Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas. I think this is the first time I have spoken while you have been in the chair. Congratulations on being elected to the Speaker’s panel. I know that you will acquit yourself in a fine and upstanding manner, as you do in every job that you do in this parliament, including your position as Chair of the Standing Committee on Health and Ageing.

The previous speaker boasted about the Howard government’s record and its economic management skills, and I had to stop myself from laughing. It was the government that allowed Australia to develop the highest inflation rate in 16 years, oversaw 10 interest rate rises in a row, ignored the skills crisis and failed to address the major infrastructure needs of our nation. It was a government that sat on its hands and did nothing except create fear.

It was an arrogant government. Nothing typifies the current opposition’s arrogance and shows that they have not learnt from their loss at the last election more than the campaign they launched last week, which was based on speculation, not fact, frightening and causing anxiety for tens of thousands of carers throughout Australia. This campaign was based on speculation. There were no facts; there had been no announcement from government that there would not be a carers bonus in the budget. Rather, it was at the whim of those in the opposition struggling for some relevance within the parliament. They linked into an issue about which they thought they could drum up a bit of publicity and create a bit of fear and anxiety. I am appalled that they could be so insensitive as to try to create fear amongst people that are vulnerable. It says to me that they have not learnt anything from their election loss.

At the last election, the Australian people elected the Rudd government because they knew that the Labor Party was the party of the future and that the Prime Minister would be a fine leader of this country. The Labor Party, under the leadership of Kevin Rudd, is committed to nation building, to building a better future for the nation and working families. The Australian people recognised that the Howard government was out of touch, had lost its way and had absolutely no plan for the future. Nothing typifies this more for me than the statement made by the then Prime Minister, John Howard, prior to the election that ‘Australian families have never been better off’. It showed me and other members of the Labor Party that he was out of touch and that he did not go out into the community and talk to people that were struggling and doing it hard—people that had suffered the 10 interest rate rises in a row.

If there is any message I would like to give to the opposition it is that they need to look at the reasons why they lost the last election. They need to come to terms with the fact that they are the opposition now; they are not the government sitting on the opposition benches. They need to be truly sensitive to the needs of the people in Australia that look to us in the federal parliament to behave responsibly—not to engender fear when there is no reason for a fear campaign. They need to learn, develop some policies, get their facts right and make themselves relevant.

I would like to thank the people of Shortland for the trust that they have placed in me by electing me to the parliament for the fourth time. The people of Shortland are very special, as is the electorate of Shortland. I know most members feel this way about their electorate, but I think I can justify making the statement that Shortland is probably one of the most beautiful electorates in the nation. It is a long, thin electorate nestled between the lake and the sea, and along with that we have some very special and unique issues. I was very pleased that one of the first acts of the Rudd Labor government was the ratification, the signing, of Kyoto. That is very important to the people I represent in this parliament. We know how important protecting our environment is. We know that climate change is an issue and we know that by making that initial commitment we are saying it is on the agenda, we are going to address the issues of climate change and we are not going to pretend it does not exist. We need action, not inaction. Once again, I thank the people for the trust they have placed in me. I promise that I will work for them and see that they have a strong voice in this parliament.

I would also like to thank the team that worked with me in the election. They are a very dedicated team. The members of the Labor Party in the Shortland electorate worked very hard to see a Rudd Labor government elected and to see me elected. They spent many hours letterboxing, coming out doorknocking with me and helping in a variety of different ways. I would also like to thank my staff, particularly my Campaign Director, John Buckley, and my family. My husband, Lindsay, is one of the very hard-working ALP members in the electorate and somebody that not only believes in what the Labor Party stands for but also has supported me throughout my time in parliament, so I thank him specially. And I thank my children, although now they are grown-up the impact of my being a member of parliament is nowhere near as great as it was when they were younger.

I was exceptionally proud when, on the first day that this parliament sat, we had the Indigenous welcome to country. It set the theme for what the Rudd Labor government was about. It created a whole new environment within the parliament and I think most members on both sides of the House would have felt that. On the following day, when we had the apology to Indigenous Australians, once again I was proud to be a part of that historic event. I think it was one of the members on the other side, Christopher Pyne, the member for Sturt, who said that it was a historic day, but it did not need to be as historic as it was because we should have made that apology 11 years ago. But as a parliament we finally made the apology and members of this particular 42nd Parliament are fortunate to have been part of that apology.

One of the big issues in the election was the Work Choices legislation. I had people coming to my office asking me what they could do to help unseat the Howard government, and many of those people were motivated purely and simply by the Work Choices legislation. I have had a number of people over a very long period of time come and see me about issues that related to the previous Work Choices legislation—people who have been disadvantaged and people who have had their lives turned upside down because of that legislation. And there were a significant number of people within the electorate that wanted to sign petitions and wanted to work with me during the election.

