Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to start by thanking the Governor-General for his remarks upon the opening of the 47th Parliament last year. His Excellency highlighted the fact that 'in hard times, Australians have been at their caring and courageous best'. We saw that over the summer when Australians were getting out there and helping one another in the floods across this country as they were dealing with natural disasters. Indeed, the member from Forrest has also just highlighted—and I want to attach myself to her remarks—the courageous work that we have seen from those in her electorate in the south-west of WA who have been fighting fires.

I thank our emergency services professionals and volunteers and, equally, those who came not just from across WA but from across this nation to ensure that we did everything we could to help communities around Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley that were affected by 15-metre-high floodwaters. It is something we had not seen before and something from which we know it will take many years to rebuild the community and other infrastructure that has been damaged.

Again, as His Excellency said:

In hard times, Australians have been at their caring and courageous best.

Sadly, we see the reminders of that during particularly awful natural disasters. What we have seen over the last three years is Australians showing great strength and resilience. Our new parliament has given Australia a fresh start to come out the other side—a new opportunity to talk about the future of our nation, to show our love for this great country we call Australia and to talk afresh about what we can achieve together.

As His Excellency said, this government will seek to lead by example. We will seek to lead by example in who we choose to send to this place, and you see the diversity of thought, skills, experience and background in the caucus that makes up the Albanese Labor government. We are leading by example through our open consultation with Australian industry, looking at new ways to work together to get things done. We've seen that in the parliament this week with the progression of the paid parental leave expansion, an idea that came from working together across industry, unions and the community sector as a result of the Jobs and Skills Summit that was held here in September last year.

I also thank His Excellency for noting that the role of the Climate Change Authority would be restored, and it has been. That was one of the first acts of the 47th Parliament, because we know that Australia's standing in the world is enhanced when we are seen to take action on climate change and when we do our bit on the big challenges that face not just our country and not just our communities but communities across the world.

I also note His Excellency mentioned our commitment to the voice to parliament. This is a commitment to build a better future for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It will be a better future for all of us and this is an opportunity for every Australian—not just the 151 people who serve as representatives in this place but all 17.2 million Australians—to have their say on writing the next chapter of our Constitution and on writing a shared future for Australia through both constitutional recognition and having a voice that can speak, in all its diversity, to this parliament and to the executive to make sure that we improve the quality of policy design.

We also had His Excellency highlight the economic policies of the Albanese government—policies that 'will promote economic growth that creates opportunities for Australians' and will 'steer Australia safely through' the issues we are facing. I think that is worth recognising as well. It's an honour to be part of this parliament and part of this government, and to see the changes that have started in this place.

I was recently reading Senator Margaret Reynolds's valedictory address from 1999, where she remarked how diverse and enlivened the Senate had become over her career from the 1980s to the 1990s. If you look at the parliament now, in 2022 and 2023, we have the most women in history in both chambers: 43 in the Senate and 58 in the House. There is more work to be done, but it's an absolute step change compared to how things were, even when Margaret Reynolds was talking about the changes that had been made back in 1999. We have 11 First Nations members of parliament. We have so many different faiths and backgrounds being represented in this place. It is always a joy, a privilege and an honour to work in this place, but I feel that that joy, privilege and honour only deepen as we expand the breadth of this parliament to ensure it looks as much as possible like the Australia we represent. It's a sign of the fairer Australia that we all seek to build, and it gives us the opportunity to make sure that we have all of the policy ideas necessary to deliver the big, lasting change we need. We are determined not to waste this opportunity. We are determined to be a government that seeks to unite Australians, not divide them, while recognising we have an important role in this place to debate things, to thoroughly examine them and to make sure that all views are considered when we make decisions.

When it comes to the capacity of this parliament to make good decisions, one of the most fundamental things that we need is to have all the information available. One of the things that was such a surprising start to this parliamentary term was that we learnt of the absolute lack of transparency that existed under the former government, when the member for Cook briefed some journalists about the secret ministries which had started in and expanded across the Morrison government, breaking faith with the Australian people, breaking faith with the parliament of Australia and breaking faith with the conventions of the Westminster system within which we all operate. This side of the House, this government, will seek to uphold and protect the conventions of parliament. We are doing that with the Ministers of State Amendment Bill 2022, which is before the parliament at the moment, to make sure that never again can any Prime Minister swear themselves into one, two, three, four or five secret ministries. That was a deception of the Australian people. It also undermined not just faith in democracy but our Australian Public Service. We did what you would expect when we learnt in an otherwise very good book—a very revealing book—about these secret ministries that had proliferated across government. We did the right thing. We asked former justice Virginia Bell AC to inquire into it, we sought advice from the Solicitor-General and we put legislation to this parliament to act upon it.

While I'm talking about ministries, obviously the member for Cook was a Treasurer, not that any of us knew it at the time—not even Treasurer Frydenberg knew it at the time—but maybe it does mean that the trillion dollars of debt that former Treasurer Frydenberg left should only be—

See this speech in context