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

And they are back, as the Leader of the House has said. But it was just a very good experience to see how they dealt with it. Instead of yelling at me, it was, 'No; just fix it. Don't worry about that.'

Turning to committee work, I have had the honour of chairing two of the big joint committees of the parliament, serving as Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties from 2003 to 2007 and Chair of the Joint Committee on Public Accounts and Audit from 2013 to 2015. The Treaties Committee was enormously varied work. One of the highlights was the ratification of the US free trade agreement, which was our largest free trade agreement at the time. We examined the modelling and we considered quarantine and intellectual property issues, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and tariffs for beef, sugar, even peanuts. It was a high-profile inquiry. I am proud of the work that the committee did. In three months, we produced a 300-page report outlining all the issues. You might remember that, in 2004, it became something of an issue with the approach that Mr Latham's opposition took at that time.

I was also pleased to chair the Joint Committee on Public Accounts and Audit. I want to speak a little bit about the way I have approached chairing these committees. When I started chairing the committee, the deputy chair was the member for Charlton, who I know is not a favourite on this side. When he turned up for the first day he was ready to fight, and a lot of our up-and-comers were ready to fight as well. Instead, as chair I thought the better approach was, 'Sure, let's have our partisan fights, but for the credibility of the committee we need to actually work together.' I knew that he had worked for Greg Combet and I was very keen to harness his expertise in the defence industry area. That has come through with some major changes to major defence projects.

More recently, since October, I have been chairing the Procedure Committee. Although it has been only a short time, we have already produced an inquiry for nursing mothers in parliament. We have done an inquiry into the consideration-in-detail debate, which sounds very dry, but it does allow for more of an estimates-style questioning after the budget. We are also conducting an inquiry into electronic voting.

I was part of the shadow ministry for six years in opposition. I am proud of the way that I constructively approached my various roles. I served as a shadow minister under the leaderships of Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull and as a shadow parliamentary secretary under Tony Abbott—firstly, in employment services, vocational education and sport and then in various areas of the health portfolio. I thank Christopher Pyne for handing responsibility for international education to me at an important time for this industry, when Indian students were experiencing violence in Melbourne. It is a great success story that in the last 30 years our universities have built education services to be our third-largest export.

Later, covering health, I had responsibility for primary health care, e-health and preventative health. All of these portfolios were highly technical portfolios with lots of detail to get across. I worked closely with Victoria Matterson, David Colmer and Ryan Post in my portfolio roles and I thank them for their detailed work. They all went on to work as ministerial advisers.

Often as a shadow minister you are focusing on small victories. I remember one with the Productivity Places Program. This was one of the signature Rudd government programs. We had the job of just trying to pick it apart. What we found was that they had online training courses for hairdressing—entirely online, no practical! At one time there were 94,000 places and only 6,000 of them got jobs. Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard would say, 'This is all about addressing shortages in mining and construction,' which sounded great as a sound bite, but the only problem was that there were no courses for mining or construction, which was a slight problem!

I really appreciated the opportunity to work with Malcolm Turnbull on his 2009 budget reply. Malcolm gathered a group of us together and told us what his priorities were. Using what we had learnt, we came up with a proposal to keep apprentices in training during the GFC. This proposal was well received and was later adopted by the government in almost exactly the same form.

In reflecting on some of my time then, there are some things that are now cause for embarrassment. We jumped all over a $1 million retreat at Geelong Grammar, which was a happiness seminar being run by Martin Seligman. Brett Mason did the work in Senate estimates, Victoria Matterson drew out the detail from AusTender and we got some great stories up in the paper. But, now that I am leaving parliament, my son's school has, I think, Martin Seligman in residence. He is one of the gurus of positive psychology. I should emphasise that we do very much admire the work of Martin Seligman. We just thought that perhaps $1 million for public servants was a little bit much. Anyway, you can sort of still take a laugh at yourself.

My job from 2010 to 2013 was to really get stuck into the GP superclinics. I was a prominent critic of the GP superclinics. When I was a student I worked for Dr Peter Heysen in the Morphettville Medical Centre, which had everything a GP superclinic provided but was opened in the 1980s with private sector funding. Every major suburb and town already has a large family medical centre that has been provided by the private sector. The GP superclinic program was something that sounded good, but it is not really the government's role to provide what the private sector is already providing. I also had carriage of the opposition response for the tobacco plain-packaging laws. In coalition parties—and I see the member for Mitchell in the chamber—which have a broad interest, it is very difficult to balance the preventative health side versus the legitimate business side.

