Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I stand here as a member of the 47th parliament because a majority of people in the Makin electorate once again placed their trust and their faith in me to continue as their representative in the federal parliament. To those people I say thank you; I will continue to do all that I can to live up to your expectations and to be an effective representative for all people in the Makin electorate and beyond. To be a member of federal parliament is indeed a privilege that comes with considerable responsibility. I particularly thank the people who not only voted for me but who personally volunteered their time to campaign for me—again, not just in the election campaign but for years, many of them leading up to this last election. They are what Paul Keating once referred to as the 'true believers'. They worked unselfishly for the election of me and a Labor government—a Labor government with policies and laws built on a belief in justice, fairness and equality for all, and a belief in a society where freedom, democracy and inclusion are not just words but core principles of the Albanese Labor government.

I especially thank the people closest to me in my everyday life who sacrifice so much of their own lives and their time to support me in what I do in this place. I refer particularly to my wife, Vicki, who has always been there for me throughout all of my time in public life—from, indeed, the day we got married—to my children and their families, and to all my other extended family members who, along with my very loyal and very confident office team, share the joys, the stresses and the sacrifices of political life. Politics can be tough and often thankless, and, as so many others—including the colleagues from the 46th parliament who were unsuccessful in the May election—find out, being in politics can in fact do a lot to change who you are as a person.

Australia being part of a global community means that we are directly impacted by so much of what takes place across the world: wars, internal conflicts, extreme weather events or disruption to peace and harmony anywhere in the rest of the world will inevitably have consequences for Australia in the form of trade difficulties and disruptions; import shortages; price increases; humanitarian assistance that is required; and refugee issues and the like.

In a global community, Australia's national interest doesn't stop at our international border. That is why it is so important that from the first day after the 21 May election Prime Minister Albanese and his senior ministers have set out to rebuild Australia's damaged relationships with other countries, including many of our near neighbours who for so long have been neglected. Australia has its own identity and independence, but we do live within a global economy and we are members of an international community that today is confronted with so many difficult issues. Yes, it would be fair to say that the world has always faced difficult issues, some greater and others lesser than the difficulties of today, but, notwithstanding that—whatever those difficulties were—it is the immediate issues that this generation faces that become priorities for our government and for other governments around the world.

Here in Australia and throughout the world the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted normal life as we knew it and exposed our national vulnerabilities. The Australian idiom 'She'll be right, mate' went out the window with COVID. We saw lives lost and many people hospitalised. Jobs were lost, services were cut and global supply chains were derailed. Medical services were stressed—and we heard a brilliant speech about that earlier this evening. Work practices changed. Immigration and travel became chaotic, and the global economy became unstable and insecure. I could go on, and I'm sure members in this place are very familiar with all of the issues that COVID brought about. Indeed, it was an experience I don't think anybody ever forecast or imagined would happen in their own lifetime, where we saw the world turned upside down.

Yet, in response to the COVID pandemic, the Morrison coalition sidelined, ignored and even denied its responsibilities on so many of the matters that were core responsibilities of government. It simply tried to use COVID as an excuse for not being able to get on with the full job of government. In fact, some of the problems that we are confronted with today in Australia arose because of the negligence of the Morrison, Turnbull and Abbott governments. These are pressing issues which the Australian people, however, did not forget about and which influenced their vote on 21 May—issues which resulted in a change of government, which saw people looking for a new and fresh direction, which saw the Australian people put their faith and their trust in a brand new government. There was the Morrison government's indifference to climate change, where the government was completely out of step with global, political, business and community opinion; the human crisis in the aged-care sector, so well exposed by the royal commission and some 20 earlier inquiries; and the neglect of the environment, as revealed by the government's deliberate withholding of the State of the environment report. The Morrison government presided over a failing national health and NDIS system and constantly white-anted Medicare. Then there was its complete botching of the replacement submarine program, where we wasted not only a decade of time but over $5 billion in public funds. It presided over the demise of our skills training and the national TAFE system. It talked the talk but didn't walk the walk in support veterans, then had to be dragged into a royal commission into veterans' suicides. And Mr Morrison presided over a government racked by rorts, incompetence and dishonesty while, not surprisingly, refusing to establish an effective anticorruption commission. These things were all part of the reason why the Australian people looked for change and marked down the previous Morrison government.

There are many other issues raised with me in the course of the election campaign that didn't form part of the Governor-General's address when he gave it last week. The Governor-General highlighted, I believe, most of the commonplace policy areas that this government acknowledges it needs to respond to. But there were indeed many other issues raised with me, which I want to quickly talk about in the time that I have left. I refer to things such as corporate greed; private health cover, where our private health system is beginning to fail the people that are members of that system; environmental degradation, which I referred to briefly earlier on; the public ownership of essential services; a struggling health system; the absence of dental cover in Medicare; restoring public trust and confidence in parliamentarians and the parliamentary process; the energy crisis, which we talk about almost daily; and the release of Julian Assange. In talking on those matters—and I will make much more in-depth remarks about all of them in this 47th Parliament when the appropriate time arises—I simply want to make these brief points.

