Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for Robertson on her fine first speech in this House and I wish her a long, productive and rewarding time here. There are a number of members who are chicken killers and I will pass their names on to her on another occasion!

I want to express my gratitude to the people of the Wills electorate for giving me the honour of representing them in the 42nd Parliament. I had a tough year last year after my resignation as shadow Attorney-General and I want to thank my family, friends and supporters for the way they rallied around me and helped me both personally and in mounting a first-class campaign for my re-election. I will mention just two. First is my brother, Lex, who is referred to by my staff as Superman. He is in charge of the corflute signs, and all I can say is that I am glad he is on my side. Second is Noel Crawley, a tireless and cheerful campaign worker who was recently injured in a car accident. We all wish Noel a full recovery.

I thank the people of Wills who came out to support me so strongly that the electorate of Wills moved from being a 67 per cent two-party preferred Labor seat to now being a 72.5 per cent two-party preferred Labor seat. In other words, not only did everyone who voted for me in 2004 stick with me, but one in six people of those who had voted Liberal in 2004 came across to vote for me on this occasion. It means a lot to me that they returned me with a much increased majority. Wills is now the fourth strongest Labor seat in the country. This is an emphatic vote of confidence and I have no intention of wasting it. I intend to do everything I can to lift and build the community in which I live and to make Wills a better place for all of us who live there.

I also intend to pursue a vigorous agenda for change in this nation. There is great hope and optimism in the air. There is excitement and enthusiasm. This is a wonderful time to be in the parliament. There are both big opportunities and big challenges. People have high expectations of us as a new Labor government, and so they should. People should always have high expectations of their representatives.

One of the things I most want to see in Australia is an active, well-informed, engaged citizenry making demands of their governments. In this regard, I want to single out for praise and commend to the parliament the work of GetUp!, who have sent us a people’s agenda for the new parliament. I have long regretted the decline of public meetings, the declining membership of political parties, the declining membership of progress associations and the general decline in vehicles for civic engagement. It seems to me that the rise of TVs, DVDs and the internet has turned most of us into passive consumers, sitting in front of a screen and waiting to be entertained rather than getting out there and making things happen. Our political culture has suffered. It has become top down rather than bottom up, leadership obsessed, driven by large campaign donations, lobbyists and focus groups, with a conspicuous lack of dialogue and a lack of serious, genuine discussion and discourse about the direction Australia and the world need to take.

Into this quite serious hole in our democratic jacket has stepped GetUp! It is a national, independent political movement of almost 250,000 Australians. It uses the latest online and offline technologies to break down the barriers between the governed and the governing, and its vision is of a progressive Australia, one with social justice, economic fairness and the environment at its core. In December, thousands of Australians met simultaneously in 327 ‘Vision GetTogethers’—strangers who share simply a postcode and a concern for their country, meeting in almost every electorate in the nation to decide their priorities for the recently elected parliament. In January, the results of their work were compiled and voted on by a staggering 32,500 Australians from every state and territory, Australians of all ages and political persuasions. Three issues stood out as the most important priorities for this parliament. The first is ‘becoming environmentally sustainable’ and combating climate change. Given my background as someone who became interested in politics as a result of my interest in environmental issues, I think that this is not surprising; it is very significant that this has stood out as the most important priority. The second is ‘making high-quality primary, secondary and tertiary public education accessible to all Australians’, and the third is ‘respecting the rights and improving the living standards of Indigenous Australians’. I will say a little more about these in turn.

The first issue is about becoming environmentally sustainable and combating climate change. The Australians who participate in GetUp! want meaningful action to combat climate change and sustainably manage our water, forests and marine habitats. GetUp! are overwhelmingly and urgently concerned about climate change over any other issue facing the nation. They want strong and binding emissions reduction targets by 2020, federal funding for research into renewable and alternative energy, and a robust carbon tax or trading scheme that does not favour large polluters. They are happy to pay more for energy needs to meet this end, although they point to the need for measures to ensure this is equitable. They want Australia to be a world leader in this sphere—leadership that will create the culture change necessary domestically and set the example internationally to avert a climate disaster. They strongly call on the government not just to legislate and fund but to proactively lead the way in creating a culture of sustainability. They finish with a quote:

We have seven years to cap our CO2 emissions. It is an emergency. All hands on deck.

That is exactly right. Global warming is a planetary emergency. It requires all hands on deck and that no stone be left unturned.

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