Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to again pay tribute to the indomitable spirit of the people of my electorate of Holt. One of the most rewarding aspects of being a member of parliament is meeting people from all walks of life and every strata of the community. One of the great things that is emphasised about the quintessential nature of that Australian spirit is when you go to a citizenship ceremony.

I often attend a citizenship ceremony that is conducted by the City of Casey. In that citizenship ceremony you have people from every corner of the globe who are taking a step to becoming an Australian citizen. It is a very humbling experience to be there as a member of parliament. One thing that strikes me is that as part of the ceremony we hand out a plant which is invariably an Australian native. With that plant there is an Australian flag. On the Australian flag we have the stars of the Southern Cross. The fascinating thing about that when you hand it over to those that have taken the oath or affirmation is that regardless of where you are in Australia when you look up at the night sky and you look at the Southern Cross it does not matter who you are, where you have come from or what race, colour, creed you are, we are all equal under the stars of the Southern Cross.

That is one of the defining features of the Australian spirit. I am no more important, none of us are more important than the people whom we serve in our electorates. I note that the press gallery is empty, it always is at this time of night when there is nothing controversial that we might say, but the fact is that I get more common sense and insight into where our country needs to go and what it needs to do by listening to the people who walk through my door. It does not matter where they come from or what they do. They have a right to articulate their views and their opinions. They are much more erudite and informed than many of the articles are that I read in the newspapers. I can tell you that much for a fact.

We are closeted away in this place in Canberra, this place removed from the Australian people. John Button once famously said that we built this new house of parliament and in some cases pulled ourselves away from the Australian people. We should be more connected to them. I know that we have a lot of visitors that come through this place. Last week, my constituents came through my door and I sat there and I listened to them as they raised their visions, their hopes, their ambitions and their experiences. We talk about our lives and our lives get reported upon in this place. It is basically the fish and chip wrapping, if you want to use that term, for the next day's feed or whatever it is, but the key thing is that their lives are really important. Their lives so rarely get reported on.

A gentleman called Ron Webb came into my office last week, a man of 74 years of age with tremendous life experience and great values. He may well be on the conservative divide of politics but I heard wisdom from Ron in the experiences that he shared with me and in the achievements of his life. He was saying: 'I have lived this life, I have done these things but there has been no-one to chronicle my existence. There has been no-one who knows what I have done and what I have achieved.' What disturbed me the most about this was that he did not feel—and he was talking about the community that he had been talking to—that we, collectively, listened enough.

There is a great crisis of confidence in the body politic at the moment and in the way the Australian people view Australian politics. That is a problem for us all, believe you me. I do believe that we need to be more removed from this place, talk to people more and listen because, as I said, there is more common sense heard in talking to our electors than I dare say in reading the articles of many of those people that sit on the second level. Our electors are the people who should be heard more often in this place instead of the people we read about in the newspapers.