Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is indeed a privilege and a relief to finally be given the opportunity to give my speech in the address-in -reply debate. I want to begin by thanking the people of Calwell for their generous support and endorsement in last year’s federal election. It is, in fact, a very great honour to be re-elected as the federal member for Calwell, and I want to note once again that it is a responsibility that I personally take very seriously. What makes this particular election all the more special is having the opportunity, under a Rudd Labor government, to represent, as always, the needs and the interests of Calwell.

Overall, Labor achieved a swing of 11.3 per cent in Calwell—more than double the national average. It is a result of which I am very proud and one that reflects just how strongly issues such as fair workplace laws, healthcare reforms, investment in education and more support for working families resonate in my electorate. Such a result would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of many individuals who selflessly volunteered their time and energy to my campaign. They are too numerous to name and, for fear of forgetting anybody, I simply want to record my sincere gratitude and thanks to all those people.

Labor has a long, strong and proud heritage, one that is firmly anchored in the history of working Australia and in the values of fairness, equality and social justice. As Labor continues to grow and evolve alongside the changing landscape of modern Australia, this heritage serves as a reference point against which to measure both specific policies and our country’s progress. It is a heritage that we on the Labor side must never forget.

In Calwell, the values of fairness, family and opportunity matter. They form the bedrock on which local demands and community expectations are built. For me, fairness, family and opportunity remain the key fundamentals when it comes to determining good policy in this place. They include an obligation to ensure fairness in the workplace, to ensure that basic services and essential infrastructure are able to meet local demand in my electorate of Calwell and to ensure that all Australians have access to opportunities.

One of the key themes in the lead-up to last year’s federal election was federal Labor’s commitment to scrapping the Howard government’s extreme and unfair Work Choices laws and to restore fairness and balance in the Australian workplace. We have done this through the introduction of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008. It has seen an end to Australian workplace agreements. Australian workplace agreements, or AWAs, became shorthand for driving down wages and conditions and stripping back protections from Australian workers. This was an issue never far from the minds of many local residents in Calwell. In a climate where the cost of living continues to rise, protecting wages and job security is absolutely vital, especially when it comes to working parents for whom job security is a prerequisite to meeting their everyday financial commitments. Labor and a Rudd Labor government are committed to making sure that our workplace relations system never strays from the core ideal of a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.

Over the last decade, my electorate of Calwell, which is located in Melbourne’s north-west, has undergone many significant changes. An influx of young families moving to the area in search of more affordable housing and a more family friendly environment has seen strong growth in local residential development. At the same time, statistics for the area show that Calwell’s ageing population is also growing at an equally significant rate. These changes to Calwell’s core demographics pose a number of significant challenges, not least in the area of infrastructure and service delivery, which I would like to address. Strong population growth also means a corresponding demand for stronger business investment, industry growth and job creation.

Calwell has long been a centre for local manufacturing and industry and boasts a large pool of existing skilled workers employed in the manufacturing sector. This is a foundation on which we need to build to meet the difficulties Australian manufacturers face as a result of increased global competition. That combined with a decade of dwindling government interest and short-sighted industry policies has had a significant impact on my electorate. Many of our local industries are struggling to survive and local jobs continue to be lost as companies downsize their operations. Protecting and expanding local manufacturing is crucial to Calwell’s long-term future. One of our key priorities in government is and will be to turn around the lacklustre fortunes of manufacturing in Australia.

In today’s knowledge economy, the focus of our approach to industry policy in Australia needs to be on innovation and measures aimed at fostering a culture of innovation in Australia. We need to deepen Australia’s investment in research and development and we also need to do a lot more when it comes to identifying and cultivating new overseas markets and export opportunities for quality Australian made products.

What I would like to see in Calwell is local industry becoming a magnet for innovation, product development and the expansion of Australia’s technical and productive capabilities. Adding to my electorate’s competitive advantage is the close proximity of Melbourne Airport. In addition to being a major source of local employment, Melbourne Airport is a huge asset for local business and industry looking to interstate and overseas export markets to expand their operations. It is an asset that we need to promote and support in Calwell. Working towards a more integrated regional approach when it comes to enhancing the north’s social and economic potential, strengthening local employment opportunities for residents in Calwell to ensure that our local economy remains strong and vibrant and striving towards closer coordination between all levels of government and various stakeholders, such as local community groups and community service providers, industry associations, local businesses and local education and training institutions are all equally crucial.

