Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I congratulate you on your appointment to the Speaker's panel. I am pleased to make a contribution on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2016-2017 and cognate bills. As a result of the electoral redistribution in New South Wales, my home, along with those of 18,000 other electors, was transferred into the electorate of Shortland, and I was humbled to have been preselected by the rank-and-file members of the Labor Party to be their candidate in the July election. I was then honoured and privileged to be elected as the fourth member for Shortland. I would like to place on the record my sincere gratitude to the people of Shortland for placing their trust and confidence in me to be their representative in this House. All of us who serve in this place are so fortunate to be the voice of our communities in the national parliament.

At the outset, I want to pay tribute to the former member for Shortland, Jill Hall. Jill has served the people of Shortland and Lake Macquarie for over two decades at all three levels of government. I was humbled to have received her support and, on behalf of the people of Shortland, I thank her for her dedicated and tireless service for our region. I also pay tribute to her husband, Lindsay, and all her family, who have always been a great source of support for Jill. I wish her all the best in her retirement. Given that she has family in Canberra, I am sure she will not be a stranger to parliament.

I also want to acknowledge the two members for Shortland who served before Jill: Peter Morris—he and the member for Grayndler were the two most distinguished ministers for transport in the history of the Commonwealth—and the first member for Shortland, Charlie Griffiths. Both Jill and Peter continue to serve on the Shortland federal electorate council of the Labor Party, and I look forward to continuing to benefit from their counsel. I am truly lucky to be only the fourth member for Shortland in its long history, it having been established in 1949.

I would also like to thank the hundreds of Labor Party branch members and volunteers who worked on the Shortland campaign. I will not name anyone individually, as there are just too many, but I do not want to leave anyone out either. All of you have worked so hard. You know who you are. And I am eternally grateful for your hard work. The Labor Party's greatest strength is our rank and file members, and I am humbled by the support and trust they have placed in me. I also want to acknowledge the support I received from the labour movement, specifically the CFMEU mining and energy division, the Maritime Union of Australia, the SDA, the AWU and the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union. I look forward to working with them to ensure that working people get a fair go both locally and nationally.

All members of the House are rightly proud of the communities we represent. Shortland is bordered to the east by the Pacific Ocean and to the west by the largest saltwater lake in the Southern Hemisphere, the magnificent Lake Macquarie. It stretches from its southern border on the Central Coast, around Budgewoi and San Remo, to its northern border in Lake Macquarie, around Charlestown and Cardiff. I am biased, but I would disagree with the member for Richmond. Clearly the best beaches in Australia—

Ms Bird interjecting—

are in Shortland, member for Cunningham, and they are an essential part of who we are and how we live our lives; as are the lakes that characterise our community—Lake Macquarie, Lake Munmorah and Budgewoi Lake. They are truly stunning places. It is no coincidence that some of Australia's finest athletes, particularly sailors, are far from the Central Coast and Lake Macquarie. I congratulate the many sailors who won medals at the recent Olympics. Whilst Shortland is blessed by magnificent natural beauty, the true wonders are the people who live there. Our greatest asset are our people and that is why I am so very proud to represent them in this parliament.

My priorities for Shortland are the Labor Party's priorities for Australia—growing jobs and protecting and enhancing our most vital public services: health and education. The economy in Shortland, and the Hunter more broadly, is diverse with jobs in a variety of sectors ranging from health, education and training, hospitality and business services to retail and construction. However, the energy, mining and manufacturing sectors do remain the bedrock of the Shortland economy. Unemployment in the Hunter region is above the national average and it has been for some time. This is the greatest challenge we face. However, I am a firm believer that our region is well placed to transition and grow, but it is essential that we have the right policy settings in place to ensure we have strong employment growth locally and nationally.

The hallmark of a civilised society is how we treat our sick, and the universal provision of health care through Medicare is the bedrock of that civilisation. We saw the pathetic outburst on election night from the Prime Minister that I think characterises the greatest dummy-spit in the history of Australian politics. The Liberal Party have never and will never truly support Medicare or the concept of universal health care. They mouth weasel words, but in the end they are not truly committed to it because they do not understand the impact of it. The Labor Party founded the Medicare system and we are truly the great protectors of it. Unfortunately, the people of Shortland know firsthand the Liberal Party's contempt for Medicare, as the Medicare office at Belmont was closed by the Turnbull government earlier this year. The Labor Party opened the Medicare office and the Liberal Party have closed it. I would like to, again, pay tribute to Jill Hall for her years of dedicated campaigning to get a Medicare office in Belmont reopened. Unfortunately, her efforts were undone by the Prime Minister and his government in closing down that said office.

Health care in general is of fundamental importance to the Shortland community. All sections of our community, from young families to older Australians, see access to health care based on need for treatment and not ability to pay for treatment as part of our Australian way of life. This is particularly pertinent in Shortland, as we have the seventh oldest population on average in Australia—so we have a great need for good healthcare services. Yet, our people continue to suffer from the Medicare rebate freeze and the cuts to pathology and medical imaging bulk-billing incentives. There are three main public hospitals that service the people of Shortland: Wyong, Belmont and the John Hunter. These are all suffering as a result of the Abbott Turnbull government's savage cuts to the public health system. The government needs to follow the advice of the new AMA president, who recently said, 'The government must first scrap the Medicare rebate freeze, reverse the cuts to pathology and medical imaging bulk-billing incentives and properly fund public hospitals.' Labor are the only party dedicated to universal health care and we will always champion our Medicare system, that Australians depend on and are so rightly proud of.

