Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's been a heartwarming and exciting morning to be sitting in this chamber as part of a government that not only has introduced legislation that goes to fixing some of the big issues, both structural and cultural, in this country but also has a positive agenda for the future. We've seen this morning legislation to improve jobs and skills; to address the problems that this country faces and the world faces with climate change; to establish Australia as a renewable energy superpower; to fix the problems with aged care, by implementing the recommendations of the royal commission; to get rid of the cashless welfare card; to make it easier for seniors to access their healthcare card; and to make medicines cheaper. And there is much more to come.

We know that the Albanese government will look to a better future for everyone across the country, and I'm incredibly proud that in my local community in Dunkley we've made a number of election commitments that we will deliver on, which will improve the lives of people in my community. For example, we are going to establish a community battery in Carrum Downs, which will help 200 households have cheaper energy and play their part in reducing emissions.

We have a number of local commitments that will mean my community can access better health care. We've already delivered on the first one, which is to make the Frankston LGA a distribution priority area so that we can attract more GPs and arrest the crisis in GP access. We will establish an urgent care clinic so that people don't have to wait at Frankston Hospital for eight, 10 or 12 hours for a relatively minor injury to be addressed. And we will invest in the infrastructure that the First Peoples Health and Wellbeing needs to have its own state-of-the-art, up-to-date clinic and self-determination. We will invest in community infrastructure in Dunkley. We will invest in the Frankston and District Basketball Association stadium so we can have a first-class stadium right in our community, and we will also make sure that gymnastics has a home. We will invest in the upgrade of Emil Madsen Reserve—for football, for netball, for soccer—so that that community, particularly in Mount Eliza, have the facilities they deserve and they can be proud of. We will invest in the upgrade of Sandfield Reserve so it is a regional playground and community facility, and so the people in Carrum Downs and Skye and Frankston North will be able to go to a well-equipped, safe and beautiful community playground. We will invest in the Langwarrin Skatepark, because that's what the local young people in Langwarrin want. They want a skate park so that they can go and hang out with their mates in a safe and secure place and be proud of their community. We will invest in our local community centres, where so much is done to increase the bonds between locals and to look after people who perhaps can't access services elsewhere. Langwarrin and the Lyrebird Community Centre in Carrum Downs will have an investment from the Albanese Labor government into their childcare facilities and refurbishment of their infrastructure.

An Albanese Labor government will invest in the culture of Dunkley, of which we are so proud. We will invest in upgrading the infrastructure at our local Indigenous gathering place, Nairm Marr Djambana, so that First Nations people, who have the oldest living civilisation on the planet, and those of us who aren't First Nations people can interact in the spirit of reconciliation and the Uluru Statement from the Heart. We will invest in the Frankston arts trail, which will go from the magnificent McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery through the wider Frankston area, including via Nairm Marr Djambana, right up to our magnificent foreshore, so that locals can be invested in and part of our arts and culture in our community.

We will make sure that our local schools have the facilities they need. Mount Eliza Secondary College is a magnificent school with great teachers and students, but it hasn't been upgraded essentially since I was born—which was a lot longer ago than I like to admit! We will invest in a new science, technology, engineering and maths centre. Patterson River Secondary College has a terrific program for students to be engaged in music. We will help them to buy musical instruments so that every child, no matter what their background is, can engage in learning music.

They are just some of the things that an Albanese Labor government will do for my community of Frankston in addition to those really important, big-picture reforms that we are also proud to have the opportunity to be a part of, and I can't wait to see it happen.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, our parliament begins the work of building a better future. The Australian people voted for change, and we intend to give them just that. The Governor-General has shared with all members and senators the ambitious agenda that we took to the Australian people at the election and that we received a strong mandate for, with an absolute majority in the House of Representatives. It is a plan to tackle the cost-of-living crisis facing Australian families; to get wages moving again; to make child care cheaper; to step up and act on climate change; to seize the opportunities to become a renewable energy superpower; to invest in the skills and training and apprenticeships and technology that our economy needs to grow and thrive; to help more Australians know the security of a roof over their head; to rehabilitate Australia's reputation in the region and around the world; and to bring dignity and humanity back to aged care. It is a plan as well to enrich our nation by embracing the Statement from the Heart at Uluru—to answer that gracious, patient call for unity and to enshrine a voice in our Constitution.