There are many challenges. One of these particular to Melbourne’s northern and north-western regions is image. As a 2003 Northern Area Consultative Committee report titled Growing Melbourne’s north: developing an integrated economy identified, current misconceptions about Melbourne’s north-west often see us overlooked by the business community as a potential locus for investment. Changing the image of Melbourne’s northern and north-western regions to make them more attractive to business and investment is another crucial challenge that we need to meet on the road to securing our long-term economic growth. My federal and state colleagues in the region and I have an important role to play in this.

I want to now turn to some of the Rudd Labor government’s election commitments announced in the lead-up to the 2007 federal election—commitments that will have a positive impact, I am absolutely certain, on the lives of the people who live in my electorate. As highlighted by the Governor-General in his address to the opening of the parliament, the Rudd Labor government has identified education and the need to invest in education as a key national priority. Investing in education is both an investment in our children’s future and an investment in Australia’s future prosperity. At an individual level, education is one of the most important pathways through which Australians have an opportunity to start life on an equal footing and to strive for self-betterment. At the national level, investing in skills and education is about making sure that we are able to meet future challenges.

Federal Labor’s education revolution is premised on the belief that investing in education, skills and training—that is, investing in your own people—is the best way to lift Australia’s flagging productivity growth, strengthen Australia’s international competitiveness and secure Australia’s long-term economic future. In a global economy, where the competition for skills and expertise becomes fiercer by the day, lifting Australia’s education standards, skilling up tomorrow’s workforce and making sure that we hold on to our best and brightest are absolutely crucial. That is why this government, the Rudd Labor government, is committed to making sure that all four-year-olds have access to 15 hours of quality preschool early learning each week for a minimum of 40 weeks per year at no extra cost to their parents. Research tells us that those children who have access to some form of preschool learning are more likely to do better at school later on in life. Preschool is about building a strong foundation for success later on in life. This commitment includes, of course, funding an extra 1,500 new university places in early childhood education, scrapping TAFE fees for childcare diplomas and halving HECS repayments for early childhood graduates working in areas of need.

The Rudd Labor government has already moved quickly to implement one of its key election commitments, the National Secondary School Computer Fund, under which all secondary schools in my electorate can apply for up to $1 million in funding to buy new computers for students through years 9 to 12, as well as to upgrade the school’s information and communication technology. Of course, applications for the first round of funding under the program are now being accepted, with the second round soon to open in July this year. Over the next four years, this program will see significant infrastructure upgrades undertaken in every Australian government, independent and Catholic secondary school in my electorate. In an age where e-education has become all but indispensable and given the reality that not all parents can afford to buy their children a computer, this is an important initiative, one that promises to pay strong dividends in my electorate.

Equally important is the Rudd Labor government’s Trade Training Centres in Schools plan. This $2.5 billion commitment to build or upgrade trade training centres in Australian secondary schools is all about tackling Australia’s worsening skills crisis by providing local students with the skills they need to pursue a future career in the trades. It is also about encouraging students to stay in school longer by broadening the range of subjects available to them and by making school more relevant to students who otherwise would not see the relevance of schooling. In Calwell, this policy provides us with a unique opportunity to establish trade training centres in strategic locations across the electorate and to align these centres with the skills base sought by local industries in areas such as manufacturing, engineering, construction and the automotive sector.

Building stronger partnerships between local industries and our local schools, especially when it comes to making sure that students who undertake trade training courses are armed with the skills needed by local industries, is crucial to the long-term viability and success of trade training centres. The benefits of such an approach include boosting local employment opportunities for school leavers and making sure that local industries have access to the sort of skilled workforce that they need in order to grow and develop. The Trade Training Centres in Schools plan is in addition to the federal government’s plan to create an additional 450,000 training places over four years, including an extra 65,000 apprenticeships.

The Rudd Labor government has also put forward a number of higher education policies, including halving HECS fees and repayments to encourage more students to study maths and science, increasing the number of Commonwealth funded university places across a number of disciplines, scrapping full fee paying places at university and expanding the Commonwealth Scholarship program for both undergraduates and postgraduates. Investing in education is about investing in people—in human capital—and ensuring that the fundamentals of our economy are geared towards long-term growth and prosperity.

