Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call the honourable member for Boothby I remind the House that this is the honourable member's first speech and I ask that the House extend to her the usual courtesies.

Nicolle Flint (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Address be agreed to.

In a world weighed down with rules, regulations and red tape, it is an honour to move this motion and be part of these proceedings which rely on convention, tradition and precedent. This simple act reflects so much of what makes our nation great.

I move this motion today having sworn my allegiance to the Her Majesty the Queen—testament to the stability provided by our constitutional monarchy and the Judeo-Christian principles and traditions that have made us one of the most respected, respectful and peaceful nations on earth. This process has been guided by convention. I move this motion as a new backbencher from the government. I pay tribute to the steadiness that the Liberal, National and Labor parties have provided to our parliament and governments over the past century. We, on this side at least, will work to see that return. And I move this motion in a place that stands as its own uniquely Australian version of the Westminster parliamentary tradition. In these uncertain times we should stick with the institutions and customs that have served us so well and have made us the stable, free and fair society that we are.

I appreciate that my some of my colleagues may hold different views on several of these matters. But that is the great beauty of belonging to the broad church of the Liberal Party, where diversity of opinion is encouraged. In the spirit of our party's founder, Sir Robert Menzies, the conservative, classical liberal and moderate liberal strands of our party are equally celebrated and heard.

I am particularly honoured to be elected by the people of Boothby in what is a historic year for reasons of both public and personal anniversaries. My time in this place will see many more. It is two decades since my predecessor, Dr Andrew Southcott, was elected to this place, and I pay tribute to his service. Dr Southcott and his wife, Kate, provided great encouragement to me as a candidate.

2016 marks 35 years since another former Member for Boothby, Steele Hall, was elected to this place. Mr Hall, a former Premier of my state, and his wife, Joan Hall, a former minister, offered me tireless support. Indeed, I doubt there is another person in this place who had their campaign office vacuumed by a former Premier!

The electorate of Boothby stretches from the beautiful Mitcham Hills to Adelaide's best coastline. My connection with the area dates back a century, but it so very nearly did not. One hundred years ago this month, my great-grandfather, then just 18, was a member of the 48th Battalion that narrowly survived action at Pozieres. It strikes me as somewhat a miracle that Private Roy Gambrell survived, as his battalion faced the heaviest artillery barrage Australian troops had ever experienced, in a place Charles Bean observed is 'more deeply sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth'.

In his address yesterday, His Excellency the Governor-General reminded us of more anniversaries of Australian sacrifice, as did the Prime Minister this morning. I will continue to commemorate the service of Australian service men and women to our nation with my friends at the Vietnam Veterans Federation at Warradale, the Blackwood and Colonel Light Gardens RSLs, and the Women's Memorial Playing Field Trust as we approach further centenaries of World War I, the 50th anniversaries of Coral-Balmoral in Vietnam and the 75th anniversary of the Bangka Strait massacre of Australian nurses during World War II.

We can also honour our service people in this place every day. It is a simple act to stand above this chamber on the grassed roof, look across to the War Memorial and reflect on the ultimate sacrifice so many made to protect the freedoms we enjoy. The greatest responsibility we have as representatives of the Australian people is to ensure our nation and our friends abroad remain safe and free. We owe this to generations past who gave their lives for our freedom. We owe this to each and every Australian living today. And we owe this to those Australians yet to be born.

To my mind at least, freedom is the simplest way to explain what it means to be a Liberal. During my campaign in Boothby I participated in a debate at Mercedes College where students asked us why they should vote for us. My campaign team had given me some very sound advice, outlining our agenda for jobs and growth, innovation and science, the defence industry and helping small business. I am sorry to say to my team, I went off script; excellent though my script was and proud though I am of our plan to restore economic certainty and security to our nation. Instead, I told those thoughtful young people that I would ask them to vote for me and for the Liberal Party for one simple reason: because we believe in freedom.

We want people to have the freedom to choose their path in life through education, enterprise and endeavour. We want them to succeed, not because of gender or skin colour, but because of merit. We want people to have the freedom to speak without fear and to defend their ideas and their ideals, not with violence or threats or court cases, but through robust and respectful debate. We want people to have the freedom to build a business or choose a job that gives them self-respect, and we want them to provide for their family, their community and those in need here and abroad.