Our future prosperity is dependent on a first-class education system. Labor are the party of Gonski. Gonski is absolutely essential for our children to receive the very best start in life. Gonski is quintessentially an Australian solution. It says: look through the sectarian divide, look through the debates of the fifties and sixties and just have the Commonwealth government, for the first time, fund purely on need. It also says to be blind to sectors: 'We don't care whether a student goes to a state school, a Catholic school, an independent Christian school—whatever.' The Commonwealth's role is to fund based on need to guarantee a base level of funding for every student with only five additional weightings based on intellectual or physical disability, low socio-economic status, an ATSI background or a non-English speaking background.

However, the very simple reality is that the Liberal Party has failed on education. The Liberal Party won the 2013 election based on a fundamental commitment that there was not a skerrick of difference—there was not a cigarette paper's difference—between the Liberal Party policy on Gonski and the Labor Party policy on Gonski. Yet this is one of their many broken promises that undid former Prime Minister Abbott and that is still bedevilling the current Prime Minister. The Abbott-Turnbull government has cut $30 billion from schools. This is so blatantly against our national interest and is a damning indictment on their priorities.

For my home state of New South Wales, this cut means that $9.5 billion has been cut from schools. In Shortland, schools will be a staggeringly $164 million worse off because of these Liberal cuts. Schools like Windale Public School, St Brendan's Lake Munmorah and Cardiff Public School will all suffer because of these misguided and devious policies of the Abbott-Turnbull government. I say to the people of Shortland that the next Labor government will have investment in education as a core priority, as we did when we were last in office. As with Medicare and health care, Australians know that Labor backs them when it comes to education.

The other key priority for my electorate is communications. The Lake Macquarie region on the northern Central Coast has the highest number of NBN fibre-to-the-node rollouts in the nation. I could say that as if I was boasting, but, unfortunately, it is a tragedy because the rollout has been a farce. The rollout has led to community members not having phone or internet service for months on end. Ultimately, when the connection has been established, they often that their speeds are as bad as ADSL2 services in their areas—and, in some cases, worse. This is the great story of Mr Turnbull's 'fraudband'. Fibre to the node does not work. Fibre to the node is massively expensive, yet delivers a service woeful compared to what fibre to the premises would deliver. Ultimately, we will have to redo it all at much greater cost and inconvenience to the Australian people. It is a massive issue in my electorate and it is the issue I commit to campaigning on—both NBN provision and then making sure those services are adequate.

Two other communication aspects in my electorate are mobile phone reception and television reception. Parts of my electorate are only 90 minutes from Sydney, the largest city in Australia, and Newcastle itself is the seventh largest city in the country. Yet we have many residents who cannot get free-to-air television reception. Just imagine that: in 2016, many of my constituents cannot get free-to air-television reception. That is a disgrace and is something that I am committed to working to resolve.

Briefly, turning to my portfolios that I have been allocated in the shadow ministry, I have been very honoured to be appointed as the shadow assistant minister for climate change and energy and the shadow assistant minister for infrastructure. I am very much look forward to working with my colleagues, the member for Port Adelaide and the member for Grayndler, in these areas. Climate change is a fundamental challenge to our way of life. The Labor Party is the only political party with a serious policy on climate change. The government's Direct Action policy is a joke of a policy. It is a policy the current Prime Minister labelled a 'fig leaf' for doing nothing and 'fiscal recklessness on a grand scale'. It lacks all economic and environmental credibility and it wastes taxpayers' money in providing subsidies to big polluters.

On the other extreme we have the Greens, who have no credibility at all on climate change. If not for their political opportunism in 2009 in voting with the coalition, we would have had an emissions trading scheme in place for seven years now, firmly bedded down, cutting pollution and proving to people that the sky has not fallen in. Whyalla has not been wiped off the map and you can still buy a roast leg of lamb for less than $100. But the Greens failed on their great claim of environmental credibility.

On infrastructure, I look forward to working with the member for Grayndler on assisting with infrastructure policy. Sound investment in infrastructure is fundamentally important to growth and productivity. The last Labor government has an outstanding legacy in this area and the member for Grayndler was an exceptional infrastructure minister. Labor created Infrastructure Australia to independently assess the viability and worth of proposed projects. We began the rollout of the fair dinkum National Broadband Network. We invested more in public transport than all the previous Commonwealth governments combined since Federation. When we left office, Australia was ranked first amongst developed nations in terms of infrastructure investment as a proportion of GDP, having been ranked 20th under John Howard. I particularly look forward to working on how we more effectively and proactively source and encourage private investment in major infrastructure projects. I also look forward to working on Labor's cities policy. Four out of five Australians live in cities, and Labor believes that government investment and sound planning can boost productivity and improve the sustainability and liveability of our cities.

I close today by thanking my beautiful family for their ongoing love and support. Above all, I thank my wife, Keara, and my children, Rachel and Michael. All of us in this place know that our families make great sacrifices to give us the opportunity to contribute to our communities and our country. I am forever grateful for their support and love. I would also like to thank all the other members of my family and friends who have contributed to me being here. I particularly want to single out my mother-in-law, Gail. Gail has been the bedrock of my family. Gail has been incredibly supportive of my continuing to represent Lake Macquarie and the Central Coast in this parliament, and it is fair to say that my family could not exist without the ongoing support, love and sacrifice of my mother-in-law, Gail. So thank you very much for that support, love and assistance.

I again record my gratitude to the people of Shortland for electing me as their representative in this House. There is no greater privilege than to represent over 100,000 people, as each of us do in this House. It is truly the greatest privilege that I will have in my professional life. My great commitment to the people of Shortland is that I will always fight for them and I will always do the best thing for the people of Shortland. Not only will I exercise my judgement; I will always tell you when I disagree with your stance and why I disagree with it. I will always endeavour to represent the best traditions of the Hunter Valley and the Central Coast.

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