Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call the honourable member for Throsby I remind that House that this is the honourable member’s first speech, and I ask the House to extend to him the usual courtesies.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, can I start by adding my voice of congratulations to those who have congratulated you in your election to the role of Deputy Speaker.

I start by acknowledging today that I stand today on the land of the Ngunawal people, the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, and I thank their elders past and present.

I have the privilege of representing the people of the Illawarra and Southern Highlands as the third member for Throsby and the 1,076th member of the House of Representatives. I have the honour of succeeding a fine parliamentarian, a great servant of the Labor Party and the labour movement, a friend to many here present, and a great Australian: Jennie George. I also have the honour of succeeding a fine representative of the people of Throsby, Mr Colin Hollis. I pay tribute to their great contributions to the electorate and to the parliament.

I am proud of the region where I grew up, the Illawarra—the place where I first acquired my interest in politics. The Illawarra is the place where I learned that the Australian Labor Party is part of a broad, progressive movement committed to social justice and to equity. Labor is the political party which recognises that the problems which confront each generation cannot be surmounted by individuals working in isolation, however great the individual. Rather, it is through organisation, achieving a collective will, through cooperation and political leadership, that real and lasting change occurs. Never was the country in greater need of this leadership than it is today.

Every significant challenge that we now face as a nation and in my region requires leadership from this parliament, leadership to achieve health reform, achieve education reform and deal with climate change and leadership in improving our productive capacity by upgrading our infrastructure and in managing our water and mineral resources for the benefit of future generations. I am proud to be a member of the Gillard Labor government, because it is a government which is committed to showing leadership and achieving long-term solutions in the national interest. In addition, Prime Minister, you stand as an example to my daughter, who is here in the gallery today. She is only six, but she will grow up knowing that in this country a woman can aspire to be the Prime Minister.

I come to this parliament believing that the values that formed around the dinner table of a large Catholic family, and on the creaking wooden desks towered over by the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, and later the Christian Brothers, will help me to serve my electorate, my party and my country. I come to this place with the benefit of a good education, which was sometimes free and always valued—valued not just as the means by which I could get ahead but because it helps to bring more light and understanding, and less fear and confusion, to the world in which we live.

I am the lucky husband to Julia, the most intelligent and beautiful woman I am ever likely to meet. I am father to Jessica and Patrick. May my hopes for the world that they will inherit be the cause for which I discharge my duties in this place. I am the proud son of Margaret and Mark, brother to Maree, Luke, Adam and Amanda. The latter two are not with us in the gallery today but they are probably, due to the marvels of modern technology, huddled around a laptop somewhere in the Netherlands, the place they now call their home. My father, Mark, is not here. He passed away on Anzac Day in 1996. I am sad at this because he taught me so much—foremost the hunger to learn and the fact that there was more than one way to be a father, to be a husband and to be a male in modern Australia. He was a man indeed ahead of his time. I am so pleased that my mother, Margaret, who quite literally broke her arm to get here, is able to do so, because I am very proud to say that she was my first and most important role model. In no small part this is because she raised a large family with little money and instilled in each of us a strong set of values and a belief in the importance of conviction and in the importance of having the courage of those convictions and of persistence and hard work; the belief that we are put on this earth for a purpose which is greater than ourselves; the belief that we have an obligation to family, to community and to country.

It is this sense of obligation and purpose that has governed the decisions I have made in pursuing the work that I have done. If I am known by others in this place it would be through my role as the National Secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union, an organisation I worked for for over 16 years and of which I am a proud life member. I have had the great privilege of being a delegate, an organiser, a lawyer and an official of the Community and Public Sector Union. In that time I undertook many hard-fought campaigns against some formidable and well-resourced opponents, many of them who sit in this place. I cannot speak more highly of the men and women who are members of the CPSU. They work in government departments and agencies, in the telecommunications and broadcasting industries. They are as committed to the performance of the public services they deliver as they are to their union. They have stuck by their union when it was not only unfashionable to do so but when in many cases it was a job-jeopardising move. To the hundreds of CPSU men and women who lost their jobs over the last decade for little other reason than that they were a union representative, I honour your commitment, and I will do my bit here to ensure that this country never again recedes into the industrial bigotry which made that possible.

