Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to the House for the opportunity to make this speech on the first day of our 47th Parliament, and thank you to the people of Goldstein. Thank you to those in our community who lifted me up. Without you I wouldn't be standing here.

I want to acknowledge our First Peoples and pay my respects to the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, and to the Boonwurrung people of the Kulin nation, on whose unceded lands Goldstein sits.

In this, my first speech to the parliament, I want to state my support, after consultation with the Boonwurrung people, for a First Nations voice in the Constitution. The voice for the First Peoples will create a direct line of communication to and with this parliament and is a crucial step towards self-determination. I am hopeful and honoured to be able to contribute to the establishment of a voice for the First Peoples, a legacy that this parliament can build.

Yet there is more that we must do. The legacy of the 47th Parliament must include climate action for the long-term future of our country, greater integrity, safety and empowerment for women and girls. These are the concerns of our nation. A few days ago one of these concerns was brought into sharp focus with the release of the State of the environment report. Our country is burning and flooding. Our water is polluting, our trees dwindling. Our very earth is wasting away. But the report gives us a path back which includes First Nations people, the first guardians of country. It's time to act.

My job now will be to hold the government to account for dramatically improved climate policy and targets, backed by the best science that we have—a timely, planned and just transition to renewable energy. The government's carbon emission target, 43 per cent by 2030, must be enshrined in law as a floor, not a ceiling. We must have clear mechanisms to keep all of us, each of us, accountable to achieving net zero by 2050, if not before. Even 2040 would not be a moment too soon. This will give certainty to business and, if we are swift and purposeful, will help keep the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.

I would say that I appreciate the good faith the government has demonstrated to date in making changes to improve the legislation. So far, so good. This kind of collaboration is what the Goldstein community wants, and it's one of the fundamental reasons that I stand here in this parliament.

The State of the environment report tells us we must not delay. The facts are before us. Ending the climate wars requires courage and ambition beyond politics. Deception, fear and division must end. We have an opportunity in this parliament to go forward and to go forward together.

I stand here today because of the life I've led so far and the impact of my experiences, the things I've seen, the people I've met, the stories I've heard and told, and a desire to contribute. The release last week of the State of the environment report made it clear to me, and I know for all of us, that we must act urgently and effectively to save our lands and our planet.

I grew up in Tassie, but I was born in Essendon. Unlike the member for Casey, I'm an Essendon supporter, thanks to dad, who played for the Bombers at the time. My father, also a teacher, instilled in me a deep ethical framework and competitive determination befitting a footballer's kid. My mother, a hairdresser and then a social worker—who supported women escaping domestic violence and later worked in Indigenous communities and in the Middle East—gave me empathy and, I think, strength in adversity.

My father's experiences as a state Labor candidate in Tasmania put me off party politics for life—sorry! It was a murky mess of factionalism and dark political tactics—casting no aspersions! Just as my mother taught me to listen and to feel, my father has always pushed me to push myself and to strive to have impact. I'm here from our community, but also because of my family—Rowan, my husband, and our children, Arkie and Pearl—who, when we talked as a family about me standing for election, said: 'You have to do something for us, Mum. Someone has to do something for us.' Rowan, initially not keen because politics can be a nasty business, especially for women, has been so inspired by the community around us and the movement that we all created together. Like his own work in international development, it was a community working together for good. So many Australians do that—volunteering at the surf lifesaving club, running the canteen at the local school, reading in classrooms, coaching junior sport, cooking the barbecue at Bunnings, those who dropped off food packs to strangers during our many Melbourne lockdowns, and the people who share their houses after floods and fires. Our parliament can and should reflect that sense of community and the concerns of our communities across our diverse nation.

In late 2013 I landed, on a military cargo plane, in the devastated Tacloban City after the superstorm Typhoon Haiyan had swept across the central Philippines. As a journalist and foreign correspondent, I have seen all manner of climate related disasters. Nothing before or since compares to those scenes in Tacloban, flattened by a storm surge that destroyed 90 per cent of the city—bodies in the streets, cars in trees, giant boats atop buildings and, amid the rubble, the shattered lives of residents. This event was a turning point for me, a realisation of the impact climate change, and its increasingly unmanageable weather events, would have on communities.

It is not the only reference point. I have waded through floods in northern New South Wales, Thailand and elsewhere in South-East Asia; seen the melting permafrost in the arctic and the animals and people scrabbling for survival as the environment morphs right under their feet; and reported on the aftermath of cyclones in the Pacific, hurricanes in the US, bushfires in Australia and California.

