

The Plan leverages Queensland’s advantages to:

• build a clean and competitive energy system for the Queensland economy and industries as a platform for accelerating growth
• deliver affordable energy for households and businesses, and support more rooftop solar and batteries
• drive better outcomes for workers and communities as partners in the energy transformation.

The Plan will ensure Queensland achieves its 50 percent Queensland Renewable Energy Target by 2030 and supports the continued growth of renewable energy to achieve 70 percent renewables by 2032 and 80 percent renewables by 2035.

Advance Queensland’s (AQ) First Nations Community Digital Transformation Project is delivering new employment and economic opportunities for Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Initiated under the AQ Deadly Innovation Strategy, the first-of-its-kind project delivers digital jobs in First Nations communities through community-owned enterprises. Profits are invested back into the enterprise and for community benefit.

Cherbourg is home to the project pilot – the first digital service centre in a Queensland Indigenous community. The goal is to create several commercially sustainable, community controlled, not-for-profit contact centres, capable of high-quality service delivery for government and industry customers.

By aligning Path to Treaty aspirations with community and corporate objectives, this is providing transformative economic and employment participation, and generating broader benefits and empowerment through self-determination.

International beverage manufacturer Frucor Suntory is opening a new $400 million beverage manufacturing facility at Swanbank near Ipswich. The cross-team, multi-agency collaboration between Queensland Treasury and Trade and Investment Queensland to attract an international investment of this calibre has significant benefits for Queensland’s economy, creating jobs and further developing the state’s manufacturing capability.

The teams’ innovative and responsive approach secured Frucor Suntory’s new manufacturing plant ahead of offers from other states and other countries. Frucor Suntory confirmed the Queensland Government’s financial and facilitation support was instrumental in its decision to invest in Queensland and to establish the new manufacturing facility in Swanbank rather than overseas or in another state.

The project is creating approximately 450 local construction and installation jobs and will support 160 long-term jobs when operational in mid-2024. Once complete, the facility will produce up to 20 million cases of drinks each year, with the ability to significantly scale up in the future. It will develop Queensland’s manufacturing capability and deliver more local jobs.

Completing Year 12 and the transition from school to further study or work is a life-changing juncture. Every year thousands of young Queenslanders struggle to navigate the school-to-work transition.

In 2019, the Department of Education recognised the need to do something different to address the complex problem of youth disengagement and introduced the Link and Launch Program (Program) to strengthen the transitions of Year 12 graduates. The Program provides individualised support to young people who have recently finished by linking them with further education, training or employment.

The Program commenced in four youth disengagement hotspots in 2019, is currently in thirty Queensland communities and will expand to thirty-six communities in 2023.

Since its inception in late 2019, the program has supported 2,020 participants with case management, referrals to overcome barriers, and linkages to study, training or work. So far, 1558 of them have been successfully transitioned.

Coinciding with the start of summer and Schoolies Week, the Queensland Police Service (QPS), in partnership with Tinder, launched a campaign in November 2021 to empower safer online dating.

The campaign delivered messaging to Queensland based participants on the Tinder app, co-branded creative for four engaging ads on the Tinder platform and leveraged earned and owned channels to share the news nationally, including a media release, reactive Q&A, social media videos, and b-roll for media.

The campaign reached 91 million people overall through 450 media articles which were overwhelmingly supportive of the partnership and the initiative.

The creative ads and messaging drove high engagement in Tinder with 59.7k total engagements and an average engagement rate of 5.97 percent (the high end of Tinder’s benchmark of 4-6 percent) driving 40,000 people through to the campaign landing page to view more prevention and awareness messaging.

This was a pioneering campaign, now being rolled out in jurisdictions throughout Australia and has opened up conversations with law enforcement agencies in the United States for the first time.

Kinship carers play an important role in the child safety system by supporting children and young people to be cared for in an environment surrounded by family.

Forest Lake Child Safety Service Centre has a shared ‘family caring for family’ philosophy to ensure children remain connected to their families, ensuring placement with kin is the top priority when children enter out-of-home care.

