Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have only been in this place for a short period of time, having come in at a by-election, but I have been here long enough to appreciate that in the cut and thrust of election campaigns it is very easy for people to be caught up in making promises to all and sundry simply to secure votes. The Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Lindsay Tanner, spoke recently at the National Press Club about some of the approaches of the former Howard government and Labor’s responses to those in the election. It is not my approach, nor one that I would support, to simply go out and—some would, uncharitably, call this pork-barrelling—make promises that, in honesty, you know you cannot commit to. That is not a practice that politicians should adopt. At the end of the day, the very thing that gives politicians a bad name is going out and making ‘commitments’ that they have little chance of being able to deliver.

Mr Deputy Speaker, you will appreciate that my electorate, in the south-west of Sydney, is very much a growth area. We have already seen extensive growth in the population, and it is set to grow further, notwithstanding the fact that this area is some 55 to 60 kilometres outside Sydney. If you can think of Sydney as having affordable land, this is an area where younger families do try to purchase a house and land, so it is an area dominated by young families and one where significant growth is planned. One of the most significant commitments made by the Rudd government to the people of south-west Sydney in the lead-up to the election was to widen the F5 freeway between Ingleburn and Campbelltown. The F5 is also the Hume Highway and is one of the main thoroughfares between Sydney and Melbourne. There are a large number of truck movements along this road. But, as I indicated, it is also a fast-growing area and, as a consequence, we have huge bottlenecks on this freeway in both the mornings and the afternoons. That has slowed the travelling  time for residents setting out for work in both the mornings and the afternoons. It is not just people’s travel convenience that is affected. It also affects local contractors who set out in their businesses to serve their clients and who need to operate in what has become a very extended peak hour period on one of the main arterial roads linking the south-west of Sydney to the major economic centre of Sydney. The depth of feeling of local residents about this was very much expressed when I received 2½ thousand signatures on a petition I sent out concerning the F5.

On numerous occasions after I came into this place I asked the then minister in the Howard government about their position on widening the freeway. That went on year after year while we had to persevere with the traffic bottlenecks and there was no relief in sight. It was Kevin Rudd who came out and made a commitment to the people of Campbelltown to upgrade this significant piece of infrastructure, not just for local residents but to ensure that it could do what it was designed to do, and that is to help commercialise the employment lands of the south-west of Sydney in order to generate jobs for the thousands upon thousands of people who have moved there. That, in turn, will have a significant impact by taking an amount of domestic travel off this road. That was one of the things that went down like a treat in my area. At one stage the member for Macarthur wanted to call it a range of things, but Labor came out and committed to approximately $140 million for this significant piece of infrastructure upgrading. More importantly for our commercial developments in that area, people saw that this was Labor’s commitment to commercialise the employment lands of the south-west of Sydney with a view to generating jobs and accommodating the natural growth occurring out there. That was a very significant feature of the last campaign.

There is not much pretence in the south-west of Sydney. They like going to their football on the weekends to see the Wests Tigers win, as they did last week. But, more importantly, they like to see things occurring that are actually good for their families. And good for their families are local jobs, education and opportunity. These are the things that really came to the fore during the last election—and that was certainly not lost on me.

As part of our campaign, Labor committed $350,000 to investigate the Maldon-Dombarton rail link. That link does not yet exist, but if it ever came to fruition it would connect the port of Port Kembla to the main southern rail, which intersects with Campbelltown and the employment growth areas of the south-west of Sydney. It would be a significant infrastructure upgrade. For some time I have been arguing that we should look at the development of areas such as Liverpool, Campbelltown and Ingleburn as inland ports. As history shows, employment is generated around ports for approximately five to 15 kilometres. If we are able to attract cargo for ships, it would more easily reach the south-west of Sydney through a dedicated freight rail line, which is now planned. If those containers were being offloaded in the south-west of Sydney there is a very good chance that jobs would be generated for the future of kids in those areas. That is why I am very passionate about the growth of the area, not just a haphazard occurrence but a well-planned operation. It is no good to simply say, ‘Let’s open up more land for housing.’ It must be done in tandem with opening up land for the development of employment opportunity. We need to have a very clear view about growth centres, and the development of facilities in the south-west is one area I think we can capitalise on.

Not surprisingly, one of the other significant things that occurred in south-west Sydney during the campaign was the impact of the industrial relations debate. I do not think many people in this place were not aware of my views when it came to the Howard government’s extreme industrial relations laws. I have worked representing not only trade unions but also employers. Indeed, at one time I was on a tribunal, so I think I have seen industrial relations from all perspectives. I try to bring a pragmatic approach to the debate. In that, I sought to bring to the fore the application of fairness and decency in the way we treat people. People can talk about workplace relations, or industrial relations, as it was known in my day, but really the heart of this debate is how we treat one another and how we would want people to treat our kids.

Without stretching the argument, eager as I was to maximise my vote in the last election, I did such things as go to train stations at a quarter to six in the morning to talk to workers as they went to work, and again when they were returning at six or seven in the evening. Not everyone wants to talk to you at those hours, I might say, but when people walk back from a train to talk to you, and you think you are about to get a mouthful of something, and they say to you, ‘The reason I’m not going to vote for the conservatives this time is because of industrial relations,’ you do take note.