Having worked for six years in the shadow ministry and for four years on health policy, I had hoped to be working in a health role in the Abbott government. It was not to be. But I continue to be interested in chronic disease management, the Primary Health Networks, preventable hospital admissions, and quality and safety. In this term of parliament, I have worked with the Stroke Foundation, the Heart Foundation, Diabetes Australia and the Kidney Foundation on getting integrated health checks put into Medicare, making them part of primary care. Also, working with the member for Swan, I have pushed for an inquiry into chronic disease management and prevention, which the health committee has been undertaking.

Locally, I am proud of the roles I have played in delivering a cancer centre at Flinders Medical Centre and the State Aquatic Centre at Marion and in breaking the roadblock on the South Road upgrade at Darlington. I see the member for Mayo and I thank him for his work on that too.

I thank the residents of Adelaide's southern suburbs for their support in seven federal elections and all their feedback, both good and constructive! The seven election campaigns were incredible experiences. When you are in the middle of it, there is so much happening that a day seems like a week. Until you are back in the middle of one you forget the intensity of the experience. I am happy to leave that to all of you.

My first campaign office was on Goodwood Road, just opposite Big W, at Cumberland Park. It was opened by John Howard, in January 1996. I actually met my wife, Kate, there when I convinced her to work on my campaign and much later persuaded her to go out with me. My first campaign manager was Charles Hurl, 81 years old and a former Lancaster bomber pilot. He would arrive early in the morning, leave late at night and answer the phones all day. His work ethic was remarkable. He had retired early from a successful career in property, and the Liberal Party was very lucky to have full-time volunteers like Charles.

When I was preselected, Boothby was a seven per cent seat and it is now a seven per cent seat, so I am happy to be leaving it as I found it. I feel very proud of our results in 2007 and 2010, when we held on in the face of a very strong swing to Labor. I have had elections where I had to gather my family together and ask them to prepare for all eventualities—particularly in 2007 and 2010. To their credit they had already worked that out, and it was unnecessary.

It makes it even more pleasing to be leaving on my own terms. I remember 2010, when the result in Boothby was much closer than any of us would have liked. It was particularly heart-warming that friends of mine, like Patrick Secker and South Australian MP John Dawkins, as well as Senator Simon Birmingham, who is here today, as soon as they heard I was in strife hopped in their cars and drove to my electorate to help with the scrutineering. I also remember the calls from colleagues like Alby Schultz and Bruce Billson at that time when things were really on the line. I think the old adage 'a friend in need is a friend indeed' was never truer!

I was preselected in November 1994, when the Boothby Electoral College met at Enterprise House on Greenhill Road and I was lucky enough to emerge as the winner from a field of eight candidates.

Mr Pyne interjecting—

Yes, the member for Sturt was not quite as excited as I was that night! I would like to thank the Liberal Party for the opportunity you gave me to serve our local community. Without the Liberal Party I would never have been a federal MP. To serve in federal parliament is, as I have said, a very rich experience. I have so many fond memories of Christmas parties at Mitcham Reserve or at our home, election night parties at my office or at the Marion RSL, and having the media follow me around during campaigns. In fact, in my first campaign, in 1996, the day after the election, I was waiting for the call from the Adelaide Advertiser. When no call came, I rang up and they said, 'No, you're a safe seat; there's just no interest in this.' I was able to change that in subsequent elections. There was subsequently a lot more interest. In 2001, when the Democrats said they were going to win the seat, the ABC got very excited and had the van down outside my office, all ready, and they left pretty soon after that. But certainly for most of those elections there was a lot of interest. I would like to thank all who served on my FEC. Geoff Arnold was my first FEC president, and Marion Themeliotis was my last. All my presidents and executives have kept the wheels of the political machine whirring.