I was involved in many campaigns which demonstrated to me and hopefully others that unions were often the last line of defence when things went really wrong. For over a decade I campaigned for job security and dignity in Telstra and in other telecommunications companies. When a company called OneTel collapsed owing employees and other creditors millions of dollars, I was very proud that I was able to organise the young workers and run a campaign to win full repayment of all of their entitlements. I also had the great honour of spending two years working at the ACTU and had the great privilege to work with men like Bernie Banton and Greg Combet, the former secretary of the ACTU and now Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, in a campaign to win justice for the victims of James Hardie asbestos products.

I think unions are an important part of any free society, and in Australia the union movement is probably the only independent body of men and women that has the reach, the resources and the inclination to challenge and question the dictates of power, whether government or corporate. However uncomfortable the result may be for us in this place from time to time, I firmly believe that Australia is a better place because unions exist.

Prior to working as a union official I spent many years as a community worker. It helped me understand that community workers are the glue that holds much of Australia together. I worked as a youth advocate for several years in a disadvantaged region of Campbelltown. I worked for several years with children who had developmental disabilities and later with adults who had suffered spinal cord injury. This was poorly paid but profoundly rewarding work. It gave me an insight into the lives of carers who daily struggle to provide food, shelter, love and some normality to the lives of their children and loved ones—usually at great cost to their own lives and those of the rest of their family. During this period of my life time was always of the essence as I juggled full-time work with part-time study. I was proud that I was able to do that, completing first an arts degree at a great institution which I will be advocating for in this place, the University of Wollongong, and then subsequently a law degree at Macquarie University.

The boundaries of the electorate of Throsby have changed since the previous election. It now more closely resembles the shape of the electorate when it was created in 1984. It stretches from the ocean of the Illawarra far into the inland and the Hume Highway. The electorate of Throsby overlies the traditional lands of the Darawal, the Wadi Wadi and the Gundungurra people. I pay my respects to your elders past and present. I thank the present elders for your friendship and support. I thank you for your custodianship of land and culture.

There is a special place on the road below Robertson in the Southern Highlands of NSW that never fails to move me by its beauty. As you approach Macquarie Pass the careful driver can pull to the side of the road, and from that single vantage point you look east and you can see the suburbs of Albion Park creeping towards the last dairy farms at the foot of Macquarie Pass. You can look past the suburbs of Dapto, Warilla, Windang, Warrawong and Port Kembla, which is home to the largest integrated steel works in the Southern Hemisphere and the deepest harbour on the eastern seaboard. You can see the beautiful Lake Illawarra and the surrounding suburbs that make up the most densely populated parts of the electorate.

If you turn to the west—and you are knocked over by the waft coming from the dairy farm owned by Jim Mauger, a councillor from the Wingecarribee Shire Council—you can see the verdant green fields and pastures which surround the iconic towns of Robertson, Exeter, Moss Vale, Berrima, Bowral, Mittagong and Welby. These were all places of early settlement and are now service centres for the surrounding farms, the mine, the cement works at Moss Vale and, increasingly, the tourist centres. But from where you stand you see the defining feature of the electorate; it is the rugged and beautiful Illawarra Escarpment. It is a segment of the Great Dividing Range. At first it was a source of cedar and then coal. It is the cause of our prodigious rainfall and our summer storms. For eons it has also been the passage through which human beings have travelled in exchange of culture, artefacts and food and it is now a passage to the coast.

The population of Throsby is as diverse as its landscape. It is a united nations of people who left their birthplace with a small suitcase and hearts full of hope that Australia would welcome them and help them make a better life here. One in five people were born elsewhere and they have quite literally built the cities and suburbs of Throsby.

Throsby is one of the best places in Australia to live but it is not yet the best place to work. Unemployment, while decreasing, persistently sits at about 1.5 to two per cent above the national average. Even these figures hide the concentrations of unemployment in certain suburbs and amongst young people.

In part due to the massive transformation of its industry that occurred throughout the eighties and nineties, at the time that I left school around 20,000 worked in the steel works. Now, there are fewer than 10,000. It drives home to me the point that our next economic transformation—the restructuring of our economy to deal with global warming and to make industry more sustainable—must draw upon the lessons of the eighties and nineties and on the need to assist the companies and the individuals to make this challenge.

There are many priorities that I will talk about—aspirations and things that I will work on with my colleague Sharon Bird to advance the interests of the people of the Illawarra and the broader Throsby electorate. There are two projects that I would like to mention briefly. The first is the NBN. It matters because over 67 per cent of small businesses in the electorate of Throsby are home based. The NBN is their pathway to the capital cities of Australia and the markets of the world. There are over 20,000 people who daily make a passage from Illawarra to the suburbs and the inner city of Sydney in the cause of work and livelihood. The NBN is their opportunity to get off those train platforms at five and six o’clock in the morning and spend more time in their communities and their households with their families. There is much more work to be done to rebuild our health and our education infrastructure, but the advances that have been made over the last three years have made a significant difference, and I intend to build on the great work of Jennie George working in partnership with the member for Cunningham in the interests of our people.

