Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

on indulgence—When asked about what they're learning, the children at Ewing Kindergarten in Malvern East and the Windsor childcare centre cite caring for country. They appreciate the teachings from traditional owners of this land, as do I. When elected in 2022, I knew that politics had a shelf life, but I didn't expect mine to be this short—well before my best-by date! The seat of Higgins, established in 1949, was flagged for abolition a mere two years into my term. It is named after Justice Henry Bournes Higgins, who became a peace activist after the loss of his only son in World War I, who raged against the authorities due to their dereliction of care following his son's death and who handed down the Harvester Judgement, which delivered the minimum wage.

As a man of principle, he fought for what matters. I took a page from his book, facing each day with urgency, focusing on the things that matter. I internalised the Prime Minister's 'never waste a day' adage, amplified by the departing member for Barton, who reflected that you can achieve more in one day of government than in years on the opposition benches. I can confidently say that I never took my time here for granted, using it to advance worthy ideas, often from my own community, and to advocate for better outcomes on behalf of the people of Higgins, who in turn advocate most strongly not for themselves but for others. They are a lion-hearted community—a seat steeped in history, producing two prime ministers, Holt and Gorton—four if you count Menzies and Fraser, who lived there—as well as Australia's longest serving Treasurer. This Liberal stronghold, for the first time in the seat's 75-year history, put their trust in Labor.

That I was elected in a seat like Higgins repudiates the claim that people are sick of the major parties. Lifelong Liberals voted Labor. It was extraordinary.

As a child of this pandemic, I was indignant at a distant political class that gaslit frontline healthcare workers, ignored calls for better safety protections and did not step up when we were stepping into harm's way. Add the deprioritisation of women, our embarrassment as a climate laggard and a casual approach to integrity by the former government and I was primed when the member for Macnamara and the Acting Prime Minister proposed this crazy idea. As Mandela said, it's only impossible until it's done.

I chose to be in a party of government because I wanted to act on problems, not just complain about them, and I wanted to pull in a team. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

Among my proudest achievements has been the elevation of clean indoor air both on the Labor Party's national platform and to the peak scientific body that advises the Prime Minister. With my partner in crime, the member for Cooper, who is unwell today, enabled by the Minister for Industry and Science and with a recommendation from the long COVID inquiry, which I was part of, we persuaded the Chief Scientist to deliver an evidence synthesis of what works. Arguing the case for clean indoor air at the National Science and Technology Council and subsequently launching the report at a public webinar was a personal highlight for me.

The community response has been overwhelming. Australians understand that we spend 90 per cent of our time indoors and that clean air reduces airborne threats like viruses, allergens and smoke. A community advocacy group supported by experts from the Australian Academy of Science and the Burnet Institute is launching this week in parliament to ensure that leaders don't drop the ball on this. It's not my pet project anymore. Implementation of indoor air quality standards will take time, but when productivity is on everyone's lips, keeping people healthy is low-hanging fruit. Sick people are unproductive; it's as simple as that.

There are other issues I've advocated for which have made it past the budgetary post. A national one-stop clinical trials shop will cut red tape, providing Australians with timely access to life-saving drugs, and will help attract more pharma-sponsored clinical trials to Australia, which could mean billions in economic activity. With hospitals groaning, research for the virtual clinic will help manage illness at home—better for patients and better for hospitals. Expanding the shingles vaccine to patients with weakened immune systems means that disseminated shingles—shingles that spreads all over your body—in the cancer and transplant patients I used to treat will vanish. The newly launched Australian Genomics will allow patients to access personalised treatments that they've read about online for years. Clinical guidelines for patients with chronic fatigue syndrome will be finally updated after 22 years, much to the relief and joy of 250,000 Australians with this condition—all thanks to the Minister for Health.

Frontline community legal centres like Southside Justice and Eastern Community Legal Centre will have funding for youth and domestic violence services, thanks to the Attorney-General. The ill-advised Jobs-ready Graduates program will eventually be dismantled and public schools will get the highest funding ever, thanks to the Minister for Education. I've had a few wins with my state colleagues, but that's for another day. But it emphasises that this federation only works when Commonwealth and states work together. I established parliamentary friendship groups for men's health and electric vehicles, and I thank colleagues from right around the chamber and corporate sponsors, as well as community advocates for their engagement.

Locally, in collaboration with the Minister for the Arts, I helped resolve a funding dispute between the National Institute of Circus Arts in Higgins and Swinburne University. Finally, with the Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport, chaired by the endearing and much-loved member for Macarthur, I put long COVID on the radar, ending the testimonial injustice for these patients.

I have held community events, walked the streets, stood on street corners, called up people, jumped on socials—which I do, under duress, due to my gen Z staff—all in the name of doing politics differently. I have tried to be proactive and approachable. One of the most gratifying experiences was striking up a conversation with a pensioner on a bench outside Malvern Central. He disclosed that he was renting and lived with his son. We got him Commonwealth rent assistance. It made his day and it made mine. It's a full bingo card.