When I thanked people, I should have thanked those people that were involved with the Your Rights at Work campaign. They came out and worked on some of my polling booths, and the polling booths that had the Your Rights at Work paraphernalia displayed were where I had the biggest swings. In an electorate like Shortland, achieving 13 or 15 per cent swings on already safe polling booths showed that that campaign touched the very hearts of people within the electorate who had felt that the Work Choices legislation was really disadvantaging them. Given that Shortland electorate is the 10th oldest electorate within the nation, it showed that those older members of the community were fearful of the effect that it was going to have on their grandchildren. It was said to me a number of times, ‘This does not affect me directly, but it will impact on the lives of my children and my grandchildren.’ Once again it shows how far-sighted, how intelligent and how practical the people of the Shortland electorate are.

I would like to touch on the issue of skills shortages. In the Shortland electorate, we have a large number of people who in the past relied on industry—people who undertook traditional apprenticeships, people who saw their role in life as working in those professions. Under the previous government, young people leaving school were unable to get those traditional apprenticeships. There were a number of new apprenticeships, but they were not preparing people to meet the areas of skills shortage that existed within the community. That was identified by the employer groups in our area and by the people who were seeking work.

One of the key commitments that the then Rudd Labor Party, now the Rudd Labor government, took to the election was to address the skills shortage. We would create opportunities for all those young people who wanted to undertake traditional apprenticeships so that they could do just that. I know that that has been embraced by people in the electorate of Shortland and it has been embraced by the schools within Shortland. I have visited a number of schools since the election. I have talked to them about the computers in schools program that Labor went to the election with and I have spoken to them about the trade schools. Next week I will be visiting all the high schools again to discuss computers in schools and the trade schools again.

I encourage members of the opposition to do the same, because it is a unique opportunity for your schools, for the schools you represent in this parliament. I was speaking to my staff member earlier today, and he said that the schools that he has spoken to when arranging the appointments for me to go out to visit them have all been excited about the fact that these initiatives are being put in place. They are excited about the computers in schools program and they are excited about the trade centres. I would encourage members to look at it creatively and to make sure that they do not let political rhetoric stand in the way of getting resources that are going to benefit the people they represent in this parliament. It is a great initiative, something the schools are welcoming, both government and non-government schools, and it is something that all members of parliament should embrace.

The Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008, the bill to set up Infrastructure Australia, has passed through this House. Once again, it is legislation that is picking up on the inaction of the previous government—the fact that, instead of investing in the future of the country, it was blatantly looking after its mates and allowing to develop in Australia a situation where those people who were very well off were taken care of but those who were doing it hard found it even harder to survive. That really shows in the fact that the gap between those on the lowest incomes and those on the highest incomes widened during its time in government. I think it is the role of government to support everybody within the community.

One area that I am particularly interested in is health and the government’s health reform agenda. I think that it is time that governments stopped blaming each other for the problems that exist within the health system. It is a time when governments of all persuasions, whether state or federal, or local, for that matter, should come together and look at what they can do to address the real health issues confronting the communities we represent. The chronic shortage of doctors, which has existed for a long time—and a shortage of not only doctors but also allied health professionals—needs to be addressed. Labor is putting in place GP superclinics that will help to address that in some ways. In the electorate that I represent, Shortland, we have a real problem because the doctors in three areas of the electorate have closed their books. The government’s reform agenda is about addressing these issues and actually solving the problems.

Regarding problems with dental health, Labor’s Commonwealth Dental Health Program will be reinstated. I cannot understand why the previous government ever removed it. It was a program that was working. I was a state member of parliament at the time that the Howard government was elected. When they decided to discontinue the Commonwealth Dental Health Program, pensioners and people on low incomes came to my office for help because they were no longer able to get the dental treatment they needed. The Rudd Labor government will be fixing that. We will be providing services to help those 650,000 people who are on the dental waiting lists throughout Australia.

I would like to quickly touch on homelessness. There are a number of different aspects to homelessness. In the Shortland electorate, we have a youth hostel and a women and children’s refuge. They provide crisis accommodation for people who find themselves homeless for a variety of reasons. They are two excellent organisations operating within the electorate. They do absolutely everything you could ask of them to provide support and service to the people who need them. But we need far more than we have at the moment. It is one of the issues that the Prime Minister is addressing at the moment.

But homelessness is taking on another face within the Shortland electorate. There is a chronic shortage of rental accommodation. People are being forced out of their homes because of the interest rate rises. I have had a number of families that cannot find accommodation come to my office. Many of them do not have rental records. The system that monitors people’s rental records is something that they cannot access. It is very difficult to find information about it, and that does not help at all. Homelessness has a number of different faces. Solving the private and public housing shortage is something that this government will embrace.

Finally, there were two main issues that I made a commitment to the people of the Shortland electorate on, and they were funding of the Fernleigh Track and a Medicare office at Belmont. The Belmont Medicare office was operating when the previous government came to power. It had a higher throughput than a number of offices that they kept open, but it was in the heart of a Labor held electorate and they closed it in a mean-spirited way. Fernleigh Track is a fantastic asset within the Shortland electorate. It is a vital tourist track and something that is embraced by the community. In closing, I would like to once again thank the people of Shortland for the trust that they have placed in me by electing me to this parliament. I promise them that I will serve them faithfully throughout the term of this parliament.

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