Joanna Gash (Gilmore, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

During my term as the member for Gilmore, I have had the privilege of having a number of students from my electorate come to Parliament House and learn of the experience of life as a politician. It is often said that young people now have no interest in the political scene, much less understand it. I have made a conscious effort to prove that that is wrong. And so, as part of the deal in coming to Parliament House, each student needs to prepare a five-minute adjournment debate speech on what they have seen and how the experience has affected them. I hasten to add that the words that are to be spoken by me are the words of Brad Stait, our year 10 work experience student from Shoalhaven High School, and I have had no input into his speech. Brad is sitting up in the gallery and I am very proud of him.

To distinguished members of parliament, I am Brad Stait, I am 15 and I am a year 10 student at Shoalhaven High School. In the first term of this year at Shoalhaven High, all year 10 students elect to do work experience for one week at a business of their choice in New South Wales or the ACT. Personally, I have always had an interest in politics and I thought work experience with my local member of parliament, Ms Joanna Gash, would shed some light on this interesting career path. I went into Ms Gash’s office a few weeks prior and asked if it was possible to do work experience with her and she happily agreed. On 31 March, I started my work experience with Ms Gash. After enveloping 200 letters for newly enrolled constituents and making nearly 150 phone calls to businesses around Australia for contact details, I thought if that was my first day, do I dare come back for more? I was doing office work like this for the first two days before I got the opportunity to see another side of working with a federal MP.

On the third day that I was working for Ms Gash, she was hosting all the primary school leaders in the area for an afternoon tea. I was asked if I would like to see another aspect of her job, so I happily sat in. As primary school students, they asked questions which may seem simple at first, but I began to realise that as an MP, Ms Gash must thoroughly think through each answer and phrase her response extremely carefully so as to not offend anybody, or accidentally say something that may contradict an upcoming policy or party belief. I began to see that this is one of the main concerns for a politician. A local MP has been elected by the people as their representative by a majority of the voting community and as such, cannot be biased, racist or sexist, even if by an accidental slip of the tongue or misinterpretation. On the other hand, if a representative has made a promise that they don’t keep, or later contradict or dismiss, the people feel like they have been let down and lied to. I learnt that as a dedicated federal representative, Ms Gash needs to keep everyone happy with what she is doing and must try not to let anyone down. I know this would be extremely hard, but all this must come into consideration for Ms Gash even when she is answering the most seemingly simple question from a child.

Towards the end of the day, Ms Gash asked me if I would like to see yet another aspect of her job, so I decided to go with her on her village visits the next day, even if I did have to get up really early in the morning. So the next morning, Ms Gash and I drove down the coast to Ulladulla and started her village stops. I think that the village stops are absolutely essential for the smooth running of an electorate. With more than six thousand square kilometres of area in the Gilmore electorate, not everyone can make it into Ms Gash’s office when an issue arises. This allows constituents to meet Ms Gash in their local town or village and discuss any problems that they may have. That day I think I learnt the extent of the job of a federal MP and that being a community representative in parliament is only the tip of the iceberg in an MP’s role. The job of a good MP entails unfathomable duties, official and un-official, such as when Ms Gash met with constituents and tried to deal with their problems. Even if they were not her responsibility, for example, zoning, which is a local and state government responsibility, she would still go back into her office and work late into the night on letters to various ministers and departments on behalf of these constituents. Two months on, and Ms Gash invited me to attend this week of parliament with her. Now I think I realise what it really does mean to be a politician, and that how the media portrays politicians and politics in general—in my opinion—normally could not be further from the truth. What the public sees can sometimes—or in my opinion usually—be biased as the media is not an impartial observer, and stereotypes are really normally a portrayal of a very small minority of a group.

I am currently in year 10 at Shoalhaven High School, and last week our year chose our subjects for the HSC, and therefore our university options. After much deliberation and popular career fads that were circulating around my year, I decided what I would generally like to do after high school: a Bachelor of Arts, most likely in international relations, but what courses I would like to do within that degree, and where I would like to do it still escaped me. Previously, working with Ms Gash started opening my mind to some of those decisions, but in general I pretty much still had no clue. I, probably like a lot of the general public, naively believed that what I saw on TV in relation to parliament was generally accurate and right. After just one day in this immense building, my eyes started to be opened to the truth of the matter: politics is a career path where you may serve the public for 15 years and do everything right, but still get no real recognition, but if an individual has served for any period of time and makes just one mistake, that, for months on end can be thought of as their only career achievement and can even lead to the end of a long and distinguished career. Yes, you may be thinking: but a politician is supposed to be a role model and representative of up to a hundred thousand people. But if Ms Gash, for example, made an offhand remark that was taken as extremely offensive to maybe an ethnic group but that was unbeknown to Jo, that could possibly spell the end of a long and distinguished career.

I am very proud of you, Brad. (Time expired)