I know that when talking after the event people can put whatever gloss they like on these things, but the fact is that it happened with a degree of frequency that certainly resonated with me. It was not that these people were coming back for some ideological reason, saying, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’ By and large the reason that people actually took the opportunity to come back and did come back in the wee hours of the morning to have a talk to me about these things was this: they were parents concerned about the industrial relations environment that their kids were going to move into or, alternatively, they were grandparents worried about the workplace environment that their grandkids were going to move into. This was an extension of people caring for their families. Clearly, one of the things that was not considered to be high in people’s priorities was to see an environment of ‘catch and kill your own’. They did not necessarily want people to be corralled, in terms of regulations and all the rest of such things, into joining unions. What they wanted to know was that if Labor got in they would repeal this legislation and bring back fairness and decency.

Given what has occurred in the first 100 or so days of this government, I think the government has gone on to act on that. We have actually been true to what was said. We have certainly proceeded on the basis of addressing those particular issues. Without stripping flexibility out of the system, we have looked to engender in the system fairness and decency. I think history will show that that was absolutely the right position. But what is going to be more important is what the people in those families think this means for their loved ones as they are growing up in the workforce.

The other thing that I feel was quite significant is the issue of climate change. Just because the people of the south-west of Sydney live some 50 kilometres outside of the main economic areas of Sydney, that does not mean that they are any less motivated when it comes to issues such as climate change. A lot of the people who spoke to me about this issue were looking down the track in terms of their families and the environment that their kids would grow up in. It is noteworthy that the idea of sitting back and doing nothing was really not on their radar. So what Labor said it would do—that is, sign Kyoto—had major resonance in the south-west of Sydney. In Macarthur we have the Macarthur Centre for Sustainable Living, which is co-funded by the federal government. It has been designed to look at various sustainable energy development programs that could be adapted by households through retrofitting, whether it be with water tanks, solar water heating or other forms of efficient energy usage systems. This organisation is well patronised by the people out there. It is not just about their living and working in the south-west of Sydney; it is also about their wanting to do the best for their environment.

As for the issue of ratifying Kyoto—and I know that the opposition, when they were in government, struggled long and hard in thinking about that; and I would have hated to hear the debates that occurred in their party room, although no doubt we will read about those in someone’s book in the not too distant future—that was absolutely critical. We had to make a stand on it. We could not wait until the Americans had decided to do it and then kowtow to them and say, ‘We’ll sign too.’ This issue required a stand. It is about some degree of maturity by us as a community. Signing Kyoto deals us back into the game in terms of how we now relate to the international community over internationally based changes to ameliorate the effects of climate change. That is going to be a long process; there is no question about that. The fact that we have committed this country to a program to be a part of that says a lot about the commitment of the government to locking itself in over a significant issue in electorates, that being climate change, as opposed to our being doomsayers. It is time we started taking responsibility not just for the problem but also for resolving those issues out there. Signing Kyoto has made us a part of that resolution process, and I think that is something that should be applauded.

One of the other things that was key in the last election was education. The member for McEwen just indicated that she thought the provision of computers in schools was very laudable—and so it is. Being a father of three and a grandfather of four, one of the things that motivated me to get into politics—and hopefully motivates all of us—was that I genuinely wanted to do the best for my community but also as a parent I wanted to do the best for my family. If we can give our kids a head start by giving them the tools for education, we do it. This is going to do this on a slightly wider scale. This is to achieve the result of every kid in years 9 to 12 having access to a computer. That is a very significant thing to do to prepare kids not only for tertiary education but for advanced vocational education and for the workforce generally. We need to give our kids a head start on these things. This is not an issue that should necessarily be reduced to politics, although on this occasion it seems it required the election of a Rudd Labor government to make this commitment. This is something that we should be committed to do, just as we are discussing the development of trade training in schools. Once again, this is about giving kids an advantage. Let us give those kids who are not going to go into tertiary education but are going into the labour force every opportunity to succeed. That is something that we want as parents and that we should all be aspiring to do as members of parliament, regardless of what side we are on in this place.

It is an absolute honour and a rare opportunity to be in public office. I am the 1018th person since the Federation of Australia to have had the honour of representing the local community in the federal parliament. That is not something that is widespread, and it is something that, quite frankly, I do think about regularly. If this ever became a job where I needed to do or say something just to get re-elected, I do not think this would be the place for me. To be in public office is such an honour that we can afford to be ourselves. We can afford to talk as genuine representatives of our community and not be afraid to go out and discuss our commitments with our community. Certainly when you do that you do not always get bouquets thrown in your direction; you get the occasional brick. But, if you are not thick-skinned, you ought not to be here either.

Realistically, an election is a time for renewal. It is a time when there is a new mandate and change is going to occur. This is a new generation of thinking in Australia. It is a very important period. We think it is going to be a central period in revitalising this country.

I would like to thank all those people who have been of assistance to me: my branches, my various party members, my staff and, in particular, my wife, Bernadette, and my family, who have stood by me. I will do this as long as they stay standing by me.

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