WELL DONE: Jennifer Howard congratulates Ipswich State High Rugby League Coaches for the Allan Langer Cup success.
JENNIFER Howard has been the State Member for Ipswich since 2015 and says she is more focused than ever on keeping local issues front and centre within a busy state agenda.
“I have lived in Ipswich for over 30 years, I raised my two children here and co-ran a local business before moving into roles in State and Federal Government,” Ms Howard said.
“Ipswich has been really good to us, our kids were involved in dance and tennis, they had a great education here and they’ve gone on to do tremendous things with their lives.”
Jennifer says it was a feeling of gratitude towards a community that has been so good to her family that drove her desire towards representing Ipswich in Queensland Parliament.
“I wanted to give something back, I have always been made to feel really welcome by this community,”
Ms Howard said. “I felt I knew quite a lot of people in the area, and I knew the kind of issues we were dealing with at the time.
“After we had a couple of years of Campbell Newman, cities like Ipswich were really the worst affected by his short but shattering reign.
“We lost a lot of critical services that supported a lot of vulnerable people in the community, so that was a key driver for me too.”
Ms Howard says she has gone about developing key pieces of infrastructure that she says are so important to the community and is now looking ahead to future challenges.
“The last couple of years in particular we have had so many unexpected challenges including bushfires and floods,” Ms Howard said.
The regularity of these natural disasters caused by a changing climate alongside Ipswich’s forecasted population growth are what Ms Howard describes as the biggest challenges facing Ipswich in the coming years.
“We need to make sure that people who are going to be moving here not only have a roof over their head but also have quality of life, access to jobs, access to health and public transport and key infrastructure,” Ms Howard said.
“People are already dealing with the day-to-day challenges like cost of living, but I can tell you that climate change is the number one issue that gets raised with me,” Ms Howard said.