One of the most important priorities in my electorate of Calwell over the next three years concerns access to affordable services in areas such as health care, aged care and child care. Access to these and other essential services plays a defining role in shaping the quality of life a family enjoys. Ensuring access to affordable services and investing in essential infrastructure to meet the demands of a growing population is particularly important in Calwell. Significant pockets of my electorate remain mired in intergenerational poverty and disadvantage, whilst elsewhere rapid population growth has created a situation where demand continues to outstrip supply when it comes to the delivery of essential services. For example, access to affordable health care is an ongoing concern in my electorate. The rising cost of health care and basic medicines, coupled with a shortage of local GP services and a lack of adequate after-hours medical services are all areas in desperate need of serious attention.

For those on the ground, the road map for Calwell’s future is clear. Alongside healthcare reform, there is a need for more childcare centres so that working parents do not have to drive long distances in the morning to drop their children off before work, as well as youth services and youth venues to cater for our local youth who do not enjoy the mobility or ease of access to suitable venues and outlets that their counterparts living in the inner city do.

We also need to radically rethink Calwell’s future infrastructure needs, in line with recent residential development, changes in our population demographic and strong population growth, and this needs to include additional public transport, better roads, more sports facilities and a host of additional social and civic amenities and services. Rather than problems that can be fixed overnight, these are all long-term challenges that demand closer cooperation between federal, state and local governments as well as sustained community involvement. In relation to infrastructure, I strongly welcome the establishment of Infrastructure Australia, which is an independent Commonwealth statutory authority set up by the Rudd Labor government to develop a strategic blueprint for our nation’s infrastructure needs, as well as the advent of a major cities program that will focus on the infrastructure needs of Australia’s towns and cities. My electorate of Calwell is a testament to the reality that Australia’s infrastructure needs do not stop once the country becomes the city.

When it comes to basic services, there is a lot of work to do in this area, but as a start Calwell has already benefited from three new federal Labor government grants. In January, I was pleased to announce Commonwealth funding for a new headspace Communities of Youth Services hub to be established in Broadmeadows. Headspace is Australia’s national youth mental health foundation, funded by the Australian government to provide people aged between 12 and 25 with mental health support as well as help for drug and alcohol problems. The centre will offer a range of support and counselling services geared towards prevention and early intervention. This investment in new services is part of the Rudd Labor government’s focus on the importance of preventative and early intervention health care, and this new centre will play a significant role in lifting the quality of life of those young people that it helps in my electorate.

Calwell has also received federal government funding for a new family relationships centre to be established in Broadmeadows. Family plays an important role in the social fabric of Calwell’s local community. The new centre is designed to provide assistance and advice to local families in areas like strengthening family relationships and resolving relationship difficulties after separation, including mediation services and of course some three hours of free counselling.

These new initiatives will begin to fill the current gap in basic support services in Calwell, and their promise of significant personal, social and economic benefits helps contribute to the long-term wellbeing of our local community. In the lead-up to last year’s November election, I also announced that a Rudd Labor government would provide capital works funding to build two new childcare centres in Calwell. The first childcare centre will be located in Tullamarine, where childcare shortages under the previous government became particularly severe, and the second will be built in Craigieburn, where Calwell is experiencing one of its strongest population growths.

In another area to do with our ageing population, aged care, the Minister for Ageing has already announced substantial changes to current funding arrangements for the allocation of Australian government care subsidies. The aged-care funding instrument took effect on 20 March 2008, with more than $380 million in additional funding to be provided over the next four years. Changes are also being made to accommodation payments and income-tested care fees, with the amount the Australian government contributes in subsidies towards accommodation and care costs increasing. For the first time, self-funded retirees will be treated the same as pensioners with respect to their income and assets.

Since taking office, the federal government has also committed $34.2 million to Victoria to fund an additional 5,908 elective surgery procedures, in order to reduce elective surgery waiting times in the state of Victoria. We have also begun work on boosting the number of nurses in Australia’s health and aged-care system by more than 10,000 over the next five years through a combination of cash bonuses to encourage back into the profession nurses who have been out of the health workforce for more than a year and contributions to assist hospitals with the cost of retraining and reskilling these nurses.

The Rudd Labor government has started to introduce measures to help tackle today’s housing affordability, a huge problem in my electorate. It is a problem that I imagine would be right across the country, but, in particular, in my electorate, housing affordability is becoming more of an issue.

Debate (on motion by Mr Dreyfus) adjourned.

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