During the COVID pandemic of the last 2½ years, whilst businesses were closing, Australian people were losing their jobs and families around the country were struggling, we saw corporate businesses making superprofits, profits above and beyond what they had previously made when the economy was supposedly going so well. We saw them also taking handouts from government, to the tune of around $20 billion, perhaps even more, when their own income was increasing. It is a concern when we have an economy where that kind of behaviour is allowed to continue.

I touched on the issue of private health cover. I read, only a couple of weeks ago, about how the private health sector is in crisis. We know that the health system more broadly is in crisis. If people do not have confidence in their private health cover—and they don't, because of the gap payments that they are being forced to pay—that will simply force them into the public system, and that will only put more pressure on the public system, and, in turn, the cycle of a public health system that is struggling to meet its obligations will continue. Indeed, in the last two or three weeks alone, in my office I have had several people come to me and say, 'My private health cover simply doesn't give me the support that I need to be able to get the health support that I need, and so therefore I need to go to the public system or we need to change the rules around the private health system.'

Environmental degradation is something that I have spoken out about in this place from the day I came into this parliament. We had a report that was put on ice by the previous government so it wouldn't be exposed in the lead-up to the last election, and that is unforgivable. I have spoken to environmentalists back in my home state of South Australia, people who know what they are doing and people who have committed their lives to supporting our environment. The environmental degradation that is taking place in Australia and around the world is something that cannot continue. Australia does not have a proud track record of environmental protection, and it is something that I will continue to fight hard for again in this term of government.

I now turn to the issue of public ownership of essential services. It has been exposed time and time again, including throughout the COVID pandemic, that outsourcing essential services means that, when things go wrong, it is the government that has to pick up the pieces, and ultimately the people of Australia pay for that outsourcing. So what might appear to be short-term savings upfront ultimately end up being major costs to the broader community.

Others have spoken about—and I have also raised it on previous occasions—the absence of dental cover in Medicare. It is something that I believe should be included and should have been included from day one. I've said that previously. I would like to ultimately see that as something that we pursue. I understand that you can only do so much, but, one step at a time, we should be heading in that direction.

Again, others have spoken about the need to restore public trust and confidence in our parliamentarians. Labor's commitment to a national integrity commission, I believe, will go a long way towards doing that, but we also need to change the way we behave in this place and some of the practices of this parliament. The public have every right to be critical of what they have seen over recent years. I believe that the reality is that people come into this place with good intentions to do the best they can for the communities that they represent, and we need to work collectively to ensure that this parliament does indeed work for the betterment of the country.

In the last few moments I have left, the last two points I will touch on are the energy crisis and Julian Assange. Australian people simply do not accept that Australia, as one of the world's large exporters of coal and perhaps the largest exporter of gas—I believe that we have now superseded Qatar in being the largest gas exporter in the world—should be paying exorbitant gas prices or that we should have an energy crisis in this country. The reality is these are Australian resources, and I believe that it is possible for those companies that are making huge profits from the gas and coal that is exported to also support the Australian people by ensuring that we have enough supplies in this country at affordable prices. Western Australia did it with their gas reservation policy, and I believe that it is possible for the rest of the country to equally ensure that we are not left without adequate supplies of gas and that we do not face a gas energy crisis. I know that Minister Bowen is working towards whatever can be done and I will support whatever steps he takes. It is a critical issue because energy prices do not only affect households but indeed they affect our competitive advantage in our manufacturing industries and affect every other industry throughout the country.

I also said a moment ago that I will speak briefly about Julian Assange. I have spoken about Julian Assange in this place on other occasions. As the Prime Minister has said, enough is enough. Julian Assange has been detained for long enough. Given that is the case, I will continue to urge for his release and I will continue to advocate for his release. I acknowledge that the Prime Minister has quite rightly said that this is not a matter that he will use a loud speaker to talk about but it is a matter that I believe should come to an end and should come to an end quickly rather than being dragged out even longer. It's something that I believe that the Australian people would expect and it is certainly something that I will be continuing to call for.

In his address to the first session of parliament the Governor-General referred to what I would categorise as 19 different areas of public policy which the Albanese government will address in this term of government. They have been identified by Labor as the issues that we campaigned on in the 2022 election that I believe Australians want us to focus our attention on. They are issues which touch on the lives of the people that we represent. Of course every issue will have to be addressed one step at a time. It is not a matter where any government can walk in and simply, overnight, change the direction of the country. Indeed, I would expect that, even with all the best intentions in the world, there will be other issues that arise in the course of the next two or three years that might also cause some disruption to the plans we have in place.

But Labor went to an election campaign with a very clear set of policies. We went to an election campaign where we articulated the matters that we would try and address in this first parliament. The Prime Minister and the ministers that we now have in this government have already in the first week or so of this parliament introduced some 18 pieces of legislation on critical areas of reform where change is needed. They are not areas of reform where we can just simply put through some minor piece of legislation that is not controversial. They are areas of reform where major change is required, including aged care, climate change, industrial relations, acknowledging the Indigenous people of this land and so on. I thank those ministers because, quite frankly, most of those issues are very long overdue. It is a big job ahead we have in the 47th Parliament, but I have every confidence that, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, all of those matters will be addressed over the coming two or three years, and the Australian people will get the policies that they voted for.

Debate interrupted.

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