Freedom is a key part of the story of my free-settled state of South Australia, which celebrates its 180th birthday this year. I am proud to say my mother's mother was a Kelly, not of the Ned Kelly colourful-criminal kind but of the staunch-Methodist honest-farmer Kelly kind who freely settled in South Australia in 1838 and produced one of our most important thinkers, reformers and effective public communicators, the 'Modest Member', Bert Kelly.

My mother's father, Alex Ling, and his identical twin brother, Roy, survived active service in the Second World War. They built their farm near Robe through sheer hard work and a bit of good luck. The Flints, also family farmers, arrived in South Australia a few years after the Kellys, in 1840; although, being Flints, we like to argue the specifics of this arrival.

What we do know is that we have been farming and active in the community around Kingston and Cape Jaffa since the late 1800s. So, when I promote and defend Australian family farmers and farming in this place at every opportunity, it is not just because my electorate of Boothby is home to one of the world's most important and prestigious agricultural research centres at Adelaide university's Waite Campus. It is because I come from generations of South Australian farmers who know what it is to run small businesses at the mercy of government, banks and markets, and that is before we even start on the weather—or for that matter the modern day scourge of environmental and animal activism, the product of a country so clever, fortunate and wealthy it does not know need or want, hunger or famine, pestilence or plague.

Those of us who grew up on farms know what it is to learn by doing. We know how to care for our environment, livestock and crops. We know the responsibility of feeding our nation. We also know from bitter experience the damage governments can do. If I was to nominate a single person who made me a Liberal it would not be my parents or John Howard or Robert Menzies or Margaret Thatcher. It would be Paul Keating.

In the early 1990s, when my parents were doing their best to run their business and provide for their four children, we had Paul Keating's 'recession we had to have'; record-high interest rates and—at that stage at least—record Labor debt. To top it all off, Labor abolished the floor price for wool without any transitional industry assistance. I learnt three things from this time: Labor can never be trusted to balance the books, they cannot be trusted to look after our farmers, and governments should not interfere in our markets. I fear that by allowing state-owned foreign investment in our nation, we are once again allowing this to occur.

I mentioned learning by doing. Formal learning and education is of course important to me too and forms a significant part of my story in Boothby. My father, uncle and aunt attended local schools. My great-grandmother Evelyn Gambrell, and my grandmother Gwenyth—whose calisthenics medal I am wearing today—taught at the Colonel Light Gardens Primary School for a combined 22 years. I am proud to say my brother John, his wife Catherine, my sister Belinda, her husband Josh and my youngest brother Simon's wife Rachel are all teachers too. I am also proud to say I studied at Flinders University in the heart of Boothby.

I thank the Prime Minister for his commitment to the Tonsley-Flinders link rail project. I fought for this project in order to improve public transport for students, staff and patients, people travelling not just to the university but also to South Australia's second major hospital, Flinders Medical Centre. This project will create additional jobs so desperately needed in our state.

While I graduated from Flinders University with a law degree and am a fully qualified solicitor—though please do not hold this against me—it was my arts degree that has formed the basis of my very interesting career.

I was privileged to study politics and public policy under professors Dean Jaensch, Andrew Parkin and my long-suffering supervisor, Haydon Manning, who is here today. They gave me the skills and the inspiration to pursue a career in politics and policymaking. I wish more academics today were as balanced and kind as these professionals, who I cannot recall ever allowing their classes to be coloured with their own political views.

Little did I know it was the other strand of my arts degree—my studies in English and Australian literature—that would one day make me a columnist. I pay tribute to my Australian literature tutor, Kate Deller-Evans, who tragically passed away recently, and whose brother, John Deller, is a friend to many of us here. It was in Kate's class that I first encountered author Tim Winton, the man who inspired me to write my first column. Mr Winton's depiction of women in his books so angered me I put pen to paper!