Zooming out, I believe that the defining feature of this term has been overlapping crises from the pandemic, energy shock, regional wars and mass human displacement, punctuated by natural disasters due to climate change. Our term has been defined by a polycrisis, also known as a permacrisis—a state of permanent crisis. With inflation and a cost of living crisis unleashed, we responded with support, not austerity, reducing inflation while keeping people in jobs. Going forward, keeping the inflation dragon subdued will demand continuous effort given that global and local shocks may well be the new normal.

But inflation was not the only thing unleashed in this term. Social discord from antisemitism, doxxing and violence has threatened the lives and livelihoods of Australians and Labor parliamentarians and disrupted the wider community, fanned by the unforgivable weaponisation in here of a tragic conflict, for political gain. I repeatedly called this out and I hope that Australians at the next election call time on those political players who peddle division. Throwing manure on police will not expedite peace anywhere.

As Australians, our allegiance is first to each other. Sectarian grievances should not be imported or amplified here. Leave them at the door. That stuff is combustible. We need to learn to disagree agreeably, not with 32 characters in upper case but in a tone more akin to the letters to the editor. Labor recognises that our locus of control is here, not there. That's why we outlawed Nazi and terrorist symbols of hate, introduced antidoxxing laws, appointed a new race discrimination commissioner—because racism is a barrier to belonging—conducted our first-ever multicultural framework review to pinpoint why multiculturalism is uneven and what we can do about it, funded intercultural activities and security measures, installed Australia's first-ever special envoys against antisemitism and Islamophobia, created a national student ombudsman with teeth so that university students feel heard and started imposing social media controls, given that social media has devolved from the town hall into a pogrom. This is our track record of real actions, not empty words.

But there is another threat to our social cohesion—a slow-moving one represented by communities exposed to fading industries. When economic deprivation sets in, social dysfunction follows. The UK community of Sunderland lost one in four jobs between 1979 and 1985 from the decline of its coal and shipbuilding industries. Fast forward 40 years, and the problems came home to roost this year when anti-immigrant rioting needed an army of police to quell. This cannot be Australia's fate.

As a coal and gas nation in a decarbonising world, we cannot be blind to economic realities. In that regard, Labor's Future Made in Australia is as much an economic policy as it is a social one. We aren't picking winners, but we have picked markets in areas where we have a competitive edge. These include low-emission technology, defence, agriculture, critical minerals, quantum and medical science and are backed by massive government investment, like the National Reconstruction Fund, to compensate for declining business investment. We want to give children in the Hunter and Higgins pathways into secure, well-paid, rewarding careers.

I am for AUKUS and for quantum—big bets that will have economic multiplier effects similar to what our car industry once had but on steroids. The tech and talent spillovers into our wider community and economy from a future made here cannot be underestimated. It will be evident as startups, patents, inventions, collaborations, jobs—a million flowers blooming provided that the seeds we have planted are not poisoned by the Achilles heel of politics: short-termism. We cannot keep surrendering the 8,500 PhDs we make every year to the hunger games of academia or, worse, to other countries. They need local industries, and we are pulling levers to make that happen. I'll cop the criticism if it means preventing the emergence of rust-belt towns in Australia. Labor can see the writing on the wall, and we are acting so that no-one is left behind.

Responding to the polycrisis means embedding redundancies right across the economy. In the way critical infrastructure like planes and bridges are overengineered, we need redundancies we can summon at a whim to tackle whatever is coming—terrorism, war, infectious outbreaks which may be natural or man made, cyberattacks, natural disasters or all of those at once. The most important countermeasure, of course, is our people—skilled up, paid a fair wage, pulled back from precarity so that they can be deployed like a trained army when the sirens ring.

One of those armies is our Public Service. It is a national asset that Labor is building up again. Good luck to any government managing the new normal of multiple overlapping crises without a strong Public Service. I recall, at the start of my term, a constituent who in desperation paid someone to camp outside the Passport Office for two days. She was livid. The good news is that we have been on a recruitment drive because Australians rightfully expect decent public services.

A skills update depends on access to decent education. To that end, we have championed education along the lifetime continuum. I never miss an opportunity to emphasise how foundational the early years are to leading a productive life. Better than thanking our early childhood educators, we are giving them a pay rise. However, undermining the efforts of our parents and teachers is an unwelcome house guest: social media. Excessive screen time is associated with myopia in kids, but of more concern is the myopia of the mind it is fostering, narrowing our horizons like tunnel vision, driving us into corners, fracking our attention and killing our negotiation skills. Unscrambling complex problems in the polycrisis era will not be possible if we end up with a generation unable to concentrate, unable to negotiate and unable to listen. Nor can we treat our way out of the mental health harm caused by algorithms targeting boys and girls. This is why we are imposing bans on social media and imposing a duty of care. Social media is more about marketing now and less about connection.