In the time that I have left I would like to say a few words about my beliefs. I joined the party of Fisher, Curtin, Chifley, Whitlam, Hawke and Keating and of pioneering women like Jessie Street, Susan Ryan, Joan Kirner and Carmen Lawrence, all names well known in this place. They are men and women of different times but they are joined together by a common belief that this wonderful country with all its wealth and beauty will only be truly great when the least advantaged of us have the same life opportunities as those who by accident of birth enjoy great privilege.

There have always been critics from the Left and Right who claim that we have drifted from our historic mission. I take the opportunity of my first speech to set out the four convictions that lie at the heart of my belief and of Labor values. They are a continuous thread that ties together the reform objectives of the first Labor government, Chris Watson’s, to the Gillard government of this 43rd Parliament. I stand by each of them.

The first conviction is that we must see the world through the eyes of working men and women. Let me say quite clearly: I do not believe that any party has a monopoly on the vote of Australian working people. A simple reason for this is that most Australians do not define themselves solely by their work or their class. But what I can say with great confidence is that Labor and I will always approach the task we do in this place with the needs and aspirations of working men and women in mind. It has been so since the first band of Labor representatives entered parliament with the objective of legislating to bring about a fairer means of resolving disputes between employers and employees. It informed our resolve to abolish the harsh and unjust Work Choices legislation. It is what drives us to remove inequality between men and women at work and elsewhere. It is what has led us to introduce the nation’s first universal paid parental leave scheme. It is the belief that working men and women, and not just the privileged few, should have access to a decent retirement that led the Labor pioneers to campaign for an age pension. This saw federal Labor, in partnership with the union movement, introduce occupational superannuation. Then, on returning to government in 2007, we increased pensions by over $100 per fortnight. It now falls to this Labor government to return to the unfinished business of ensuring that we can extend compulsory super to 12 per cent of wages. It is our belief that postcode should not be the determinant of destiny—the determinant of access to health and education and to all of life’s other opportunities.

The second conviction is that we need a cohesive and progressive economic vision for our country. I believe that Labor is the party which is committed to building long-term economic capacity. This commitment stems from the knowledge that it creates jobs and improves the quality of life of those we represent.

The third conviction is that Australia must have the confidence to build a nation and the confidence to engage in nation building. One hundred years ago the first Labor government elected in its own right had the courage to plan and imagine a transcontinental railway. Labor remains committed to building more railways in this country, but we also have the courage and conviction to build the railway of this century, the National Broadband Network, and its liberating effect on our economy and our lives.

The fourth and final conviction is the belief that any credible national government must have a credible approach to national security. In early 1942 Labor’s John Curtin spoke those famous words:

Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.

He laid the foundation for a new direction in national security and defence. What emerged over the next decade was the ANZUS alliance. It has been the keystone in our national security architecture ever since.

It is my belief that from Federation to this day it has been Labor in government which has taken the key decisions that have defined our nation’s approach to national security .Whether it was Andrew Fisher when he founded the Australian navy, whether it was the governments of Curtin and Chifley, which managed our nation through its most challenging wartime years, whether it was that great Labor pioneer HV Evatt, who was so instrumental in the formation of the United Nations, its treaties and its institutions, or whether it was Gough Whitlam, who re-established our relationship with China that we now prosper so much from, it has been Labor that has taken the tough decisions in advancing our cause in this region, and we do not retreat from this territory—it is ours.

Some call us an old party. Implicit in this is a criticism. I wear it as a badge of honour and I say with pride that I belong to a party that has a set of values and a tradition that has endured over 100 years of challenge. We were there at the formation of this parliament, through two world wars, the Great Depression of the 1930s and the global financial crisis of 2008-09. It is true: we are not revolutionaries but reformists. It is true that we come to this place hungry for reform but armed with the burning patience that knows that the perfect must never become the enemy of the good.