The great privilege, the great opportunity and the solemn responsibility of government is to turn these ambitions into actions, to convert the promises of a campaign into the progress of a nation, to write our vision for Australia's future into the laws of the land.

Labor's plan is for all Australians, and we've pledged to govern for every Australian, no matter where they live and no matter who they voted for. In the first speeches of our colleagues we've already heard the voice of modern multicultural Australia, the embrace of diversity, the march to equality that gives our nation—our democracy—greater strength. And all of us—new members and those who've been here awhile—know there is not a day to waste.

The challenges facing our economy and our country are significant indeed. The IMF is warning of growing global uncertainty, and rising inflation confirmed again today means price pain for households, making it harder for people to get by and to buy the things they need. The government understands that inflation is a challenge for the economy as a whole. We also know it puts the pressure on those who can least afford it. As the Treasurer has said, things will get worse before they get better—but they will get better, and we will work every day to make sure of that.

The challenges are significant and, more than that, they are urgent—and we are responding with urgency. This is a government that has hit the ground running. In our first two months in office we moved straightaway to back an increase in the minimum wage for 2.8 million workers. I want to say again to all those Australians, some of the heroes of the pandemic—the people who kept our economy going, cleaning hospitals, stacking shelves, facing the crisis on the front line—you deserve more than our thanks; you deserve a government that backs your right to fair pay. If I can go back and channel a much-played conversation I had during the election campaign: do I welcome the 5.2 per cent increase for minimum-wage workers? Absolutely!

Secondly, we have already put to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change our nationally determined contribution of 43 per cent by 2030. That puts Australia on the path to net zero by 2050. This week we will put that same ambition in legislation to the parliament of Australia. I say to those who are continuing to oppose that: they should listen to the electorate, because the electorate very clearly has sent a message that they want a government who acts on climate change, who puts in place an energy policy for the country.

Thirdly, when floodwaters revisited their devastation on people in Southern Queensland and New South Wales, we mobilised the ADF to work alongside state support—faster than ever before. We also got emergency payments moving to families and businesses affected—faster than ever before.

Fourthly, we've implemented the strongest-ever biosecurity measures to protect Australian livestock from the threat of foot-and-mouth disease. We acted swiftly. The minister went to Indonesia to deal with the challenges they're facing. We also took action right here in Australia, in consultation, of course, and with a position that was supported by the National Farmers Federation, the cattle industry and the livestock industry, while those opposite were busy playing politics.

Lastly, through the Quad, through NATO and the Pacific Islands Forum, through official visits to Indonesia and France and through targeted ministerial engagement, we have demonstrated to our neighbours, our partners and our allies that the new government of Australia will be a constructive partner and a trustworthy friend. They don't have to worry about sending text messages about whether it will appear. We engage in a trustworthy way, one that builds relationships. We also, of course, made the visit to Ukraine to express our solidarity with the people of Ukraine, suffering from the Russian invasion.

Now my team are seeking to bring this same energy, urgency, purpose and drive to the work of this parliament. The government is determined for this new parliament to work better than the old one. Our behaviour—all of us—is a part of that. We must strive to treat each other with respect and courtesy, to cooperate where it is possible and to disagree in good faith where it is not. Of course, we may not always meet that standard. We serve in an adversarial democracy, and this chamber can be a place for fierce and determined clashes. But we can—each of us—make the contest about substance and ideas, about the things that matter to the people and the country, rather than the trivial, the personal and the petty. Let each of us try to live up to this place's best traditions, rather than succumb to its worse habits.

The culture of what happens in this building matters too. That's why the Jenkins review is a call for all of us to make this a safer, healthier and more respectful place to work. Of course, we are already, outside this place, working on the 55 recommendations of the Respect@Work report.