In late 2019 I met former Australian fire chief Greg Mullins on the fireground amid bushfires in California. He and others had spent months making calls and writing letters trying to get a meeting with the former government to warn them to prepare for a black summer ahead. They were ignored. During that summer of 2019-20, like all Australians, I watched horrified as those predicted fires came, changing communities forever, killing and displacing billions of animals and burning through our precious landscape. Enough waiting. Enough obfuscating. The impacts of these floods, fires and storms have become too much, too frequent to continue to do too little.

I especially want to thank my family for supporting me as I stand here today wanting to do more. Rowan, Arkie and Pearl, the three of you know better than anyone that I am innately an introvert—happiest just pottering in the garden or having a quiet swim in the ocean and being with my family—but you also know why we must do this together. It's because it's time to be fierce and to be brave, to represent community, to make hard decisions, yet to lead with optimism. Be the change you want to see—that's what we tell our children. Remember, Arkie, when Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement in 2017? You said to me: 'No one is doing anything. It'll be too late. Why isn't anyone doing anything?' As a parent, it was a helpless moment. I remember saying, 'I can't do anything about that.' Well, now is my chance.

It's our chance to do something about climate, about transforming our economy amid a huge opportunity—a renewables revolution—and about restoring public trust in leadership. It's about grasping this opportunity that a pandemic delivered us. The pandemic has had and continues to have so many terrible impacts, but it's also reminded us what community is about and what we can achieve when we come together.

This is what the people of Goldstein have realised, and that's why our community has propelled an Independent candidate into this House. A movement mobilised to put me in this seat in this place—a movement that wants reasoned discussion and collaboration to solve the big challenges of our time.

An honourable member: Hear, hear!

I acknowledge my fellow community independents and their communities. We've been put in these seats for similar reasons by people who want honesty, sincerity and guts from their representatives.

Back in the days before I was a foreign correspondent, I was a rural journalist and a presenter of The Country Hour on the ABC. The ABC, by the way, is a critical service that connects Australians in good times and in crises and must be funded to reflect its value to communities across the nation—as a teller of Australian stories, as a connection between us and the world and as an emergency broadcaster. I grew up as a horsey kid in Tassie, so being a rural reporter stomping around on farms was a natural fit for me.

That was when I met the energetic whirlwind Cathy McGowan. She was involved with Australian Women in Agriculture, and we met on a study trip to the US that ended with a major conference in Washington, DC. I was in my mid-20s, and it was my first trip overseas. Years later, after several foreign postings, when I returned from four years in Washington covering the Trump presidency, Cathy sent me a note: 'I think you'd make a great MP.' In Cathy's first speech in 2013, she introduced this place to Voices for Indi and to the power of a rural community to 'reinvent itself'. Those were her exact words. Now it's urban Goldstein's time for reinvention through its own Voices movement.

For more than 100 years, Balaclava, now the electorate of Goldstein, had voted for men from the conservative side of politics, but in 2022 Goldstein found its Independent voice—a woman, at that! You'll note that I'm not wearing teal tonight. Purple and white were the colours worn by suffragists like Vida Goldstein, after whom Goldstein is named. Vida was a peace advocate, an activist, a politician and—as owner and editor of Woman's Spherea journalist, like myself. She was the first woman in the Western world to stand for a national parliament. Vida Goldstein also rejected party politics. 'I ask you to vote for me because I'm not a member of a political party,' she told voters early last century. She said:

Study has convinced me that party government is a system that is entirely out of date … It is a cumbersome, unbusinesslike method of running the country …

Vida, unfortunately, made five unsuccessful attempts to get elected to the House and the Senate, and it took Australia 40 years from Federation to elect—finally—a woman to federal parliament. In this, our 47th Parliament, women make up about 40 per cent, the highest proportion on record. That includes 19 first-term MPs. I am one, as the new member for Goldstein, in Vida's name.

I'd like to take a moment to recognise Tim Wilson, my predecessor, for his six years of service to our community, which threads through bayside Melbourne from Elsternwick to Beaumaris and inland into Cheltenham, Bentleigh, Highett, Gardenvale, Ormond, McKinnon, Glen Huntly and Caulfield South. Our community is diverse, culturally and religiously varied, established, and highly educated in parts, with green parks, a blue bay, old and young using our magic bush trails, all kinds of footy, netball, cricket and cyclists—a lot of lycra!

But we're not a community devoid of problems. Goldstein has housing stress and homelessness, small businesses struggling to recover from the pandemic, people struggling to navigate aged care and the NDIS, and serious youth mental health issues. Yet, it's a place where you'll find the Chatty Cafe Scheme, which brings people together to simply have a sandwich and a cup of tea and talk. You'll find lifesaving clubs and bay swimmers, from Brighton to Black Rock to Beaumaris, who choose to swim in the freezing waters of Bayside Melbourne, even on dark winter mornings, for health and connection. You'll find a group of people looking to secure hope for the future.

