Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to be back here representing the electorate of Swan for the third time. Back in 2007, with a startling victory in Western Australia where we thought we might have reached a high-water mark, I managed to win the seat by the enormous number of 164 votes. At the time it took three weeks to decide. That particular vote was increased to just over 4,000 in the 2010 election and now we are up to over 10,000 votes—confirmation that the people of Swan have confidence in me and in the Abbott government and a display of displeasure toward the previous Labor government who had affected voters' capacity and lifestyle.

The desire to change the government was obvious. In Western Australia we had 12 out of 15 seats. To the people of Western Australia I say you have made a wise choice. You have finally put a government back in which would have loved to have come in like the Rudd government in 2007 with a $20 billion surplus on the books. But I fear we have been left with a very large anchor and it is going to take some time for this government to right the wrongs, which we are determined to do.

Representing the seat of Swan is an honour and a privilege. Over the past six years it has been fantastic to mix in with a group of diverse people in the electorate. I have enjoyed representing their needs and desires in this place and being out and about in the electorate, learning what it is about and seeing their hopes and dreams for a better government come to fruition in 2013.

I would like to comment on the campaign. Since 1998, the seat of Swan has been an anti-bellwether seat, and this is the first time since 1998 it has been held by the government of the day. I can only put that down to the hard work by the people in my electorate and the motivation of my campaign team, the division, the over 600 people who manned the booths on election day, the over 300 people who put yard signs on properties and all the people who helped arrange that. I make special mention of Jesse Jacobs, who helped arrange all those yard signs throughout the electorate. He did a fantastic job along with all the other volunteers. There are many people I could thank. They are all appreciated and I will thank them when I see them. Most of them have come to meetings since the election and have been thanked for the amount of work they put in to make sure we kept Swan and brought in the Abbott government.

There is one particular person I would like to thank—my campaign manager, my wife. She had never run a campaign before. She did a fantastic job. Cheryle probably worked harder than the candidate and did a great job in putting together templates for future use—

See this speech in context