The arts have been a theme throughout my columns because it is our artists, authors, filmmakers and songwriters who show us who we are. From the chop fat in the bottom of the pan in Peter Carey's Sydney based The Tax Inspector to our soldiers in the film Gallipoliand our shearers in Sunday Too Far Away; from Fred Williams's landscapes to Jeffrey Smart's cityscapes; and to bands like Cold Chisel and The Waifs who sing about our country from the city to the sea, we need those who tell our Australian stories and we should celebrate them more.

I must thank those who allowed me to tell my stories: editors and journalists Tom Switzer, Sam Weir, Anthony Johnson, David Pougher, Andrew Bolt and Tony Wright. But it was Sushi Das at The Age who gave me my first column and my confidence. I still wonder how she managed to get me published each fortnight in The Age!

The member for Barker, sitting next to me, encouraged me to take key roles in the Liberal Party, without which I doubt I would be here today as the first South Australian Liberal woman elected to the House of Representatives in 20 years. We need women and men working together to improve the representation of Liberal women in this place—or any other, for that matter. The reasons this is necessary for my party are laid out in the paper Gender and politics I co-authored last year with the Executive Director of the Menzies Research Centre, Nick Cater. I credit Nick with convincing me that it was time to act if we want to improve our party's impressive record of electoral and governance success since Federation. It is now my task to convince our party.

Those who call for mandatory quotas fatally misunderstand the culture of our people. Change needs to be organic, and it needs to be encouraged from the grassroots up. Change also needs to occur in how we conduct ourselves, in this place and outside, on the issue of nationwide reform. Where significant attempts have been made in recent times on both sides, they have too often failed—in part, to quote from a Guns'n'Roses song, because of 'failure to communicate'. But the problem is not one of communication alone. We need academics, the media and our industry associations, like the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, where I once worked, to debate, discuss and support the case for change.

It is a great honour to be elected as the member for Boothby and as a member in the Prime Minister's government. I am conscious, however, that it carries a heavy responsibility. Advancing our national prosperity and justice is the task to which we apply ourselves in this parliament. While we may disagree with those opposite on how to achieve that, some things are certain. We will not advance prosperity by deferring hard economic decisions. We will not help business to prosper by dodging the challenge of increasing productivity. We will not provide justice to future generations by leaving a burden of high debt. We advance justice by encouraging less dependence on the state. To borrow from Sir Robert Menzies, a government should be remembered not so much by:

… a debate won or an electoral victory gained as of a nation advanced in prosperity and justice.

I will move from the great Sir Robert Menzies to quote a great band from Boothby, the Hilltop Hoods: 'This life'—and the past year—'turned out nothing like I had planned.' It is thanks to the incredible support from a range of people that I am here. Mr Speaker, you are one of those. I want to congratulate you on your re-election to the role that you conduct with humility and grace. We share similar trajectories to this place, and I am grateful for your advice, friendship and support. There is no greater relief to a new candidate than having colleagues offer support, as you did, Mr Speaker, and as did the members for Barker, Kooyong, Warringah, Flinders, Robertson, Canning and Tangney; our chief government whip, the member for Forrest; former members Dr Brendan Nelson and Ross Cameron; and Senators Bernardi, Fawcett, Seselja and Paterson.

I thank my state colleagues Stephan Knoll, Sam Duluk, David Speirs and Corey Wingard, and former members Stan Evans and his wife, Barb, and the Hon. Legh Davis. I cannot thank my campaign manager, Sam Duluk, enough for his efforts and for making me and my many volunteers work harder every single day. My state Liberal Party president and friend, Mr Steve Murray, the ultimate volunteer, was instrumental to the campaign and to my maintaining my sense of humour. I thank our state director, Sascha Meldrum, Brendan Clark and my now office manager, Jane Johnston.

I thank all my incredible volunteers, but especially those who were there with me from the start: Helen and Saffron Ronson, Alexander Hyde, Jack Newton, Erin Murray, Leighton McDonald-Stuart, Ben Newell and Ben Hall. Thank you to Michael van Dissel, Malcolm Post and the finance team. Special thanks to Dr Peter Hendy, Greg and Marguerite Evans—who were so good to me in my time at the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry—Matthew, Charmaine, Sue and the late Chris Binns, Tony and Vicky Franzon, Peter and Jenny Hurley and my friend Nick Cater. Finally, I thank the Clerk of the House, Mr David Elder, and Ms Robyn McClelland for their help in the lead-up to today.