The very first member for Goldstein, Ian Macphee, a longstanding member of the Liberal Party, generously endorsed me during my campaign. In his own first speech, Ian Macphee said he would:

… endeavour to serve all constituents to the best of my ability and to make here a contribution to national policy formation.

At the time, he said:

It seems to be a fact of life that parliamentarians, the principal lawmakers, are not held in high regard by those whom they serve.

…   …   …

I anticipate that during my political life expectancy in this Parliament, the Parliament's greatest problem may well be to raise its own standing in the eyes of the community …

We're still not there. In fact, I would contend that the situation has worsened since Ian framed that speech. But it's also my goal—and the goal of all of us in this parliament, I believe—to behave and to deliver in a way that makes our nation proud.

Along with my deep concerns about the lack of action on climate sit my observations about the fragmentation of truth and trust, and the danger that poses to our democracy and the future of our communities and our children. Authoritarianism, populism, disinformation and vast conspiracy theories have flourished in recent years in a volatile world. Social media has been used by Donald Trump and others like him to sow doubt on the integrity of elections. As we've heard in the evidence about the shocking events of 6 January 2021, those who stormed the US Capitol thought they were protecting democracy. Instead, they were deceived and manipulated.

Without trust in policy and leadership, without integrity and good governance, we cannot function as a society. When facts become just a matter of opinion, we have a problem. It is our responsibility in this parliament to rebuild that trust. I would suggest that my former colleagues in the press could also reflect on their own behaviour.

To be honest, I had little interest in becoming a politician. After years of covering politics, I knew what it was. When my old university friend Angela Pippos called me last year and said, 'Are you sitting down?' and asked if I would be interested in running for parliament with the support of community group Voices of Goldstein, my first response was, 'No way!' Yet here I am. I thank the Voices of Goldstein for their trust.

I didn't take the regular pathway to politics. I have never signed up to a party or a particular ideology. When you've spent your life as a journalist, you create distance from the parties, and I've always been a swinging voter. I've spent much of my career so far talking to people with very different political views to mine. I've learnt to consider how people are affected very differently by events and circumstances. While over the years I've voted according to leadership, ethos and policies, it was only when the idea of running as an Independent was presented to me as a realistic option that I thought, 'This is a way of actually stepping in, stepping up to the table and having an impact, without having to pick a side.'

This community crossbench, I believe, is ready to work with government to make change. Our communities said this is what matters: climate, integrity, gender equality, and safety for women and girls. There's more: fixing health care, aged care and the NDIS; humane refugee policies; tax reform; and affordable housing. We must return to collaborative politics to make these changes, and it must happen now, because, while all of our futures are at stake, it's our young people who will pay the price for continued inaction, continued self-interest and the continued absence of vision.

To our young people, our kids, our babies: I'm sorry. I'm sorry that your generation is going to pay the price for the failure of those who have come before you, for failing to make the government take the action we need to futureproof our nation and the globe from the devastating impact of climate change on your lives and those of your children. I know that, when you see things like the latest, shocking State of the environment report, you ask, 'Why aren't we reacting? Who's going to make the hard decisions?'

With all of this in mind, I step into this place, into the room where it happens, with determination but also with optimism, with the opportunity to look forward to what we can achieve. Australia has a chance to lead and to take our place in the world as a nation of innovation. In doing so, we must implement an effective integrity system: an anticorruption commission, transparency of political donations and ministerial diaries, whistleblower protection and truth in political advertising.

And we must hold the government to account on the safety and economic empowerment of women and girls. We must value the care economy to revalue the contribution that women make. Let us shift the focus from hard infrastructure, like roads and bridges, to hospitals and schools and give women and girls their best opportunity to participate in the economy, taking into account their multiple competing priorities. Higher productivity is critical and timely. Universal, cheap and flexible child care is central to this to cater for women working fragmented shifts.

Independents have a special place in this parliament. Unfettered by party lines, we can and will speak up. We have a special role in our communities as listeners and then as a direct voice in this place. If we as leaders don't listen, learn and carry our communities forward with us, we will see more people vulnerable to disinformation, to conspiracy. We must provide policy, stability, hope, and a road map to follow.

During my campaign I borrowed a phrase, its origins with the Jewish elder Hillel, later adapted by JFK: 'If not us, who? If not now, when?' Our when is now. It starts today. It's time to act. Thank you, Goldstein, for your trust, and I ask you and all Australians to hold me to account.

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