Mr Speaker, you have been as patient as I have been indulgent with the time. Can I conclude by thanking a few people. Firstly, I acknowledge the great support that I have had from the former member for Throsby, Jennie George, and the current member for Cunningham, Sharon Bird, who I know I will form a long and productive partnership with. I thank the fantastic branch members of the Labor Party, in particular those who have joined us from the Port Kembla branch—Bobby Turner, Ann Martin, and I think I might have seen Tommy Ward there earlier as well. From the Southern Highlands Branch, I thank Jan Merriman, Graham McLaughlin, Phil Yeo, Maurie O’Sullivan, Jo Babb, and from the Warilla and Mount Warrigal branches, Phil Rayner and Jim David. As for our campaign team, I could not have hoped for better: Anthony Keenan, Jane Mulligan and Carol Jordan, who have joined me on my staff, together with Danielle Ribergaard and everyone who did the pre-poll.

I am grateful for the great support from my union—the Community and Public Sector Union. I have seen many members and officials and former officials in the audience. I am so proud to be here today to talk of your cause and your issues, and I will represent your interests to the best of my ability where I can in this place. To the CFMEU Miners Division, Bobby Timbs and Spotty White, who took time from dealing with their own problems to assist me in my campaign, and to the MUA’s Gary ‘Hollywood’ Keane, the AWU’s Andy Gillespie and Wayne Phillips: thank you very much, as well as to all of the other unions on the South Coast who assisted me. On the South Coast it is sometimes hard to separate people who wear a union hat from those who wear another hat, but I thank Narelle Clay, Richard ‘Makie’ Davis, Colin and Melissa Markham and many, many others.

I have already mentioned my mum, my wife and my family, but I also include Sally Quilter, Michael Quilter, and Adriane Quilter, and my great friends Stephen Fitzpatrick, Michael Samaras, Luke Foley and, last but not least, the electors of Throsby.

It is said that this speech should be the standard against which my actions will be measured henceforth. So it should be.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I congratulate you on your return to the Speakership, though it was a journey about which stories will be told. My heartfelt congratulations go to you from my position as a member of the House and as a friend. This 43rd Parliament, like all others, is not a place for the faint hearted. It is hard to get here and it can be harder to stay here. With success comes greater difficulty. That is why every person who has the honour to serve here has my respect. We have had an election campaign, and you can read all about it from Barrie Cassidy or Mungo MacCallum—I need not have input into that. I congratulate the member for Throsby on his address just delivered. I am sure that Jennie George and Dennis would be very happy with the address that has just been given to the parliament. If they are both watching at this time to see the new member for Throsby, I wish them all the best and I hope that Jennie has given up smoking!

I have been returned to this House for the third consecutive time, which is not unusual for many but is unusual for me, having been thrown out of this place twice before. I really do owe a lot of people for my health and wellbeing in this place. I have never, ever thanked my paid staff, because I always thought it was an indulgence when they are actually working within the electorate office. But today I want to not only thank them but also pay tribute to them: Kevin Carmody, Margaret Burridge, Jennifer Paproth, Ken Mitchell, Millie McLean and Prue Acheson. I also want to refer back to staff members of the past and thank Kaye Clements; my much loved friend Margaret Thompson, who came back to carry me again on election day with her partner, Rob Ellis; and Leonie Hemmingway, who has stayed through the highs and lows. I thank my supporters Neville Goodwin, Cara Carter and Mary Aldred—great workers and very professional. I say thank you for the personal and professional support I received from Gary Blackwood, the member for Narracan, and thank you to Andrew Ronalds, his Liberal team and the whole of the party, to donors great and small and especially to those people who hand out how-to-vote cards, both prepoll and on the day. I know how grateful every member of parliament here is to those people, who often can give nothing else but who give of their time and themselves to go out and do the job for us on election day. I thank my greatest supporters: Bronwyn, Emily, Paul, Evan, Sian and Lauren. I cannot say what they have done for me. I thank all those who returned McMillan to the parliament in Liberal hands. Our overall result in Victoria was appalling. Especially disappointing was that my neighbour in La Trobe, Jason Wood, lost his seat to Labor and that we failed to retain Corangamite, Deakin and McEwen. We have a lot of work to do, but I assure you I will do my best, along with my party.

I do appreciate this parliament, with its new blood, its new enthusiasm and its returned enthusiasm—this place with its new opportunity for people to express themselves. The member for Throsby, in his first speech, just talked about the great goals that he has for his life in the parliament. I am sure every member of this parliament comes in with those goals, with the opportunity to deliver on behalf of their community, their electorate, their party, their state and this nation. Everybody out there should understand that we all come here with that intention, with that drive. I said before that this is not a place for the faint hearted; it is a place for those who are prepared to put in a lot of hard work, a lot of energy.