Making the parliament work better also requires a program and a purpose, an agenda that will make a difference to the lives of the communities we represent and the people we have the honour of serving. Day after day, the previous government treated parliament as an arena for its political stunts: cooking up wedge issues, manufacturing points of difference, desperately seeking to find a new angle for attack. But, for all their frantic obsession with finding something to say, they rarely turned up to parliament with anything to do. As the Treasurer will detail tomorrow, the Australian economy is still counting the cost of that complacency, that culture of rorts and waste, that wasted decade of delay and denial and division, that strange self-loathing that saw parliament as a chore and government as a problem.

We are determined to be better and determined to do better. My colleagues and I want to treat every day in this job in this place in government as an opportunity to deliver for the people of Australia, to fulfil our promises and to prove worthy of the trust that the Australian people have placed in us. And that begins with the legislation that we're introducing here this week—a significant legislative agenda as outlined in the Governor-General's address to the parliament just yesterday.

Firstly, we're taking the important first steps to fix the crisis in aged care. We are committed to giving older Australians the respect, dignity, quality of life and humanity in their later years that they deserve. That starts with putting nurses back into nursing homes—something that shouldn't be a radical concept, but, apparently for those opposite, was just too hard.

We're going to make sure that Australians living in aged care can see a registered nurse in their residential facility. We know that this brings peace of mind to people, and we know also that it helps take pressure off emergency departments. On so many occasions, we know that our hospitals are full not just because of people who need to be there. Were other facilities available, like a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic, for example, or if you had a nurse in a nursing home, people could get the care where they are before issues become more acute. This is a commonsense position that was outlined very clearly in the aged-care royal commission report.

The legislation we are bringing into the parliament will also boost accountability in residential aged care and put a stop to exorbitant fees for home care. The money that the government and families put in should go to improving the quality of care for people, not boosting the profits of a few unscrupulous providers. Overwhelmingly, people in the sector are doing their absolute best and, in particular, I pay tribute to the workers in the sector who have been under such enormous pressure, particularly in recent years, but continue to look after our older Australians.

The other piece of legislation that we've introduced just this morning is the creation of Jobs and Skills Australia. This is applying the Infrastructure Australia model to how we deal with the labour market. Immigration will always play an important role in our skills provision, whether it be temporary or attracting skilled migrants to Australia. But we also need to have a plan to train Australians, because what occurred when the borders shut was, all of a sudden, the skills shortages went right through the roof. People weren't able to get the skills that they needed to operate their businesses or even just to stay open. The creation of Jobs and Skills Australia, a new statutory body, will help fill urgent gaps in our national skills base and provide a plan ahead to avoid shortages in the years to come. This is important for individuals, to give them the opportunity to better their lot in life, but it's also important for the nation.

Another piece of legislation we've introduced is to amend the Fair Work Act to make 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave part of the National Employment Standards, available to 11 million workers if they have need of it. In Australia, tragically, one woman dies at the hands of their current or former partner every 10 days. Thousands more live in pain, fearing for their safety and the safety of their children. Escaping a violent partner is a legal, logistical, financial and psychological nightmare. Worrying about missing work simply shouldn't enter into it. No woman should be held back from leaving a violent situation for fear of losing her job. This legislation will make that right, and it's just one of the measures that we will take—in addition to providing additional community workers, in addition to providing support for those in the sector who need it and in addition to providing additional funding for emergency housing. The truth is that, every night in Australia, a woman—potentially a woman with children—is turned away from a shelter because there simply isn't space, and they're forced to sleep in their car or try to sleep on a friend's couch or, worse still, return to a dangerous situation. We can do better and we must do better.

