wo of the biggest corporate facility investments in Australia and in New Zealand in 2007 were breweries (from SABMiller's Pacific Beverages joint venture and Lion Nathan, respectively). But there are more important liquids flowing Down Under, LNG and ethanol chief among them.
      Good spirits indeed may be the region's most valuable commodity. It's no accident that Mercer Human Resources in 2007 reported that the top five quality-of-living cities in Asia were in Australia and New Zealand: Auckland, Sydney, Wellington, Melbourne and Perth.
      Today, under the Labor Party administration of recently elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, human appeal and human resources are coming together to help meet company needs at a time when unemployment is lower than it's been in 30 years.
      Through various immigration reforms, the government therefore has raised its allowed total immigration for 2009 to 190,300 (a 25-percent hike), with 70 percent of that total to be chosen based on possessing the skills most in demand. A separate short-term visa program allows for 100,000 more next year. That's a large proportion in a country with a total population of 21.2 million.       One place the industrial facility capital and job opportunities are flowing is the northeast state of Queensland, from Brisbane, Gladstone and the Gold Coast up through Cairns and the many towns flanking the Great Barrier Reef. In addition to leading the continent in population growth in 2007, the state has increased its share of the national economy by 3 percent since the turn of the century, to 21 percent, joining Victoria (home to surging Melbourne) among the leading areas for industrial growth.
      A report released in May said Queensland is growing by 60,000 people a year, that Cantonese and Mandarin are South East Queensland's second most spoken languages after English and that nearly half the state's entire population resides in Brisbane.
      The state is seeing its human capital infrastructure filled in with developments like new federal funding for medical student training and a tripling of funding for grants and fellowships to be awarded to researchers as part of Queensland's "Smart State" program, which already has resulted in the construction of 36 different institutes, many in health and science fields.
      The state also is seeing traditional infrastructure investment, as displayed in the A$16.2-billion (US$15.3-billion) Roads Implementation Program released by Queensland Premier Anna Bligh's office in early June. The funding is a 22-percent boost from the previous program, and nearly half of it is dedicated to the fast-growing and congested area of southeast Queensland.
      One rapidly growing zone in that region is the Gladstone State Development Area (GSDA), which expects final company approvals to come soon for the Santos LNG liquefaction and shipping project on Curtis Island, which will take a total investment of US$7.3 billion and could be sending its first shipments to markets across Asia around 2014.
      In addition to already securing the site, the company's project team of 120 also has secured approval by the state government of its status as a "significant project." Up to 3,000 jobs could be created during construction, with 200 new jobs expected once the plant is operational. This spring the firm appointed Bechtel and Foster Wheeler as the lead engineering and construction contractors on the project, and also submitted its environmental applications.
      The company in late May announced a 60/40 partnership in the Gladstone project with Petronas, the oil and gas giant wholly owned by the Malaysian government that is the third largest LNG producer in the world, operates the world's largest LNG shipping fleet and operates the world's largest integrated LNG facility in Bintulu, Sarawak.
      The overall project at Gladstone involves three components: the drilling for coal seam gas (CSG) in several productive inland fields; the construction of a 264-mile (425-km.) pipeline system from those fields to the Curtis Island complex; and the construction of the LNG liquefaction plant on Curtis Island. The company plans to increase its CSG wells from 120 to 400 by the end of 2009. The pipeline will follow existing easements. The ultimate vision is for a multiple-train complex capable of producing 10 million tons of LNG a year.
      In a conference call with analysts, Santos CEO David Knox said the deal with Petronas takes Santos from being an east Australian company to a player in the larger and dynamic energy economy of Asia.
      "Queensland has been very intelligent in the way they've developed the Curtis Island site," he said. "There is an LNG precinct, with room for us and for other projects if they wish to progress."
      Other port-related projects are moving forward in the area as well. Gladstone Ports Corp. in April received environmental approvals to move on its new Wiggins Island coal port terminal, which will create 130 jobs and include a US$1.2-billion first-phase investment in the terminal and a related US$472-million rail upgrade.
      The Port of Brisbane also continues its growth, the most recent project being a US$500-million investment that will end in the lease of two new container berths by Hutchison Port Holdings. The project means the Port now will have nine container terminals. And it needs them: In the 2006-2007 fiscal year, the Port's container volume grew by 14.2 percent, out-distancing the growth rates at ports in Melbourne and Sydney to the south for the fifth straight year.