Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to comment on the address-in-reply to the speech that was given by the Governor-General earlier this year in opening the 46th Parliament. I particularly noted a comment where His Excellency said:

We are one of the world's oldest democracies; our freedom has produced a cohesive society that makes us the most successful immigrant and multicultural nation on earth.

That's very true. I am very proud that Australia, in my view, is the most successful multicultural nation in the world. As the member for Lalor would agree, we certainly have one of the most successful multicultural states in the world, in Victoria, very well led by Premier Daniel Andrews—a state that celebrates multiculturalism and diversity. We're two very proud members for electorates in that fine state.

It is an honour to be here representing Holt in this 46th parliament. Can I say that because I haven't had the opportunity to formally thank the people of Holt and those living in the City of Casey for the honour of representing them and being their representative in this 46th parliament. It is an incredibly diverse constituency with a lot of young families. It's very car dependent and it's one of the fastest growing areas in Australia. It is a great area to represent.

We obviously know what happened on election night. It was a disappointing night for the Labor Party. The voters obviously spoke with a loud, clear voice. The Labor Party will listen to the Australian people and learn lessons from the result. We are going through that process now in a careful and methodical way. But it's been raised with me that 48.5 per cent of the Australian people did vote for the Labor Party, and I would take issue with some of the commentary that I have seen from people, not necessarily within the Labor Party but other commentators, and I would remind them that that percentage of people did in fact vote for the Labor Party at the federal election.

As the federal member for Holt, I can say that last year—I think the member for Lalor would empathise with this—we had a fairly substantial redistribution. The very character and nature of my seat changed. The suburb of Endeavour Hills, which had been part of Holt for 28 years, went into the federal seat of Bruce. Areas like Doveton, Endeavour Hills, Hallam and Narre Warren came out of Holt. That was a significant loss of over 40,000 voters. But I was rewarded by getting new areas and very different areas to those areas that I just mentioned. I'm quite excited, having been down there on the weekend and been there post the redistribution. It's a very different constituency in that portion of the electorate, because it fronts Western Port Bay. It's the first time in Holt's history, since the seat was formulated, that it actually has a coastal element to it.

With that coming into the constituency it offers fresh perspectives on the seat. It changes the character of the seat quite substantially. The areas of Blind Bight, Botanic Ridge, Cannons Creek, Clyde, Devon Meadows, Junction Village, Pearcedale, Tooradin and Warneet—most of the places that I have just mentioned are coastal elements of the constituency. They are in a World Heritage Area. They're in an area that is unique for its flora and fauna, and they also have great people. I was at the Warneet sailing club on the weekend. We're talking about a very inclusive community, a welcoming community, a community that wants to share this very unique coastal landscape with the rest of the people of Victoria. It's the home of the weedy sea dragon, one of the rarest and most beautiful creatures on the planet. It's great to be part of that now and for that to be part of Holt.

You'll be hearing a lot more from me about great places like Moonlit Sanctuary; I note a lot of celebrities go there, and it's run very well by Michael Johnson and the Johnson family. Again, it is a very unique part of the world. Tooradin is an amazingly spectacular part of Victoria, with a very rich history. It is part of the Healesville to Phillip Island Nature Link. As I said, there is just so much diversity. Why am I talking about this? Because it is a very significant area. It's got great people that are real social entrepreneurs, and I look forward to telling you more about them in my time here in the 46th Parliament, talking about how I can assist them and about projects of significance to these people, and lobbying on their behalf.

Having said that, I want to talk about seats like Holt that are categorised as outer suburban seats. Australia's outer suburbs are home to five million people, and in just 15 years another 2.5 million people will call the outer suburbs home. My electorate of Holt is home to some of the fastest growing areas in Australia—Cranbourne East and Clyde. There is an increasing need for much-needed social infrastructure in these rapidly growing suburbs. As the member for Lalor would know, that need has been identified very successfully by the Andrews government, with the issue being very capably led by the member for Cranbourne, Pauline Richards, who was elected at the last state election. The state government has realised that there needs to be significant reinvestment in these amazing growth corridors. That's why you see roads being widened, sky rail being put in, an additional rail line being put in between Dandenong and Cranbourne, hospitals built and enlarged, schools being built. It shows what a proactive government can do. Those significant reinvestments in what I call the social infrastructure are one of the reasons why Daniel Andrews and the Labor government were re-elected so substantially.