We've also introduced legislation to deal with the challenge and the opportunity of climate change. For too long, climate sceptics have dictated Australia's climate and energy policy. Nine years of delay and denial on climate policy inflicted nine years of chaos and confusion in energy policy. The legislation that we've introduced gives parliament a chance to draw a line under that. We've already updated our position for the United Nations and sent a message to the world. What that has done is open the door of international engagement. It's the price you pay for going through—you've got to leave the naughty corner, and Australia has left the naughty corner, when it comes to climate change, and we're engaging. Given what has occurred in recent years in Australia, with the bushfires, with the floods, floods and more floods—which followed, a few years earlier, of course, the drought—I can't understand how anyone in this chamber can say that we don't need to legislate for a serious position. Those opposite, at various times, took steps down the track. They actually had the Liberal party room vote for a National Energy Guarantee, not once but twice. But then, instead of implementing it, they rolled the leader. We need to do better than that. This is a serious issue, and people voted for climate action at this election.

With this legislation, the crossbenchers and the opposition and the minor parties have an opportunity to end the climate wars. We announced this policy on the first Friday of December last year. It was more than 5½ months to polling day. No-one can say that there wasn't scrutiny of the position that we put forward. No-one can say it wasn't fully costed. No-one can say there was any ambiguity about this during the election campaign. That's why, in my view, those throughout this parliament—in the House of Representatives and the Senate—have an obligation to vote for this legislation. If that doesn't convince them that that's necessary, think about how isolated they will be, given that the Business Council of Australia, who I addressed this morning here in Parliament House; the Australian Industry Group; the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry; the Australian Council of Trade Unions; Greenpeace; the Australian Conservation Foundation; and the Clean Energy Council have all said they support this legislation and have called for parliament to pass this legislation. Surely everyone in this parliament can find one of those groups that they listen to, somewhere on that very broad spectrum which is there. The business community are saying very clearly that they just want the certainty that comes from this legislative change. It won't change the commitment. The commitment's done. It has already been done, witnessed by those organisations and submitted. What it will do, though, is provide some comfort and some certainty going forward, particularly for the business community.

All of that legislation is legislation we're introducing in week 1. Tomorrow, the Treasurer will deliver the economic statement to the House, ahead of the Jobs and Skills Summit we'll convene here in Parliament House in September, followed by the budget in October. People understand the tremendous difficulties of the situation that we have inherited, but I want Australians to know that we have a plan. We have a plan to help with the cost of living, a plan to get wages moving, a plan to step up and work with businesses and unions on skills shortages, and a plan to boost productivity and take pressure off family budgets, with reforms such as cheaper child care. As a government, we've now embarked on the work of building that better future we promised.

I invite the parliament to join us in this task, to cooperate in the national interest and to find constructive common purpose. Whatever our differences in political parties, we share a love of this country, and we share an extraordinary privilege to be here.

Through all the turmoil and hardship of the past few years, Australians have been magnificent. They've been brave. They've been caring. They've been resolute. The best way that we can serve the people of Australia is by striving to match those qualities that they themselves have shown: courage in the work of change, care for those in need, and resolve as we face the challenges ahead. With new hope, with new energy and with new purpose, let us take up this great task to indeed create a better future for this country.

Milton Dick (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 the House to extend to them the usual courtesies. I give the call to the member for Boothby.

Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker. May I offer my congratulations on your appointment to this role. I acknowledge that we meet today on the unceded lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, and I pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. I pay my respects to other First Nations people present today and acknowledge and celebrate their cultural authority.

The electorate of Boothby, which I am honoured to represent here today, is on Kaurna Yerta, the unceded lands of the Kaurna people. Boothby is spread across the plains to the south of Tarntanyangga, which is Adelaide, from the hills to the coast, and it contains many important cultural sites in the Tjilbruke dreaming story. I pay my respects to the Kaurna people.

I'm proud to be here as part of the Albanese Labor government, which has committed to the important reconciliation work that is the implementation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Voice. Treaty. Truth. This is unfinished business for us all. Together, we are stronger. The work of bringing us together is overdue.

I'd like to acknowledge the previous member for Boothby, Nicolle Flint, who served two terms before retiring at the 2022 election. I acknowledge her work representing the community and particularly her advocacy on the issue of treatment of women. I wish her every success in future endeavours.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to congratulate our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. I received so many contacts from across Boothby following the election. The words I heard most were 'relief' and 'hope'—hope for a better future for themselves, their children and their country, hope for a community that works together and cares about each other. Your vision—our vision—for a parliament with integrity, for an inclusive community, for the Uluru Statement from the Heart, for climate change action and for a pathway forward for those doing it tough is inspiring and worth working for. Australia is in good hands.