The team welcome all kinship carers, noting the many different needs of children in out-of-home care. Staff work to ensure kinship carers from diverse cultures, backgrounds, identities, abilities and experiences all feel safe, respected and supported. They also go above and beyond to provide intensive assistance to kinship carers to maintain placements. This ranges from providing cultural healing, family therapy, regular home visits, transport, and assistance to go to appointments, and support in accessing allowances if required.

The team have maintained a kinship care placement rate of over 60 percent for all children and young people that are subject to child protection orders and reside in out-of-home care. More than 90 percent of children and young people case managed by staff at the Forest Lake Child Safety Service Centre reside in family-based placement.

In 2019, the Queensland Police Protective Services Group commenced an innovative pilot program to recruit, train and engage local people to provide competent, professional security services to government infrastructure on Palm Island.

Successful applicants joined with First Nations trainers/mentors to support them through tailored learning and development activities. The mentoring process enabled a focus on skills, knowledge and role behaviours, and the physical, psychological, and financial literacy and wellbeing of trainees.

In October 2020, the culturally apposite initiative saw six In-Community Senior Protective Security Officers formally inducted into the Queensland Police Service. Security of government infrastructure is now being undertaken ‘by the community for the community’. With each member still engaged and a multitude of other successful outcomes emerging, 2022 brought project expansion with an anticipated 113 jobs in ten additional First Nations’ communities by 2025.

Literate Futures has been the catalyst behind serious educational reform at Urangan Point State School (UPSS). In its entirety, Literate Futures has systematically launched an improved teaching and learning culture, leading to significantly improved outcomes for all UPSS students.

Literate Futures stands upon three key pillars:

• Systematic curriculum implementation and highly effective pedagogy
• Supporting student engagement and wellbeing through Positive Behaviour for Learning
• Strong cultural and inclusive practices with a distinct focus on Indigenous perspectives.

Literate Futures gives students the best start through improved student outcomes and engagement in schooling, as evidenced by high percentages of students reaching and/or exceeding year level benchmarks, setting them up on a trajectory for continued engagement and success in schooling.

Student wellbeing, engagement and inclusion has been enhanced, as well as community confidence in the school. Our cultural history has been honoured and embraced through innovation, cultural education and awareness, and enhanced community partnerships.

In the face of the unprecedented challenge of COVID-19 to the health of Queenslanders and health system capacity, tens of thousands of staff working across Queensland Health mobilised together to ready Queensland.

The entire Queensland Health system focused its effort to achieve a unified goal – continuing to deliver world-class and equitable frontline health and wellbeing services to all Queenslanders.

Queensland Health’s successful response under the declared emergency was achieved through multiple legislative, regulatory, policy, and funding changes. However, equally powerful was the system-wide reforms leveraged by the response including virtual wards and telehealth to deliver care closer to home, dynamic workforce models, and strengthened partnerships and pathways with other health service providers.

Harnessing effort to drive the system-wide and networked COVID-19 response, Queensland Health unleashed the potential for broader health system reform to deliver even better health services across Queensland into the future.

Violence against healthcare workers is an increasing phenomenon, with complexities arising from numerous medical conditions that manifest into aggression.

As the nation's only dedicated unit tasked with developing, trialling and implementing strategies to reduce occupational violence, the Queensland Occupational Violence Strategy Unit is transforming the way clinicians view healthcare security officers, whilst making clinical areas safer.

The Queensland Health Ambassador Program sees specifically recruited, covert healthcare security officers embedded in clinical areas to work alongside the multidisciplinary team. Ambassadors are patient-centred, empathetic, patient advocates, who have a genuine desire to support patients and their families through their journey across a complex health system.

The program has demonstrated success in emergency departments, acute mental health units, hospital settings, and residential care facilities, with reactive security interventions reduced by 80 percent.

The Cape York Kidney Care (CYKC) model is designed as a transdisciplinary service, providing a conduit between tertiary-level nephrology services and primary care. The program aims to provide holistic and culturally safe kidney care for people identified as high risk of, or with, chronic kidney disease. Emphasis is placed on person-centred care and the promotion of self-management of chronic disease via shared goal-setting and decision-making.

