Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

On 2 March I marked 20 years as a member of this place. Twenty years seems a good time to rule the line under a career. In the Roman Army, if you survived 20 years you got a plot of land, a bag of salt and Roman citizenship. But, in terms of what you go through, the experience of being a member of parliament is a reward in itself. While we all enter this place with an ethos of service, at the same time it is personally a very rich experience in terms of the quality of the interactions, the people you meet, the tests and challenges you face and taking part in the great national events in our country's history. When I see my friend and mentor Ian Sinclair down at Aussie's cafe, I realise that, once you have been a part of the federal parliament, you never really leave it; you always remain a part of it.

When I gave my first speech, in May 1996, it was in the immediate aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre. The response from John Howard was gutsy and was one of the great achievements of the Howard government. Twenty years on, a great democracy like the United States is unable to grapple with gun control. But we did it in Australia, and it has made our society safer.

The two great interests in my working life have been medicine and politics. Balancing them was hard as a university student. During my hospital years, I trained in medicine until the call of politics was stronger. After 20 years in parliament, it is time to return to my original calling. In fact, being a member of parliament has allowed me to reconcile these two competing interests, with a strong focus on health policy being a theme throughout my seven terms. While I plan to return to medical practice, my hope is that I can also continue to contribute to public policy in health.

It was more than 20 years ago, working as a hospital doctor in Adelaide's major hospitals, that the idea of running for federal parliament took hold. Coming from a business family, I identified as a Liberal and, as a Liberal, I was motivated by our four election defeats in a row. I felt that Australia needed to do more for us to achieve our potential as a nation. Much of my political outlook was really formed in the seventies and eighties. As a country, we were very conscious that we had gone from being a rich country at the time of Federation to one which was lagging on many OECD measures. This was a very strong influence on my thinking, and I pay tribute to those reformers in the Hawke and Keating governments who commenced a lot of the necessary economic reforms, which were continued by the Howard government. Taxation reform, industrial relations reform, privatisation, competition reform and budget repair were important and necessary reforms. As a new member, I naturally gravitated towards the Society of Modest Members, as their vision of small government, lower taxation and an efficient economy fit well with my view of the world.

Now that I am leaving parliament, I feel I am able to talk about one of the roles that I did for four years—party room briefing. I had the job of providing the off-the-record party room briefing—the 'official' off-the-record briefing—to more than 50 journalists of the press gallery, every sitting week. It was a challenging role. One experience I particularly remember was at the start of the 2007 parliamentary year. I had given the briefing, and John Howard had provided a description of all of the circumstances that had seen a change of government since 1949. I paraphrased it and summarised it and said, 'Well, it only occurs if they've stopped listening to you or if you're hopeless.' Michelle Grattan got very interested in this and said, 'Well, which of the two is it?' I distinctly remember that. I had given the briefing, I thought it had gone okay and then, subsequently, I got a call from Tony O'Leary. I raced back to the Prime Minister's office. I was absolutely crestfallen. I was apologising, saying, 'I'm so sorry.' I will never forget their response. Their response was not to carpet me, not to abuse me, not to yell at me. John Howard said, 'No, no, no; don't worry about that; just fix it.' I just think that that group around John—Arthur Sinodinos, Tony Nutt and Tony O'Leary—was really the best operation that I have seen in my 20 years.

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