Like many Australians, I am a migrant. I was born in Hollywood—less glamorous than it sounds—a small town outside Birmingham in the UK. With my parents, along with my mother's parents and siblings, we all moved to Australia as ten-pound Poms in search of opportunity, and we certainly found it. I cannot imagine my family, arriving with a 20-month-old me, foresaw the opportunities that would be afforded to me and the life that I would go on to lead, let alone that I would be one day standing here in this place making this address.

We initially settled in the north-east suburbs of Adelaide. My grandfather worked on the floor of the Holden factory. My father worked as an electrical draftsman for a whitegoods manufacture and then in the public service. My younger brother was born in Adelaide, and we attended the local primary school. We were the generation that took off on the weekends on our bikes with our school friends, traversing the fields and creeks adjacent to what was then the outer suburbs of Adelaide, building cubbies and bike jumps and reappearing at dinnertime. I was the kid covered in scratches and bruises from falling out of trees or riding my bike through the scrub. It was great.

I still remember the day my brother and I came home to find my mum and dad waiting for us and they told us the worst news: dad had cancer. I was 10 years old. Then started three years of treatment. I don't know what it was like for dad; the worst of it was hidden from my brother and me. But I know that there would be days when mum and dad would head off to the hospital in the morning and they would not be home at night. Dad would be too sick to leave the hospital, and mum would have to stay and look after him. My brother and I would walk home from school and let ourselves into the house. I would help my brother do his homework. I would feed us both and lock up the house, and we'd go to bed. Mum would be home sometime during the night.

And then came the day in August 1980, a very crisp spring morning with blue skies, sunny, icy cold. I remember opening the curtains in my room and the sun shining through the window. I remember going into the kitchen to find my grandparents. I remember being sent into the living room, where my mum was sitting with my brother. My dad had died overnight. I remember the shock. As a child, I had taken for granted that, when they said his cancer was treatable, that meant he would survive.

My Irish grandparents moved in to care for us, and so I grew up with their stories. They'd tell me stories of the Blitz in Birmingham and how granddad had come home to found their house had had a direct hit. He dug through the rubble, not knowing if his wife, my granny, was alive or dead. When he got to the cupboard under the stairs, which was their bomb shelter, he found her unharmed, cradling my two-year-old uncle Tom. Granny was pregnant with my mother at that time. You were that close to not having me here.

One of the stories granny would tell me was of her own childhood in Belfast—the story of her father losing his job in the shipyards. There was no income support in those days, so my great-grandmother went scrubbing floors and pawned her wedding ring to feed the family—no shame in hard work, but my granny was horrified that her mother had had to pawn her wedding ring. The story has a happy ending: when my grandfather found work, the ring was reclaimed, and granny gave me her mother's wedding ring when my own children were born. I wear that ring here today in tribute.

That experience of poverty and of the precariousness of our family's situation drove my grandparents' commitment to education, to ensuring that their family was never so vulnerable again. My grandparents were committed Labor people. Their commitment came from their understanding of the transformative powers of public education and public health. After their experience of poverty in Northern Ireland, they wanted more for their family. Two generations on, the importance of education was drummed into me, and I became the first person in my family to go to university.

Whitlam said, 'We are all diminished as citizens when any of us are poor.' Poverty is a national waste as well as an individual waste. We are all diminished when any of us are denied proper education. The nation is poorer—a poorer economy, a poorer civilisation—because of this human and national waste. I'm not old enough to remember the Whitlam government, but his vision for our country underpins much of what I value: affordable education, affordable justice, land rights for First Nations people and women's rights. Whitlam ended the death penalty, stood up against apartheid in South Africa, established the Racial Discrimination Act and ended conscription to the Vietnam War. Importantly, his vision included affordable healthcare. My family did not have to choose whether to go broke to give my dad the best possible chance of surviving. Finances might have been tight when he died, but we did not have the crippling medical debt pushing us into bankruptcy that we see in so many countries. Good government establishes the conditions and the opportunities whereby we, all of us, can flourish individually and as a community. If it isn't about the people, if it isn't about the community, what is it about?