The CYKC team consists of a rural general practitioner, kidney nurse practitioner, nephrologist, dietitian, First Nations health practitioner, and pharmacist. This team is based in Weipa (hub site) and delivers services across six rural communities of the Western Cape in collaboration with local primary health care centres.

The communities have primary care services delivered by the state government as well as an Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation and/or Royal Flying Doctors Service.

The first known service of its kind in Queensland, the innovative Metro North Virtual Emergency Department (MN Virtual ED) operates as a frontline service, utilising virtual modalities (online video consults and telephone) to deliver care.

MN Virtual ED can respond to health care professionals via the clinician-to-clinician service and interact directly with the community for their emergency care needs via the patient service portal. There is no need for a referral to use the service as the public can self-initiate contact with MN Virtual ED.

Virtual care is the way of the future and with over 7,000 referrals, an average of approximately 600 referrals per month. There has been year-on-year growth from service inception in April 2020 until present, with a 72 percent increase in referrals seen from 2021 compared to partial year 2022.

MN Virtual ED holds further potential for managing increasing demand for emergency care now and in the future.

The 2022 February-March floods were devastating for many parts of South East Queensland, with rivers and creeks extending from Bundaberg to the Gold Coast hinterland becoming raging torrents, resulting in extensive and dangerous flooding. The torrential rain in the Brisbane River catchment created a large runoff, meaning the Brisbane River quickly became particularly treacherous.

The resulting river flows dislodged trees, pontoons, boats, and other debris and sent them racing downriver creating dangerous conditions on the water, the tributaries to the Brisbane River and surrounding areas, as well as the Gold Coast and the Mary, Burnett rivers and greater Wide Bay areas.

Maritime Safety Queensland (MSQ) provided high levels of leadership and coordination for many weeks to clean up the waterways and shorelines to allow port activities and recreational boating to resume as quickly and safely as possible.

MSQ’s professional, dedicated, swift and committed response enabled the safe and efficient reopening of the supply chain, the safe use of the Brisbane River and its tributaries for operators and Queensland recreational boaties, and the return of assets such as vessels and pontoons to rightful owners.

Over the past three years, Queensland State Archives (QSA) has embarked on the first large scale research project, the First Wars Project, to support truth telling and the Path to Treaty. The First Wars project is a major milestone in QSA’s journey to be an archive that supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander self-determination and embraces First Nations’ worldviews, knowledge and culture.

The project team have led this very challenging project with commitment, passion and sensitivity. QSA committed to digitising 4,000 identified records and, over many months, worked with a team of research assistants to describe the records and make them more discoverable.

QSA has aimed to find a balance between truth telling, and cultural sensitivity, ensuring that the records are supported by appropriate cultural warnings, so that all Queenslanders have the opportunity to engage with this difficult period of our state’s history.

Creating space for First Nations voices is critical, and key to including First Nations perspectives in a colonial archive.

Imagine farming in Australia's most disaster-prone state and running a successful business living in one of the world's most variable rainfall areas. This is the daily challenge for Queensland farmers.

The Drought and Climate Adaptation Program (DCAP) is fully integrated from the research laboratory to the paddock. DCAP helps farmers better manage drought and climate risks and adapt to climate change, through improving the reliability of and trust in seasonal forecasts, decision support tools and on-farm extension and training.

The best climate scientists, government and non-government agencies, farmers and industry leaders are working together on a number of cutting-edge projects targeting grazing, cropping, sugar cane, and horticulture industries.

DCAP evaluation demonstrates how farmers are adopting new technologies and practices to improve their management decisions. Queensland farmers are sharing their stories of management changes, showing their improved ability to manage climate risks challenging their businesses.

Children’s Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service (CHQHHS) has empowered its workforce, young people, families, and care partners to pursue innovative ways to minimise their environmental impact by establishing an Environmental Stewardship Network.

Since its formation in March 2020, the Green Team has grown to over 200 active members who work together in a voluntary capacity, in addition to their regular healthcare and professional responsibilities, to meet targets set out in the CHQHHS Environmental Sustainability Plan 2021–2024.

The Green Team initiatives have resulted in emission reductions, improved energy efficiency and waste reduction at the CHQHHS in South Brisbane. This has established CHQHHS as an international example for sustainable healthcare service delivery, both financially and environmentally.