During that 1994 preselection I met with Neville Newton in Bellevue Heights. He was a great local figure. He was our auctioneer at quiz nights and a great source of political advice. His advice on the best strategy to tackle Kevin Rudd, Nicole Cornes and the 2007 election was exactly the same as our advice from Crosby-Textor—and it was much cheaper, I might add. His daughter was having twins and was staying with him to be close to Flinders Medical Centre. Those twins are about to turn 21, and another grandchild of Neville's, Jack Newton, is one of our committed Young Liberals. That illustration of the passage of 21 years really confirms my decision that this is the right time to step down. The Liberal Party has preselected Nicolle Flint, who—as a lawyer, adviser, Flinders graduate, Menzies Research Centre author and columnist—has the necessary skills to make a great federal MP.

In terms of some experiences that really stick out over 20 years, as the Australian parliamentary representative at the United Nations I had a range of experiences during that three-month posting. Some of the highlights were attending meetings with Alexander Downer, meeting Kofi Annan, and observing ministerial-level Security Council meetings with Jack Straw and Condoleezza Rice. One of the most memorable was to follow John Howard for the day and sit in on his meetings—with the Danish Prime Minister, the editorial board of TheWall StreetJournal, the investment banks and Ariel Sharon. To see John Howard at that level was to receive a master class in politics.

I have also experienced the opportunity to visit the Australian Defence Force on deployment, from the Peace Monitoring Group in Bougainville in 1999—hanging on the outside of Vietnam War era Iroquois helicopters—to the HMAS Ballarat and the Orion crews in 2006 during the Iraq conflict and to Afghanistan and coalition headquarters in 2014, with the member for Rankin. I remain enormously proud of those young Australians who serve our country so far from home.

I have been lucky to have some great friendships during my time in politics. I have had so many great friends, but my two greatest friends and confidants have been Andrew Thomson and the late Don Randall. They have both been lifelong friends since we met 20 years ago. I still miss Don so much, and every week I think of things I would like to share with him.

I would also like to thank all my staff over the last 20 years. Their job was to make me look much better than I was, and I think mostly they succeeded. Two staff members were with me for most of my time. Ann De Cure has been there since day one and Nita Freer-Cooling for 14 years. We have known each other so long that they are more like family to me. More recently it has been a joy to work with gen Y staffers. The next generation work hard but like to have fun and work as part of a team. I feel I have learnt more from them than they have learnt from me. Other long-term staff include Suzanne Kazprzak, Steve Ronson, Simon Milnes, John Deller, Sean Elder, Victoria Matterson, Sue Meaney, David Little, David Colmer, Sanjay Kumar, Lauren Kelly, Zoe Darling, Ryan Post, Matt Hee, Marion Themeliotis, Nate Keily, Rebecca Puddy and Matt Shilling.

Mr Buchholz interjecting—

It's been 20 years, Scotty! Lastly I would like to thank my family for all their support. Spending half your year living out of a suitcase can be hard on families, and I have been lucky to have the unswerving support of Kate, Henry and Georgina. In fact, at the last election Henry and Georgina were my secret weapon, handing out how-to-vote cards at the ages of 11 and nine in Flagstaff Hill and Aberfoyle Park with me. That is the life of a child of an MP. I like to think they were volunteers. My wife, Kate, has witnessed the highs and lows of politics with me, and we have fought all seven election campaigns together. She has been my confidante and my sounding board and has shared it all. She has had her own career and has raised a family. I could not have done it without her.

Looking to the future: Paul Kelly has written of how he believes the Australian political system is fractured and economic reform has become too hard. He says, in Triumph and Demise:

Australia's political system is failing to deliver the results needed for the nation, its growth in living standards and its self-esteem. The process of debate, competition and elections leading to national progress has broken down.

Unless the trend is reversed, Australia will undergo a steady economic and social deterioration until a circuit-breaker or nasty economic crunch arrives.

I agree with the Kelly thesis. The important economic reforms of the eighties and nineties were often bipartisan and were in the national interest.

For Australia to continue to reach its potential it is important that we continue to promote efficiency in our economy. Australian economic history shows that we cannot grow too fast without running into an inflationary crunch or a current account crisis. John Howard used to speak of the metaphor of the ever-receding finishing line, and I think it is a good one. In terms of economic reform, the work is never done. You have to continue to look forward and ask, how can we make our economy more efficient?

The Productivity Commission has produced a range of excellent reports on labour market regulation, taxation and competition reform. These reports should not be allowed to gather dust. The Australian economy has now been growing continuously for a quarter of a century. Only one other country has managed this in modern history. But this rests on our natural resources and the reforms of the past. For Australia to reach its potential we need to continue the job. I thank the House.

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