As the new member for Kooyong sits by me, I am reminded of my experience of the man who went before Josh and who—like Jennie George, whom I just mentioned—through voluntary retirement is no longer a part of this parliament. I want to talk about my experience of the man known simply as Petro to his friends and to his foes. When he was a young child, his teacher tried to call him Peter, to anglicise his name, but Petro staunchly refused to answer that teacher until such time as the teacher called him Petro. Then he answered the question. I think the die was cast then. But for me what stood out was his political intelligence, his great ability to focus on an issue disregarding all else, to think around that focus, to take a thought out of the box and to hone the issue just to the substantive—to dissect the argument into the important and the not so important.

Remarkable was his high regard for others, for all members of this House on all sides of the political divide. To many, Petro was confronting, but what I saw was his heart for the nation’s people and how it soared beyond self-interest, the head that would not bow, the knee that would not bend, the insightful mind and intellectual integrity that are shared by so few, and the often lonely walk into the policy headwind, seemingly unaffected by personal or political attacks. Few in this House can claim beneficiaries of their efforts in such a direct way as Petro can. I am talking in the corporate sense of the House, not about individual members of parliament, because I know you all work hard on behalf of your constituents. There are men, women and children whose lives were changed for the good, for the generations, by the persistent personal courageous conviction of this lone warrior for human rights here in this Great South Land. He came here to this House at a time of his choosing. He left this House at a time of his choosing. Many of his foes did not enjoy the same grace.

As part of his broader career in the political mainstream, he was awarded the Alan Missen Award. This award is all about integrity. You would have to be blind not to realise that I miss him a little. At the same time, I know that the future of the seat of Kooyong is in good hands with this new member and I look forward to his first address. I look forward to this parliament being all that it is cracked up to be. It is cracked up to be a house of the people. We are nothing but representatives of the people. Because my experience goes back to 1990, I know that people like me come and go. So one word of warning to new members: if you decide that rudeness or arrogance to the other members of parliament on both sides is part of your play, remember that one day you will need them.

I never forget that I am responsible to my dairy farmers, who are affected by this Murray-Darling Basin issue. My dairy farmers receive a lot of their feed from that grown in the Murray-Darling Basin. There is not a person in this country who is not affected by what happens in the Murray-Darling Basin. We need to consider whether we are going to remain internationally competitive. I have never walked away from my position that to remain internationally competitive, whether we are growing potatoes or other vegetables or supplying any sort of a market whatsoever, we need a flexible labour market. I believe that when we went to the Australian people saying that we are not different from the Labor Party on the issue of a flexible labour market we were not believed. I will always have a different position to Labor on IR. I have never walked away from that; I do not walk away from it today.

I have spent a life in small business. What we earned, we earned for ourselves. What we earned, we earned with the cooperation of the staff who worked with us every day. We had a flexible workplace before there was a flexible workplace. For the unions to say today that a student cannot come in and work for two hours but must work for three is ridiculous. Ashamedly, I do not remember all of my young students, and they say, ‘Russell, I worked for you.’ But they were young girls and young men then. Today, they are not young men and young girls; they are adults, and they have gone on to do marvellous things. But their first job was working in one of Broadbent’s stores. We had to be flexible with our staff. Lots of them were young mums. They could not come until after nine o’clock and they had to be home by 3.30. So they made other arrangements within our businesses so that it all worked for everybody. Half the time, this parliament starts from a position that says that all employers are crooks and all workers are good. Life is not like that. It is hard.

There are others in my party who know exactly what I am talking about because they have lived my life. I am sure that they were there on a Wednesday night worrying how they were going to get enough money in the bank by two o’clock on Thursday to pay the wages of their staff. Forget the family: they were not going to get any.

In my electorate of the past is the Hazelwood power station, which supplies 25 per cent of the power that goes into the Victorian grid. Yet we have people blithely and openly saying, ‘We’re going to close down that power station because it suits us politically and because it is dirty.’ On and on they go. The fact is, at this time we cannot. Over years, we can change it to gas. There are things that we can do. We can better clean up our act. But please do not threaten the jobs of those workers. Every time somebody makes a statement about closing down Hazelwood, my phones ripple like mad, because people see the Labor government attacking their jobs. Do you know why I am here in this place? Because Labor voters voted for Russell Broadbent. They know that he will come into this place and protect their jobs. Time and time again that came to me from those Hazelwood workers and their families. We need new power stations. Eventually, someone has to bite the bullet and build a new power station. Labor in Victoria say that they are going to go ahead and look at building a new power station. And then they get creamed by all their own people.