The Green Team initiatives support local businesses and circular economy jobs while also shifting current practices and improving Queensland’s environmental performance.

Queensland was the first state in Australia to incorporate betterment into disaster reconstruction. Betterment allows local governments and state agencies to rebuild essential public assets to a more resilient standard to help them withstand the impacts of future natural disasters. It is a great example of all levels of government working together to improve the resilience of Queensland communities.

Queensland’s experience with betterment funds shows that an upfront investment in rebuilding impacted assets to be more resilient saves money for all levels of government in future disasters.

Not only has betterment achieved substantial cost savings through more resilient infrastructure, but it has also improved the lives of those living in impacted communities.

Since the first betterment fund was established in 2013, more than 520 projects across 70 Queensland local government areas – with a betterment value of more than $263 million – have been approved, helping create stronger, more resilient Queensland communities.

Economic Development Queensland has embraced partnerships across government, industry and community to deliver several major lifestyle and economic outcomes for Northshore in 2022, including:

• an updated Development Scheme and Infrastructure Plan, paving the way for a vibrant future that includes Brisbane 2032 Athletes’ Village
• the building of a new global headquarters for biotech company Vaxxas
• the completion of roadworks and infrastructure to facilitate in private sector investment for over 1,500 new dwellings, and;
• innovative public realm activations that achieve national acclaim for opening up riverfront unseen by the public for over 100 years.

Northshore will be Brisbane’s new riverfront parkland and Brisbane’s most sustainable, climate-responsive, and desirable living address; a unique recreation and cultural destination, and a major driver of economic, innovation, enterprise, and employment activity. From a lifestyle perspective, the amendment paves the way for a new civic and open space zone, transforming a further 1.2 kilometres of prime waterfront into a vibrant, mixed-use destination for Queenslanders to enjoy.

Aerial and satellite photography are critically important for our shared understanding of Queensland’s geography. The Queensland Government has been acquiring aerial photography since 1949 and for the last 16 years, the Department of Resources’ Spatial Imagery Services Program (SISP) has provided the Queensland Government and the community with comprehensive satellite and aerial imagery of the entire state.

Through SISP, our “bird’s eye” knowledge of Queensland is annually refreshed by a rolling delivery of high-resolution image capture. This invaluable asset to the state provides an incredible record of our history and development and enables informed decision making.

SISP delivers high-quality digital data that is used in front-line services and planning the development of future communities for more than 50 government stakeholders.

The Queensland Government announced the establishment of the Bruce Highway Trust Advisory Council (BHTAC) as part of its 2017 Future-Proofing the Bruce policy. The BHTAC is made up of leaders from peak transport and industry bodies, the Department of Transport and Main Roads (DTMR) and regional representatives.

The BHTAC oversaw the development of the 15-year vision and action plans for the Bruce Highway to unlock economic growth, build flood resilience and improve safety. The BHTAC also oversaw the development of the Safer Bruce 2030 Action Plan.

The BHTAC was guided by DTMRs' expertise and collaborative approach, bringing together the DTMR Technical Working Group, comprised of technical and subject matter experts and the Customer Experience Branch.

The work has involved robust collection and analysis of data and information, and three phases of the research to understand customer perspectives and priorities for the Bruce Highway and how these are changing over time.

The Queensland Energy and Jobs Plan (Plan) was developed and launched on 28 September 2022 by the Department of Energy and Public Works. The Plan is for the future of Queensland’s energy system and outlines how Queensland will transition from traditional energy sources to renewable energy and deliver clean, reliable and affordable power for generations.

The Plan leverages Queensland’s advantages to:

• build a clean and competitive energy system for the Queensland economy and industries as a platform for accelerating growth
• deliver affordable energy for households and businesses, and support more rooftop solar and batteries
• drive better outcomes for workers and communities as partners in the energy transformation.

The Plan will ensure Queensland achieves its 50 percent Queensland Renewable Energy Target by 2030 and supports the continued growth of renewable energy to achieve 70 percent renewables by 2032 and 80 percent renewables by 2035.