I thank my family and friends here today, particularly my parents, Evan and Glenys, who have been great role models to me in terms of hard work in their business, community and eating well. As dad says, 'If you're going to do a job, do it properly.' My best friend, Jane, and her parents, Keith and Vicky McBride, are cut from the same cloth, as is my uncle, Tim Flint, whose Westminster School bible I have with me here today. I cannot thank them enough for their support over the years.

Most of all, I am indebted to the people of Boothby. I am blessed to have been so warmly welcomed by groups across the electorate that I have not yet mentioned, including the Seacliff, Somerton and Brighton surf lifesaving clubs, the Sturt CFS brigade, the many Rotary clubs—including my own at Blackwood—the Onkaparinga Northern Community Forum, the Bedford Park Residents Association and the Flagstaff Community Centre. St Jude's Anglican Church, the Uniting Church at Brighton and Trinity Inner South, as well as the Blackwood and Trinity Baptist churches, have been generous with their friendship and time. Small business owners are the economic backbone of our community in Boothby, and I thank them for everything they do.

I serve at the pleasure of the people of Boothby and I will try to do my best for them every day. As the fourth generation of my family to have lived, worked, studied and volunteered in the electorate since my great-grandparents settled in Claire Street, Lower Mitcham, in a modest war service home in 1920, the people of Boothby can trust that I have their very best interests at heart, because they are my own. Our task in this place is to protect what Menzies described as a great and special freedom: the freedom to do our best and to make that best better.

Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call the member for Fairfax, I remind the House that it is the honourable member's first speech, and I ask the House to extend the usual courtesies.

Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am honoured to rise in the chamber today and make my maiden speech in this, the 45th Parliament of Australia. Maybe I could say from the outset, Mr Speaker, how encouraged I am that you have asked people to extend to me the usual courtesies. I suppose that means they cannot heckle me. So maybe I should say that, unashamedly, as the new member for Fairfax, I represent by far the most important electorate in all of Australia. That is the 'Hear, hear!' prompt there.

Named after Ruth Fairfax, the wonderful founder of that organisation, the Country Women's Association, my electorate lies in Gubbi Gubbi country right in the heart of Queensland's Sunshine Coast. We are an eclectic mix of towns and villages combined with unrivalled natural beauty and a near-perfect climate. For me, it is a rare place that still possesses all that old-style romantic charm of a small community but with a happy, vibrant, modern population. It is one of those unique places in Australia where the values of the past and the opportunities of the future genuinely coexist.

Idyllic though it is, some people in Fairfax are still doing it tough. Many seniors are struggling with cost-of-living issues, many young people are leaving the region because of limited career prospects, and too many small businesses and families are carrying too much debt and struggling to make ends meet. Part of the solution for these people and for all residents of the Sunshine Coast is for us to build a better future, one anchored to a vision of becoming the healthiest place on earth, a region that protects and leverages its natural beauty while diversifying its economy into clean, green, high-value industries enabled by modern infrastructure while never losing its family friendly and community oriented culture.

It has not been an easy road to get here. In fact, being elected to the seat of Fairfax has been the longest and toughest job interview of my life. And, of course, I did not do it on my own. My colleagues, from the Prime Minister down, provided enormous support, encouragement and counsel along the way. I also had a very strong team on the ground—an army of volunteers, in fact; too many to mention by name. They deserve the credit for my being here today. I am delighted that some of them have been able to make the trip down and are in the gallery today. Together we reclaimed the seat of Fairfax for the people of Fairfax—and, indeed, for the people of the Sunshine Coast. In fact, this last election gave birth to 'team Sunshine Coast' as three new MPs, Andrew Wallace, Llew O'Brien and I, joined Senator James McGrath to work collectively as a team to put our region first. As part of that team, my pledge to the people of our region is to be the Sunshine Coast's man in Canberra and not Canberra's man on the Sunshine Coast.

I said before that I would not mention any volunteer by name, but I will make one exception. It is for one who is more a conscript than a volunteer, and that is my wife, Sophia, whom I love and adore more than anything in the world. How anyone can pursue public life without the support of a loving family I just do not know. But what I do know is that I have the very best of them in mine. It helps too that Sophia is far better looking and more charming and twice as smart as I will ever be.