One of the great joys of campaigning was talking to the people of Boothby—hearing their concerns and helping them with their issues. In the hills of Blackwood and Belair I heard about climate change and bushfires. On the plains at Dover Gardens and Ascot Park I heard about the housing shortage and the insecurity of casualised labour contracts. In Warradale I heard from a couple, both working, saving like mad for a house deposit as they watched prices escalate faster than they could save. In the seaside suburb of Glenelg I heard from retirees about their fears of the legacy they were leaving their grandchildren: climate change. I heard from a man with quadriplegia who had his overnight support cut by NDIS, and another man, very distressed, who told me about his mother's last terrible months in aged care.

The very significant benefits of this wonderful country are not shared fairly. My family taught me about the importance of working hard to get ahead but also the importance of social equity. If we want to have a peaceful, cohesive society; if we want to grow our collective wealth; if we want to protect against the very real challenges heading our way, be it climate change, the pandemic or our place in the world; and if we want a strong country, it is in all of our interests that as many as possible are able to share in the benefits of our great country. Inequality is a detriment to us all.

Too often government does not create the conditions and the opportunities for all of its citizens to flourish. Indeed, it creates conditions that push some people down, hold them down and make life as difficult as it can be. It punishes them for not being enough, for not being able to overcome the disadvantage they may have been born into or may have experienced in their lives. Too often past governments have actively and deliberately pushed people into poverty.

Cost of living is one of the major issues I hear about across Boothby. While it affects almost everyone, those on a form of benefit payment, those on minimum wage and those on low fixed incomes are definitely impacted the most. There is no logic and no moral reason why the poorest and most disadvantaged should be the ones who bear the greater burden. The raising of the minimum wage is a fantastic step forward, and the addressing of casualising gig economy work conditions will make such a difference. Many of you know that I'm a long-term campaigner for the Raise the Rate campaign, and I don't step away from that. I'm also committed to addressing other forms of cost-of-living issues.

This government has inherited wicked problems: $1 trillion in debt and rising interest rates; a climate emergency and a neglected environment; the pandemic and a shortage of skilled labour; and a housing crisis in both purchase and rental markets, and in all of these issues it's important to remember that those in poverty will feel this a lot more than the rest of us. They say a rising tide lifts all boats, but not if the boat is tied down.

My recent work has been in the homelessness sector. When we think of homelessness, we are talking about the pointy end of poverty. This is the stage where people truly have nothing left, and it's hard to come back from losing everything. No-one plans to become homeless—this is not anyone's ambition growing up—yet it happens to more people than you would think. There were over 112,000 homeless at the 2016 census, and we expect that number to have risen in the 2021 census.

We always say in the sector that anyone can become homeless and, when you hear that, I know for many there's a small voice in the back of your head that says, 'Well, yes, but not me,' because we'd all like to think that the benefits that we experience are the result of good decisions that we've made and our hard work. And we like to think that because it gives us a feeling of control and safety and security. But, sadly, I'm here to tell you that it can and does happen to people exactly like you and me every day, and to people like your loved ones, your parents, your children, your siblings and your friends.

Physical illness—a cancer diagnosis, for instance—mental illness, relationship breakdown or death of a spouse, a job redundancy, injury, domestic violence: a crisis can arise unexpectedly and very quickly, and suddenly someone who thought their life was stable, secure and independent finds that they have no income coming in and they can't pay the rent. Nearly half of all South Australian women would not be able to support themselves for more than a month on savings alone, and for men it's 36 per cent. It's hard enough trying to survive on Jobseeker, let alone be the preferred tenant in an overly competitive housing market.