Those investments are what the people in the outer suburbs are looking for, but that's not what the people in the outer suburbs have been receiving from the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government. There's nothing that I've heard in the rhetoric of the Prime Minister that gives me any level of reassurance, in my constituency and that of the member of Lalor, who is here with me, that that style of reinvestment by the Daniel Andrews state government is going to be made. That's bad. It is bad because, for example, the Casey Hospital, which is just outside my constituency, in the federal electorate of La Trobe, doesn't have an MRI machine. We have a catchment area of probably 300,000 to a million people, but that doesn't warrant the installation of an MRI. The federal government haven't spoken to the state government. The state government has built a seven-storey wing at the Casey Hospital. You can see it from one end of my constituency to the other. It's that big, you could probably see it from the International Space Station. It is a significant investment by a state government that is committed to providing these services.

Prior to the election, when then opposition leader Bill Shorten came down to Victoria, we were going to invest $22.9 million into the City of Casey because of the rapid expansion of the population and because there needs to be more investment. We needed to expand the emergency department and create another, I think, 22 beds for a mental health ward to expand the provision of mental health services in the region. Even though there is significant investment by the state government, the population growth is so great. In relation to partnership, we hear a lot about the activities of the Morrison government and COAG and how they're working together with the states, but I haven't heard of an MRI machine going into the City of Casey. I haven't heard of additional, much-needed infrastructure spends—new schools, new roads outside of the Monash Freeway, new rail. I've heard none of that whatsoever. I've heard a lot of criticism, but I haven't seen the co-investment that Mr Morrison speaks about. That's absolutely significant and what that means, for example, for the roads.

Again, prior to the last election, had we been successful, a Shorten-led Labor government would have invested $75 million in partnership with the Andrews Labor government on two major roads in my constituency. One's Thompsons Road—we were going to assist with the duplication of the roadway between Dandenong-Frankston Road and Berwick-Cranbourne Road. I was there for the announcement with other members of parliament and state members of parliament with Daniel Andrews and Bill Shorten prior to the election. That's not going to happen.

There's also another very significant stretch of road: Narre Warren-Cranbourne Road between Thompsons Road and South Gippsland Highway. I had the misfortune of having to drive back after a function at Warneet last weekend, and one may as well have been in the city. We're talking about an area that's about 47 kilometres outside of the CBD, and one may as well have been in the CBD, because the traffic just banked up almost from Thompsons Road to South Gippsland Highway. The space is available, but we can't just leave everything for the state government. I would say the state government in the seat of Cranbourne has probably invested close to a billion dollars in terms of infrastructure—it could well be over that. Now, if you look at what the federal government was investing—a couple of million versus $1 billion perhaps—that clearly indicates to me what their priorities are; they just don't prioritise it. I think I will be reminding the people who were stuck on that roadway about the fact that, had we been elected, we would have had that significant co-investment, working hand in hand with the Andrews Labor government. But that's not going to happen. I'm waiting, and I hope that the Morrison government will in fact do that: match the spending that the state Labor government puts in.

The other thing I wanted to turn my attention to was the issue of jobs and wages in the south-eastern region. We know that we've had something close to about 29 years of unimpeded and uninterrupted economic growth. The interesting thing is that we have not had 28 years of unimpeded, uninterrupted real wage growth and real wage increases to match cost of living increases. In fact what we've had, as a consequence of the previous government, the Turnbull government—sorry, the Abbott-Turnbull government—

Ms Ryan interjecting—

I keep on losing track, Member for Lalor; I've got to remember the holy trinity: the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government. We've had cuts to penalty rates. In our area, because we have so many young families, our young families require penalty rates just to keep their heads above water. As governments, we encourage people to go and live the Australian dream, to buy their property, to raise their kids in the outer suburbs and to lead the life. Because it's a very car-dependent constituency, because it is so far out, we have again significant investment in public transport, but it doesn't match the fact that we have many, many workers in the construction and trade industry who can't catch a train to go to their job; they've got to use a car. That's why you've got to have a government that matches that aspiration by providing the roads for them to travel on so they can do their jobs and—they might be married, they may have a partner; they may have kids and they might be working in retail—don't have their penalty rates cut. They can send their kids to the schools that they want to, even government schools. They can pay the mortgage.

