Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

Labor supports the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2020-2021 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2020-2021. I also support the amendments moved by the member for Kingsford Smith. I had hoped to speak this afternoon more on the resources portfolio, but I'm going to spend a few moments reflecting on some of the reports we've seen in the media, just a couple of hours ago.

After reports today of further debasement in this parliament of the women in this place and the workplace itself, I would not be surprised, quite honestly, if the women who work here, and particularly the staff, simply walk off the job and leave the men to the revolting mess of their own creation. What we've seen today in news reports is behaviour that beggars belief. It's disgusting. We're all tarnished by this behaviour—all the very decent, hardworking, honest, good people who are elected here or who work here, whether they be our staff, as members and senators, or the support staff that make sure we can do our job. We all, because we work here in what should be a magnificent place, are tarnished by the behaviour that we've seen reported in previous weeks and again tonight. It's a shocking indictment on this place. As I said, we're all tarnished by this vile behaviour, and perhaps we should be. We've allowed this behaviour to go on for decades—not, perhaps, the individuals in this chamber right now, who haven't all been here this long. But a culture has been allowed to pervade, and erupt in, this building which has seen the most vile, debased acts of the utmost arrogance and the utmost entitlement—acts of disrespect towards women and disrespect towards fellow humans in treating a workplace in this manner.

Who would blame female staff in this place if they just walked out tomorrow and took some action to demonstrate just how debased this workplace has, clearly, become and the way some people choose to treat it. I know everyone in this chamber today would agree with me that what we have seen in news reports tonight is just the most horrific thing you could imagine. We all now get to walk around our offices and think: 'I wonder what happened before I got this office. What did happen in here?' There might be a few red wine stains from time to time that are cleaned up well, but now we know there is much more going on than I ever imagined. I've worked here for five years, and, before I was elected, I worked here as well. That this kind of thing was happening never entered my imagination. Call me naïve, and I probably am, but what I would say to the female staff and to all the staff is that I'm sorry. To all the good, decent, hardworking people who are committed to their parties, to the policies we talk of and to the arguments we have civilly in this place, I'm sorry for what you're all going through. I feel exhausted. I'm sure many feel exhausted by it—obviously not as exhausted as the victims of sexual violence and domestic violence right across this nation. To all the women in this place who will be feeling even worse tonight than they would have felt just last week, I want to reassure you all that, as an elected member of parliament, all my colleagues and I are thinking of you finding yourselves in a vulnerable situation that we really would never want to see again.

We all talk about this being a moment in time where the culture of this place may change. One hopes that if the culture of this place changes we can do some very good things right across the country where the systemic abuse of women and domestic violence can come to an end. If it can't start here and be successful here I guess there is little hope for it happening across the nation. The people that work here, those that are elected here, are those elected leaders of the nation and a lot of people who work here want to be elected as leaders of the nation. If this behaviour is to continue or to be seen again what hope have we got for the nation that we seek to lead—if we cannot behave properly and with respect to every human that works in this place. To all the women and to all the good, honest men who are working hard to fix this as well: I thank you for your commitment, for sticking with us and for sticking with your work through this place. But, to be honest, if you did walk off the job tomorrow I certainly wouldn't blame you one little bit.

As I said before, I came here tonight to speak about the resources industry. I was very proud to take on the resources portfolio in addition to the trade portfolio on behalf of the federal Labor opposition. I look forward to working with it into the future. I want to recognise my immediate predecessors in the resources role, the member for Chifley and the member for Hunter—both strong, energetic and practical supporters of a strong Australian mineral resources sector.

I acknowledge the member for Burt, another proud Western Australian. As a proud Western Australian I've seen firsthand the impact a strong, successful—pardon me, and the chair and the member for O'Connor is here as well—mining and resources industry can have on this country, which now accounts for half of Australia's total exports and directly employs more than a quarter of a million people, many of them in regional areas.

I suppose many of us in Western Australia sound a bit like a broken record when we describe the resources industry, but it is the engine room of the nation's economy. I repeat it so often because it's absolutely true. In my additional role as shadow minister for trade, as well as being the representative for an electorate known for its heavy industry, I've been fortunate enough to witness some of Australia's huge nation-building projects in the making. This includes the INPEX Ichthys LNG Project in Broome and its main facility in Darwin, Woodside's North West Shelf Project in Karratha and more recently the Pluto gas project in Dampier, Chevron's Gorgon Project on Barrow Island and, of course, the Wheatstone LNG project in Onslow. There are so many others that have made great job-creating contributions to this nation and that keep on keeping on.

It's important that every Australian understands the value of the sector, not just to the broader Australian economy but to the hip pockets of the hundreds of thousands of workers across the country, and of course their families. When you're in the resources sector and you're a fly-in fly-out worker, which is often the case, your whole family is involved in that job because the worker isn't always there, so the family takes on an additional burden during those weeks away.

My links with the mining industry began long before I was born. It's a history that I had some time to reflect on during a recent trip to Kalgoorlie in my new role as the shadow minister for resources. It's a family story. In the 1890s, following the sudden death of his wife, my great-great-grandfather, Eli Pizer, packed up four of his children and his life in Melbourne to join the luck of the gold rush in Kalgoorlie. Eli Pizer wasn't a miner but he started a handsome cab service to move the lucky and the luckless around that great booming town. One of his sons, Thomas, my great grandfather, went on to provide the critical service of running the Clydesdale horses that hauled kegs of beer to the hotels that shot up during the greatest gold rush Australian has seen. These days if you go to Kalgoorlie—I know the member for O'Connor represents the area—you will know by the magnitude of the Super Pit gold mine that, all the other activities there on the eastern border, it feels like that rush never ended and will continue for some time.

While I was there I went to the Kalgoorlie cemetery. After a bit of searching I found and visited the grave of my pioneering relative Eli Pizer and reflected on his story, which is a story shared by many Western Australians whose forebears quite frankly did leave Melbourne and Victoria. They came from the goldfields of Victoria to the goldfields of Western Australia. Indeed, it was those Victorians that we can blame for our Federation, or thank for, because we know they changed the votes quite substantially. As a person who's very pleased that Western Australia is part of the Federation I will always support it. That time and the contribution of the gold rush literally to the Federation was— (Time expired)

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