Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity this evening to reflect on the last three years and also on the outcome of the election and the contribution of so many people in supporting me in representing the seat of Goldstein. I would like to thank the people of Goldstein for their trust during the election. It is a big thing to represent some 130,000 local people, over 300 community groups, 40-plus aged-care facilities, all of the 50 schools in my electorate, 5,000 businesses and 60,000 households. It is a wonderful thing to be able to come to this place and seek, as best you can, to represent the priorities of that community. I have been in and around the political system for a significant part of my life, but the last three years was the first time as a representative of the people—the first time that I had stood for parliament—and I do not regret a minute of it. It has been a wonderful experience.

I will come back to my activities in this House a bit later. The most enjoyable part, I think, has been my association with the local community. I did not know how much I would enjoy the experience of representing them, meeting them, absorbing their views and doing my best to fairly represent their views in this place, no matter how people voted. I must say, it has been a great joy to me to be able to get around and make the acquaintance of so many.

I have seen the efforts of significant parts of my community. I think we are privileged as parliamentarians to be able to see the number of people who are involved locally in a voluntary capacity. Most people in the community have one or two extracurricular activities. That is what they do and it is an important part of their life. As a parliamentarian you get to be exposed to everyone’s extracurricular activities and the volunteers that are involved. In my electorate there are 130,000 people, including all the kids. There are somewhere in excess of 20,000 people who volunteer in some capacity, and without them our community would not work. My electorate of 17 suburbs has tens of thousands of people who, of their own volition, are providing their own time, effort and skills to make that community work. It is a privilege to know those people and to do what I can in a small way to help their cause.

I have taken a particular interest in a lot of the organisations who provide disability services. It has been an eye-opener for me to see the sacrifice. I am in awe of the sacrifices made by the people in those organisations, many of them volunteers. The professionals go the extra mile, endlessly. What they do for so many people in our community who unfortunately often have some sort of disability is something which is really hard to come to grips with. You wonder how you would cope and what sacrifice you would make if you were put in their circumstances. I really do live in awe of the sacrifices made by so many of those people. At Marriott House, Lloma Shaw, the chief executive, is just an outstanding woman. There is MOIRA disability services, Bailey House and many others, including Family Life services, which works so closely with families who are having difficulties, through mediation and all the rest. There are so many organisations and I really am privileged to be associated with them.

I would like to thank my team in my electorate. We have local volunteers. I have the good fortune of having close to 700 Liberal Party members in my seat. They are a very active, very interested, very competent and very experienced group. I had the great benefit of taking over from David Kemp three years ago and inherited a very strong organisation and a strong body of people who really have done most of the work for me.

As a party, we lost government at the last election with, in some cases in Victoria, a swing a touch over five per cent. The swing in Goldstein was 1½ per cent less than the national and state swing and I do attribute much of that result, which was a better result than in many other places, to the work of those involved in my re-election to this House. All of my campaign team, headed so competently by Jeannette Rawlinson, should be extremely proud of the result, and I would like to thank them in particular. Jeannette Rawlinson, who has been my campaign director on the two occasions that I have stood for the seat of Goldstein, has done a just outstanding job. My deputy campaign director and chairman of my federal electorate council, Rob de Fegley, has been a source of great advice. I trust his judgement enormously. His feel for the seat and the issues in the party has helped me do my job in here and in other parts of Australia. He provides feedback and brings insight to that job.

Others on the committee included Brett Hogan, Ian Mence, Kaye Farrow, Yolande Henderson, Stephen Gage, Bert Moffatt, Leo King, Paul Nettelbeck, Raymon Frederico, Hanife Bushby, Roy Aspinall, John Foley, Peter and Katrina Grove, Trevor Beaumont, Jo Goss, David Feldman, Colin Gourley, Andrew Hudgson, Andrew Tame, Daryl Williams, Stephen Hartney and Stan McConnell. As you can see, there is a huge list of people who were on my campaign committee. All of them were very actively involved in the campaign and there was a good mix of experienced and young people amongst them. It was a great team effort. My team certainly carried the bulk of the load and enabled me to carry out a range of responsibilities in the electorate and beyond. I thank them for their work. I also thank the over 300 volunteers who worked tirelessly, particularly on polling day, across the 37 booths in my electorate, as well as the dozens of others who went from my electorate to assist in areas of the state where we did not have such a strong party membership.

I would like to thank my electorate staff: Kathy Foley, Sam Russell, Megan Cox, Nick Troja and Anne Lane. All of them worked above and beyond, not just through the campaign but for many months. They have all been my Rock of Gibraltar and I really do thank them with all my heart for their work, for their sacrifice and for the loyalty that they displayed. Equally, I would like to thank my former ministerial staff. They played such a big part in helping me in the lead-up to the campaign and in helping me do the best job I could last year in my role as Minister for Vocational and Further Education. My chief of staff, Julie Abramson, is an outstanding woman who helped me in my earlier role as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and last year in my role as Minister for Vocational and Further Education. I also thank my wonderful personal secretary, Margo Beales, who was with me in business before I entered parliament, as well as Andrew Coombe, Suzi Hewlett, Stuart Eaton, Mary-Anne Mellor, Kathryn Hodges, Ben Davies, Donna Schmeider, Jane Farr and Robyne Head, who helped out locally for me during the campaign. I think we all realise in this place the importance of good, loyal, committed staff. That is something that both sides enjoy. Certainly I, as much as anybody, have been greatly blessed with the quality of staff that have worked with and for me.