Although education is the most powerful lever against disadvantage, it is not enough. For Australians to prosper, we are building out the scaffolding that helps them succeed, like housing, Medicare, child care and job security. Known as the social determinants, this scaffolding is bread and butter for Labor—bread and butter. Our target of 1.2 million homes in the next five years is ambitious, but so was the Renewable Energy Target set by a previous Labor government. Last week, incidentally, Australia clocked four million households with rooftop solar, thanks to a target set years ago. With people in tent cities and young people locked out of homeownership, we need this difficult Senate to pass our housing bills. Enough's enough.

To my children, Annika and Ash: you make me look like an underachiever! Dad and I are so proud of the way you have grown despite my absences, often during formative events like VCE exams. I couldn't make snacks during those exams, but I did order Uber Eats, often from this chamber! This has been a character-building chapter, and you could both write the manual on resilience. My husband has been a rock for us all. I could only pursue politics thanks to what we built together. To my siblings, Romayne and Steve, who are here, and my parents: thank you for all your support.

I have deep gratitude to my staff. This is not a typical job, because we never switch off and the stakes are high. But you have served Higgins with professionalism, care and attention to detail. Thank you to my longstanding staff: Drew, Josh, Kalida, Brayden, Niamh, Gabi and Ro. Thank you to Llew and to my friends for your counsel and unwavering support. It helps to have a sounding board outside of this place.

I am grateful for the many friendships across the aisle with colleagues from the Liberals, the Nationals and Independents—too many to name. We had laughs while doing business. My community groups, parents and schools in Higgins: a profound thanks to you. Your volunteerism nurtures that which is best in us all. To my federal Labor colleagues, especially the class of 2022: we are a unit. The gender pay gap is at its lowest level ever because of a majority female government which is acutely tuned to the aspirations of Australia's women—aren't we?

I'm straying into dangerous territory now by singling out people, but I wish to thank the Chief Government Whip and the member for Hawke for their care and counsel. Labor delivered cultural diversity, which I hope continues into the 48th Parliament, because having people with funny surnames in this place helps shrink policy blind spots. We should be laser focused, not just on policy but on implementation, especially in health care. I had been reviewing a spate of migrant children—Australian children—dying in Australian emergency departments. But I have run out of runway. Colleagues across this parliament, I urge you to root out institutional bias in health care, because it kills.

When people look back, this government will be remembered for legacy reforms: tax cuts for all—not for some but for all—gutsy, but the right move. It will be remembered for the National Anti-corruption Commission and for not one but two budget surpluses that allowed room for the things that matter, like paid parental leave, super on PPL, and the Housing Australia Future fund. We've introduced electoral donation reform to stop elections from becoming auctions sold to the highest bidder. And supermarket scrutiny—aren't they enjoying that? There have been changes to competition, because it is the consumer's best friend, as well as a climate policy that won't deindustrialise our economy or see the lights go out and has upped renewable energy generation from 30 per cent to 42 per cent in less than three years. There has been student debt relief, free TAFE, Medicare urgent care clinics, Medicare mental health clinics, endometriosis clinics, a national anti-scam centre, a future made not there but here, a better NDIS, confidence in aged care, a nature repair market, tax cuts for EVs, and high-speed rail. Can we go faster on that? The Prime Minister is currently overseas repairing international relationships, because friendshoring in the polycrisis era also shores up supply chains and jobs.

We have shown that you don't conquer the future with press releases or personalities but with policies for today and tomorrow. Populist leaders and their perpetual grievance machines will seek to undermine our legacy, but they trade in a bogus simplicity, hocking simple solutions to complex problems that are hard to deliver in the cold light of day and leaving voters with buyer's remorse writ large.

I entered parliament because of people and purpose, only to find that politics is what gets in the way. But for all its imperfections, this place still gets things done. There is nothing like politics, as Gillard said, for delivering impact at speed and at scale. I've also learned that nothing is preordained. In the face of the polycrisis, the decisions we make today will determine whether or not we emerge with an inflationary hangover. Knowing that we are masters of our own destiny makes me not just an optimist but, as Desmond Tutu said, a prisoner of hope. I am seeing that hope baked into our work every day.

As the first Labor member for Higgins and its last ever member, I reflect that although it is not a utopia it is a strong community, where the environment is itself therapeutic: people living productive lives—close to jobs, close to opportunity, close to services—who are supported from the cradle to the grave. My friends and colleagues, places like Higgins should be the norm, not the exception, in this country. It has been an honour to serve this community and to serve in this Labor government. I thank the House.

See this speech in context