This is something that I think Mr Morrison should reflect on: when he talks about how well the economy is going, what I am hearing consistently from people and major employers connected with the manufacturing network down in the south-eastern suburbs is a suppression of demand, a grave concern that we're in something like a retail recession. We're actually in a period of time where the economy is not travelling well. So, we have the government saying, 'We're getting into surplus.' 'This is really great' and 'You've never had it so good.' Come down and say that to the people in the south-east—the ones that are struggling because they've had their penalty rates cut when they're working at Myers at the Fountain Gate shopping centre. Or talk to those mums getting their kids off to school who are struggling to pay school fees, to pay for school uniforms or to pay for travel when petrol goes up to $1.75 a litre.

One of the things that I think should be noted here, given that you've got massive car dependency and a lot of people who need cars, is that, when petrol goes up, as it did recently, to $1.75 per litre, it's almost like a mini interest rate rise. And that's probably not familiar to people who make pronouncements about the economy going so well. What would they know about a Tuesday morning when the price of a litre of petrol eventually cycles down from $1.75 to $1.29 and you have mums and dads and tradies queuing up for anything up to half an hour to get their fuel tanks filled? Does that seem to be factored in? That isn't discussed. Consider energy costs, for example. The government's been talking about the work that it's been doing on dropping energy costs. That's interesting because I recently heard of a constituent whose energy bill went from $600 per quarter to $2,000. It went up just like that. Then, when he shopped around, like the government told him to do, it dropped from $2,000 to $1,700 in that quarter with no guarantee that there weren't going to be further price rises.

So I'm hearing rhetoric about jobs, about the roads going so well that apparently you can drive on roads that are really congested, and about people being able to pay their bills, yet the great social service providers, like the Cranbourne Information & Support Service, have people knocking down their doors to come and see them. And these are not just people who are on welfare or pensions; these are people we'd regard as being middle Australia. They're going to the Cranbourne Information & Support Service for vouchers to pay for food, to help them with school clothes and to help them get past having all these bills coming in. So tell me: how can the economy be going incredibly well when we have increased levels of concern expressed and when we have people from Cranbourne Information & Support Service, like Leanne Petrides, who's been the director for a number of years, saying that they haven't seen it this bad? Something must be going wrong. The economy that is supposedly going so well, Member for Lalor, can't be. Something must be going wrong. I think it is quite clear that cost-of-living pressures are not being matched by increases in disposable income for people in the south-eastern suburbs, particularly when that's exacerbated by a cut in penalty rates. I will come back to this in future addresses, Member for Lalor, because I don't think the problem's going to be solved, notwithstanding my drawing the House's attention to it.

I do want to talk about a very exceptional community in my constituency, which is not a huge community. I want to talk about the Oromo community and its impact on the world stage and the contribution that Australian Oromos have made to a peace process. I bring your attention to a recent Nobel Peace Prize that has been awarded. One of the most hopeful changes that I've seen in the 21st century has happened in Ethiopia recently. Nearly three decades of authoritarian rule have been overturned. The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front has come under intense challenge, but there's been a change and it's a change without violence. It was done by a protest, almost like an Arab Spring, to some extent, in Africa, but it's not reported on much. In the face of popular protests and in desperation, the regime felt compelled to hand over the reins of government last year to a young and dynamic gentleman who became the Prime Minister: Abiy Ahmed from the Oromo Democratic Party. According to democracy expert Larry Diamond, since coming to power in April 2018, Ahmed has released political prisoners, loosened media controls and implemented a wave of other reforms, including appointing one of the most respected opposition figures to head the country's electoral commission in advance of the elections due in 2020.

In Africa, entrenched authoritarianism exists amongst nation states, but, with 100 million people, Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Africa and it's become a peaceful multiparty democracy. The implications for the continent are enormous. The Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed Ali, was awarded the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation and, in particular, for his decisive initiative to solve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea. There were three people in the course of the dark days of this, before they transitioned—Biftu Gutama, Sinke Wesho and Abdeta Hanna—who would lobby me consistently. Congratulations to them. We've seen one of the most peaceful transitions of power in the 21st century. It's they and the people of Ethiopia who should be commended.

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