I would also like to record my pride in some of the achievements, many of which were very significant for the local community, many of them driven by the efforts of local community groups over the last three years. A lot has been achieved in the seat of Goldstein with local community groups. As I said at the outset, it has been a great pleasure not only to be involved with so many of these groups and to get to know them in my first three years as a parliamentarian but also to properly understand my patch and, I hope, get to properly and effectively represent their interests.

Aged-care facilities were justifiably rewarded with more than $4½ million of new aged-care places in the Bayside area. Demographically, not only are many young families coming into my part of the world but also we have a large senior community. The aged-care facilities are second to none and provide a great service for the seniors in the seat of Goldstein. Other achievements of which I am particularly proud include the Sandringham Yacht Club, which received a grant of over $400,000 for a really important initiative. It will contribute towards building a training centre at the yacht club. It is the second sporting club in Australia which has become a registered training organisation—after the Bulldogs, which do a great job in the western suburbs in Melbourne with their training programs. This followed meetings I had with it. I discovered it had started to provide for literally thousands of young people. Last year, several thousand young people attended training programs at the club, using small yachts. It taught them leadership and teamwork and introduced them to sailing. Many thousands of those are young kids from more disadvantaged parts of the south-east suburbs. The club draws kids not just from my electorate but from far and wide.

I think it is a wonderful thing the yacht club is doing and it is a great contribution to the community. It has opened new horizons for literally thousands of young people who may never have thought that they had the opportunity or the wherewithal to be part of the yachting community. It caters for people from all walks of life. It is a great sport and it is a great thing that the Sandringham Yacht Club is doing. I am very proud to have been associated, as the patron of the club, with this wonderful development that it is involved in.

Family Life is an organisation in my electorate that now extends well beyond my electorate in providing mediation services for families in difficulty. In the last three years it has been successful with programs in excess of $2 million that it is providing on behalf of government to local communities. It is a very difficult process, trying to avoid courts in cases where family relationships have broken down et cetera.

The Sandringham Bowls Club is a great club and a very progressive club. It was successful in getting $119,000 for an innovative water conservation project. It put together money it had raised, together with money the local Bayside council had put in, to be fully self-sustainable, from a water point of view, in the coming years. It is a great symbol, a great project to the local community. Senior members of the community should take note of this initiative—this very innovative, leading-edge technology. It is currently being introduced, but it will stand as a great symbol and an example to the local community of the need to make the most of the scarce water resources that we have.

I am also very proud that, since 2004, the local schools in Goldstein have shared in $5.3 million of funding for over 90 projects at all of the 50 primary, secondary and special schools within my electorate. The Investing in Our Schools Program was a very significant program. It enabled the local school communities to decide for themselves what was most needed. There have been some super projects and wonderful infrastructure that have filled lots of gaps that were not being met by the state government, and I am really disappointed that that program has been shelved by the Rudd government as one of its early forays into the education field.

One of the many things I am particularly proud of is the Green Vouchers for Schools program, and I am really disappointed that the new government has downgraded it very significantly. Most of the schools in my electorate had started the process of putting in rainwater tanks and solar hot water systems. It has been amazing to watch the enthusiasm and focus that that gave to the whole community in the short space of two or three years. I will also endeavour to keep the new government accountable for all its election commitments in Goldstein over the next three years. Already we have had a watering down of the commitment to provide a laptop to every school student—it has been watered down to providing access to a laptop to students in secondary schools. This is disappointing but, on behalf of the whole community down there, I will seek to ensure that these commitments are met.

In the short time that I have left I would like to say that my first three years in parliament have been a great experience. I have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunities that I have had in the House of Representatives. In the first few months, I was a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration and the Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs. I came to appreciate the significant work of both sides of the House with regard to those committees and, in many respects, I was disappointed not to be able to continue with a couple of the projects that we had embarked upon. I spent six months as chair of the Federal Government Task Force on Workplace Relations, which was a very stimulating time, and 12 months as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. Working with the Muslim communities at a very difficult time stretched and motivated me. I came to value the members of that community, and I look forward to continuing to help them with their integration into our community and achieving proper acknowledgement of their contributions. In respect of African refugees, I am disappointed that I am unable to follow on with lots of the ideas and the opportunities I had to help them to become wonderful Australian citizens.

Last year was again a most stimulating time as Minister for Vocational and Further Education. In many ways I have had training wheels on, but having lots of different projects and many different opportunities has meant that, firstly, I have not been bored for a second and, secondly, I have been highly motivated and stimulated. I have enjoyed it immensely. It really is what you come to this place for, no matter which side of the House you are on.

I am very proud to have been a part of the Howard-Costello government for three years. I do think they have left a wonderful legacy. In years to come, they will be remembered for having provided a golden age of  uninterrupted economic growth and for paying dividends to people in social terms—for the jobs, the quality of life and the peace of mind that have been delivered to people for so long. I do think there have been significant changes. In many respects I think the welfare mentality that permeated a lot of our community has progressively been turned into an aspirational mentality, with people increasingly accepting responsibility for their own destiny. (Time expired)

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