Government members: Hear, hear!

I got a hear, hear for that one, Mr Speaker.

I am the ninth and youngest child of Tom and Bernice O'Brien. My mother, Bernice, is here today. To speak plainly, I love my mum. I thank my mum for dedicating her life to being such a wonderful wife to dad and the most extraordinary mother to us, her nine children.

We lost dad to Parkinson's disease nearly five years ago. He was a man of great humility, gentleness and wisdom, yet hard as nails when pushed or his values were challenged. His advice to us boys before we ran on the rugby field was: 'Run straight and tackle hard, my son.' Run straight and tackle hard—sage advice for far more than just the sporting arena.

I am one who believes that we are all largely part of our own backgrounds and personal experiences. To that end, nothing has influenced me more than growing up the youngest of my family—the youngest of nine children. By the way, don't believe those who say the youngest child is spoilt. If you grow up one of nine kids, seven of whom are boys, and you are down the bottom, I swear it is not all kisses and cuddles, but you learn a lot.

As a schoolboy it did not matter if I was a leader among my mates, back at home along that long kitchen table—mum at one end, dad at the other and us nine in between—good luck if you thought you were going to call the shots. When I was little I used to be put on the table, or get there myself, because that was the only way I could be heard. I have checked out these tables here, and I take it I am not allowed to do such.

No matter how loved I was or how secure I felt, no matter what I was able to achieve in the outside world or what positions I held, back home I was still just one of nine. This ingrained in me from my very beginning an appreciation for what it is like to be part of something far bigger, far greater and far more important than I. It is with that same sentiment that I stand here today as someone who sees politics as a vocation to serve and not as a career to progress. I recognise that by virtue of being elected to this chamber I now am part of something far bigger, far greater and far more important than I.

Another aspect of my early years was growing up in our family business, started by my forebears as a flour milling company on the Darling Downs in 1899. They named the company 'Defiance' to signify a determination to take on the mainly international companies then dominating the industry.

My first job was as a trainee baker with Defiance. I started at an age where I still needed to stand on a chair so I could reach the workbench.

Defiance opened my eyes to the world when, straight out of school, I did my first stint living and working in Asia, helping the family business break in to new markets. I quickly came to realise how good we have it here in Australia—how safe, how prosperous and how free our country is—and how important good and stable governance is for maintaining this. That remains my view today.

This week I enter parliament after 20 years in business, with experience from industries as diverse as agriculture through to high technology, from small start-ups through to multinationals. Most of that time has been spent living and working predominately in Asia, giving me a perspective of our country that I do not think I would have otherwise gained. Australia is a medium-sized free market liberal democracy living in an increasingly integrated, yet highly volatile, global political economy—one that is experiencing rapid change: change that on one hand presents enormous opportunities but on the other hand presents us with great risks and challenges. Whether we like it or not, as a nation we do not control all the levers that will determine our future. We don't, and that is just the nature of the world and our place in it.

We have a choice. Either we be complacent as a nation and leave things to fate, react as challenges arise as best we can and otherwise hope to God our future is as safe and prosperous as our past or, in my preference, we take control of our own destiny.

My wife, Sophia, and I often reflect on what the world will look like when our little girl, Alexandra, who is now four, is our age. My hope is that the future Australia that she and her little mates at kindy will enjoy will be one driven not my major events, not by political parties nor ideology but by values. The foundation upon which I hope our future is built is a common set of values—values that bind all Australians regardless of race, religion or creed.

I believe there is no greater value than that of freedom, for nothing else guarantees happiness and fulfilment like freedom, freedom realised through independence, self-reliance and dignity of the individual—ideals that in turn promote protection of speech and property rights and encourage human endeavour and free enterprise. Of course, freedom expressed in these terms can be interpreted as individual rights, and I believe they are. I also believe that in our society the pendulum has swung too far in favour of individual rights without a commensurate degree of individual responsibilities.

