Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was hoping for a division to end that debate, because I thought the government might turn up, but there you go.

I come to this place from the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne where I was born and bred. It is a region which I am proud to call home and proud to represent as the member for Bruce. Like most of us who hail from big cities, electorate boundaries are somewhat ephemeral. Bruce today is bordered by Highbury Road and Glen Waverley in the north; Blackburn Road, as it runs past Monash University and the Australian Synchrotron; the Pakenham railway line in the south, as it runs through Springvale, Noble Park and Dandenong; and back up the Dandenong Valley creek.

For thousands of years these have been the traditional lands of the people of the Kulin nation—the Bunurong and the Wurundjeri people. With that in mind, I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, as well as to the traditional owners of the land of this place, the Ngunnawal people, and to the elders of other communities who may be here today.

I also want to thank my community for the trust they have shown in me and the Labor Party by electing me to represent them. I ran a grassroots campaign knocking on 14,000 doors over 13 months. Fronting up on people's doorsteps for a chat—or the occasional bollocking, and you get a bit of that—to listen to people one-by-one, family-by-family, is a humbling and intimate process. I will do my very best every day that I hold this office to honour their trust. Every encounter has value, and I hope some of the wisdom of the crowd, if you like, stays with me.

My favourite question to ask people was: what is most important to you? I thank everyone who took the time to answer that question and to share their views, and I would like to reflect today on what I heard and what I learnt. The distinguishing characteristic of Bruce is its human diversity. It is one of only two federal electorates where a majority of people—53 per cent—were born overseas. Over decades, people from every part of the world and from every cultural, religious and language group have settled to live and work in the suburbs of Bruce. It is truly a microcosm of humanity. I had that line before Peter Khalil used it yesterday, I will note.

I am one who cherishes—relishes—this diversity of the multi-ethnic fabric that makes up Australia's multicultural communities. Unfortunately, there are too many people in this 45th Parliament who tap into and take advantage of the fear of diversity. The politics they play is both devious and dangerous. It is devious because it taps into genuine community concerns, such as economic exclusion and uncertainty, and it is dangerous because it trades on the basest of human instincts, to fear the other and scapegoat people not like me. This is surely the lowest form of politics and the antithesis of good leadership, and it is a path that I know all of my Labor colleagues reject.

I must say that the aftermath of the federal election reminds me of the time that I spent as Mayor of the City of Port Phillip, a large and diverse inner city municipality, from 2000 to 2002. This was at the tail end of the first phase of One Nation. Back then, community leaders spoke up against bigotry. Right now, we need to continue to call out this behaviour because it is morally wrong and because demonising marginalising people sells out and damages Australia's security and prosperity. To paraphrase my friend Councillor Meng-Heang Tak, who is the Mayor of the City of Greater Dandenong, Bruce today is Australia tomorrow. Think about those words. Australia is a diverse nation, and the reality is that even greater diversity will be there in the years to come. We can get a sense now of what this could mean from communities like Bruce.

We all want to believe that Australia's best years are in front of us. I wish I could say that I am certain that they are. They can be if we make the right choices, but if we do not, if we fail, then we will be the first generation to bequeath a lower standard of living to our children as well as a less equal society, and that would be a disgrace. Current indicators are worrying. Despite 25 years of continuous economic growth, inequality in Australia is at a 75-year high, and the transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle classes to the rich continues. More than 2.5 million of our fellow Australians live below the poverty line, unable to fulfil their human potential or contribute meaningfully and fully to our economy, our society and our community.

I have listened to a few first speeches and I have heard other people say those things. These facts are known, but they must not be accepted as our new reality. I worry that the language of social justice has become too soft, that we must speak more clearly about poverty and stark, indefensible and growing inequality. In my electorate of Bruce I see pockets of growing affluence right alongside entrenched unemployment. Young people, migrants and older workers are especially at risk. Thousands more job losses in the auto supply chain loom across south-east Melbourne, which are a direct result of the laissez-faire extremism of this government. In some areas we are at crisis levels already. For example, the unemployment rate in Dandenong is consistently more than twice the metropolitan average, the youth unemployment rate in south-east Melbourne is pushing 20 per cent and there are anecdotal reports of unemployment amongst African youths far higher than that. The social and economic costs are immense, not just from direct expenses but lost productivity, forgone growth and genuine community safety concerns when alienation turns to anger.

I am proud to be a member of a Labor Party that fights policies that fuel inequality, such as the largesse of massive company tax cuts and personal tax cuts skewed to the top end; the current negative gearing and capital gains tax arrangements; a tax on penalty rates for low income workers; cutting pensions and family payments or attacking public education and Medicare. I could go on. I am conscious, though, of the community's frustration with negativity and the lack of cooperation between parties. You certainly pick that up when you are doorknocking. Too often this century, parliaments and parties have failed to reach enduring agreement in important areas of policy where stability is most needed—for example, climate change and carbon pricing, retirement incomes and the taxing of resources. I am up for doing my bit to listen, learn and find common ground with other views in this place. As long as we stay true to our core values there is no shame in difficult compromise if it solves our shared problems. Finding common ground to solve problems is what the people we represent expect of us, and we sell them out when we avoid it.

I have listened to a few of the first speeches of new members opposite, and I have noticed a theme about Australia's now-precarious fiscal outlook. If anyone opposite is listening—they are probably on the television—I will say this in response: I agree that sustainable budget reform is a pressing challenge for this parliament and that Australia needs to act. Imagine then how great it would be if this government could cut a deal that included serious structural reform where the top 10 per cent contribute rather than consistently asking and picking on and taking from those who have the least, because there can be no grand bargain with us to protect the wealthy and vested interests from the burden of budget repair.

Let me take members back to the streets of Bruce. I mentioned that when doorknocking my favourite question to ask people was: what is most important to you? Given the exceptional diversity in Bruce, you might think that there was no one issue that stood out, but you would be wrong. Overwhelmingly, the answer was education, from parents worried about the government cutting the Gonski needs based school funding or baby boomers who benefited from free education and are worried about their grandkids paying $100,000 for a degree or working-class families who are so proud that their kids are not just finishing high school but attending TAFE or university or students angry at the prospect of a lifetime of debt. Education was especially important to migrants who, like my mum, have a laser-like focus on education as the key to a better life for their children.

I share that belief in the importance of education because I have lived it. My mum raised my brother and I alone after my dad died when I was four. Although money was tight, Mum used the money available when my grandma died to ensure we got the best education possible. We were the kids who rocked up in the old Torana to the rich school, Wesley College Glen Waverley in Bruce. I then went on to study science and law degrees at Monash University. Mum was the political black sheep of her family for being a Liberal voter—although John Howard lost her in the end! We can talk about that another day. But I need to be careful because Mum died about six or seven years ago, so she cannot answer back and she may haunt me from the grave! She always did think voting was private—but we knew what went on! It was when I was at Monash that she finally accepted I was like the rest of the family—a Labor person. She saw me on TV on the nightly news with a megaphone, leading a student protest against Jeff Kennett. We are forever grateful that she did not see us chucking the oranges!

Without a great education my life could have been very different. Like so many parents, Mum made sure we had what she never had. Mum was a working-class girl from Footscray in Melbourne's west.

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