The most important thing to do in this country is to secure our water supply. Mr John Forrest, the member for Mallee, said in a speech yesterday that the first thing that the Romans did was to secure their water supply. That is what we have to do in this country. Power stations do not run without water. It is one of the most important issues for us to deal with as a nation.

During the last election campaign, I did not hear anybody in this House talking about self-funded retirees. They are a growing group in our community. They need the same sort of attention that we give to other groups in the community. But they have been completely ignored, in my humble opinion. They are the people who have not only worked and saved for themselves but now live on what they have earned and saved and their assets. We as a nation do not recognise that their numbers are growing and that we need to protect them and their assets so that they can survive better on their own. But they tend to fall between the gaps. They are in every electorate. They will come and talk to you. When I went down to open the farmers market at Korumburra and Coal Creek, three different self-funded retirees came up and had long conversations about where they stood and what their issues were and how they were struggling. Not every self-funded retiree is a wealthy person.

Most of my electorate is rural. This rural students issue has been raging in my electorate and there are still people disadvantaged under the programs that we now have in place. We have to find ways to rebuild country communities. If we do not support country students we cannot expect doctors and nurses and health professionals to come back into our country communities, particularly if we are sending people away for education the whole time. We have to be able to fund that appropriately. I think we have made some moves in the right direction but I do not think we have been the whole way.

Last night I talked about the importance of health care. The West Gippsland Healthcare Group runs what we call the Warragul hospital. I would not be unlike any other member of this House who has a hospital nearby that needs rebuilding or is old—and if you have ever renovated a house or an old building you would know there are stages throughout the process when you wish you had never tried. That is why the Warragul hospital, in this case, is not on the radar for rebuilding by my state government, yet our federal government has left the impression, and we as a parliament have left the impression, that we are available to fund hospitals. I have got Leongatha, I have got Wonthaggi, which needs an upgrade, and I have got Warragul, which I am about to tell you needs $243 million for a brand new site where they have the land or over the next 20 years—and I will be 79 or 80—we are going to rebuild solely what exists there now. At the moment the government has thrown out a couple of million dollars and said: ‘We’ll give you five new emergency bed cubicles. Both sides have agreed to that and you will get them. That’s fine. Isn’t that terrific!’ But the problem is that next year I am going to have a hospital that needs rebuilding and the year after that I am going to have a hospital that needs rebuilding. We are on the edge of Melbourne. Now we have got a new freeway—the ‘Russell Broadbent Bypass’, which we are all very happy with. Thank you, Peter Costello, for that and for all the things that went before and all that sort of stuff.

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ms Roxon interjecting

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Shorten interjecting

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh, so Zahra got that one for me! Except I go back before you and Zahra with the first $26 million. Importantly, this hospital is sitting on the cusp of an explosion of population, a 40 per cent increase. The member for La Trobe would know that Casey is really struggling at the moment. It has backups, as I know. My nephew went there the other night for a cut across his head—I will not tell you how he got it—and had to wait four hours at Casey. The family gave up in the end and went on to Dandy Valley, which is fine. That is fine for families like ours that can afford to do it. It is not fine for people who come to Casey for that initial care. That is really important. So what happens is that people are gravitating to the Warragul hospital—from Moe, Leongatha, Wonthaggi, in the south, and Neerim, in the north—for all the services that they provide. They provided 87,000 services last year. We expected that there would be a 20 per cent increase in need at the hospital—and there has been a 40 per cent one.

The minister has heard all this before from hospital after hospital after hospital. Because of what the nation has done we are now ending up with a whole lot of hospitals that are not ready. I am not coming in here and saying this is a Russell Broadbent proposal and therefore it must be a good proposal. I have to mount an argument as to why that particular hospital should get the benefit of what we do as a nation and as a state. I have got to get the state bureaucrats on side, the state government on side and the federal government on side to fund that Warragul hospital. That is a hard job. It is a hard job for any of us but we have to mount the arguments. It is no good saying, ‘I want this and a political fix of $200 million.’ It does not work because it offends everybody. What I need to do here, and what I am trying to do, is mount the argument that this is an area that is going to have to be addressed and that I would rather a new hospital than a rebuild. That is what I have been putting to this parliament today.

Debate (on motion by Mr Albanese) adjourned.