Built on these foundations lies a vision for a future Australia. I see a future Australia that is well governed, not because we inserted government into every aspect of our lives or because we ensured conformity by dumbing down public debate, but because we revisited the simple notion of the role of government and let go of activities beyond the scope of what government should be looking after and because we acknowledge that our founders' intent for the federal compact was a sound one, with different tiers of government responsible for different things in accordance with our Constitution. Thus, we devolved more responsibilities to the states, including the areas of health and education.

I see a future Australia that is prosperous, not because we struck it lucky with a never-ending resource boom but because we had the common sense to leverage those industries in which we have a competitive advantage and we created and commercialised new intellectual property, and because we had the courage to repair our fiscal position, reform the tax system and welfare system, and bring flexibility to the labour market, thereby creating jobs, opening opportunities for Australian businesses, and freeing younger generations from a financial burden not of their making, while also taking care for our seniors and guaranteeing a generous safety net for struggling, hardworking individuals, families, pensioners and others in need.

I see a future Australia that is highly competitive because we reformed competition policy, improved productivity and restored profitability back to the land by empowering regional and rural Australia—not because we chose winners, protected incumbents or cleared the way for big companies to grow even bigger but because we found ways to entice super funds and capital inflows to invest in new, productive assets, including world-class infrastructure, and because we dismantled monopolies in both industry and the labour market, removed unnecessary regulation and put the interests of small businesses first.

I see a future Australia that is safe and secure, not because we denied the threat of Islamic terrorism and thereby weakened our resolve or we feared it so much we retreated into isolationism but because we asserted our national interests, strengthened our traditional alliances and deepened relations with emerging powers within our region; because we invested wisely in national defence, protected our strategic assets and looked after our service men and women; and because we welcomed with open arms immigrants who respected our values, our way of life, our system of government and our rule of law.

I see a future Australia that is compassionate, not because we were shamed into submission by media-savvy activists or those who confronted us on our doorstep but because we generously allocated resources that were distributed on the principle of helping those most in need—people suffering from disease and starvation in poverty-stricken nations, and people fleeing persecution in war-torn countries or in countries of first asylum.

I see a future Australia with a strong civil society, not because we solved social issues by even bigger welfare programs but because we made local communities more resilient, helped not-for-profits become more commercially sustainable, and found new ways to build and reward volunteerism and philanthropy; because we increased participation in our democracy and restored trust in our institutions and honour and dignity to public office; and because we fostered a high standard of public debate—debate which was honest and fearless, not censored by politically correct media or cheapened by cowardly social media trolls or keyboard warriors.

I believe this future Australia can eventuate, but it will not just happen. It has to be got. It has to be fought for. And its beneficiaries will be not only my little Alexandra but young people right across the seat of Fairfax, from Mountain Creek to Mudjimba, Nambour to Ninderry, Kenilworth to Kuluin, and everywhere in between, and not just them but Australians of all younger generations and those yet to be born.

But this will not be easy, and it will require us to break some myths. We need to break a myth that there is a political choice to be made between, on one hand, growing the economy and, on the other, delivering vital services: health, education and the like. There is no such choice, because without one you cannot have the other. Having a strong economy is the means by which we can deliver vital public services on an ongoing basis to every Australian. And, as the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and others have been rightly pointing out, we need to break the myth that we can keep living beyond our means. We are a formidable economy, especially compared to other nations. There is no doubt about that. But just because others are in worse shape than we are does not mean we ourselves do not have a problem. If we are to avoid the severe pain that an economic crisis would inflict, we need to accept that as a country we have been living beyond our means, and we need to adjust our behaviour accordingly.

To my mind, breaking these myths requires nothing short of a cultural shift, and in my experience it does not matter how smart you are. It does not matter how clever your strategy, how persuasive your words. There is only one thing that ever changes culture, and that is leadership. Leadership is the secret ingredient—leadership displayed in this chamber, in this modern-day colosseum where the battles of ideas can be fought, and leadership displayed beyond these hallowed halls: on the street corners and in the shopping malls, in the grandstands and in the town halls, wherever we have an opportunity to speak with those we are here to serve.

I am honoured to have been elected to a government that will provide that leadership, and I will play my part to ensure that as a nation we do not walk complacently into the future but we control our destiny and, with a clear line of sight to the future, we run hard and we tackle harder. Thank you.

Debate interrupted.