Doorknocking in Boothby, I came across people living in garages and squatting in derelict houses. Businesses on our premier tourist strips told me of people sleeping on benches and in doorways. Residents in some of the wealthier areas told me of giving blankets and food to people living behind the local shopping centre and to families living in cars. I've seen it, I've met them, and I can tell you truly: anyone can become homeless.

The Australia my family migrated to, the Australia that I see in my mind and that I hold close to my heart, is an Australia of opportunity, where hard work is rewarded but misfortune is not punished, where we are one community and we are a caring community. I am proud to be here as part of an Albanese Labor government, because Australia needs us to do more and be more.

I said at the beginning of my campaign that this is a 'we' campaign not a 'me' campaign, and I have so many people to thank. Labor is a movement that is bigger than the party. It's powered by the mighty union movement and supported by broader civil society. It's a movement that says that we can all share in the riches of our country, that we should all be treated with respect, that each of us, as individuals, should be valued. Our work should be valued. Our contribution to the community should be valued. We should be valued. I can't thank you all enough and I'm here to help us achieve our vision: a fair community with a better future—no-one left behind.

Particular thanks to Senator Penny Wong; Senator Karen Grogan; South Australian Deputy Premier, the Hon. Susan Close, who I think is in the gallery today; Ian Hunter MLC and Abbie Spencer for their support during the preselection process and since; members of the Boothby FEC, particularly President Aileen Croghan, Secretary Don Clancy and former president Dale Beasley for having faith in me; my campaign manager, the wonderful Tom Mooney, who worked the magic and kept me moving forwards; and the campaign team, Liz Temple, Abbie Spencer, Jo Sutton, Ella Waters, Tamsin Anspach, Nick Falcinella, Alexia Deegan, Amy Ware, Ella Shaw, Sean Hill, Cameron Smith, Patrick Stewart, Issie Martin and Elias Hallaj; and the extraordinary support and friendship of Shaun Bonett, Adrian Tisato and Leon Cermak.

I want to thank everyone involved in the South Australian union movement. So many of our unions supported me, and I particularly want to thank the United Workers Union, the Community and Public Sector Union, Australian Services Union and the SDA for their incredible support. I was truly overwhelmed by the support of so many unions and union members who dedicated countless hours to elect the first Labor member for Boothby in 73 years and a Labor government that will fight for the rights and conditions of workers. I'd particularly like to call out Gary Bullock, Jo Sutton, Abbie Spencer, Liz Temple and Ella Waters.

There were many, many volunteers who came out day after day in hail and in the middle of summer, doorknocking, phone-calling, letterboxing. Some of them are long-term volunteers, such as Julanne Sweeney, who has been volunteering for Labor since Whitlam—and I've seen the photos—many others were volunteering for the first time, moved by a sense of urgency to change the government.

My staff—all up in the gallery—Nick Falcinella, Amelia Yaron, Hannah Beadle, Alex Bond and James Dimas, are now in the process of setting up the office while providing service to the many constituents we're hearing from. A little bit like building the plane while you're flying it. And, of course, the voters of Boothby who engaged with me, talked to me, told me what mattered to them—their concerns, hopes and fears, the stories of their lives, and, of course, what they wanted from their government and their representative. I feel incredibly privileged to be entrusted with your stories, your faith and your votes, and I will work for you every day and every night.

I'd also like to thank my former employer St Vincent de Paul Society SA, its state president, Brad Hocking; national president, Claire Victory; and staff and volunteers. I'm sure that your newish CEO up and leaving to campaign for a federal seat was not in your forward plans—I don't recall seeing it on the risk register, but possibly that was my failing! I thank you for your support.

Finally, my family and friends. My mother: you provided a secure and safe home, despite the death of your beloved husband, my father. You supported my education in an era where education for girls was not a given, and while I recall that I was the perfect child I accept that it may not have always felt that way from your perspective.

To my best friend Tiffany Williams, who is in the gallery: I suspect that you think I am your support and cheerleader, but actually you're my support and cheerleader. Thank you for putting up with me being a very neglectful friend over the last 10 months.

My triplet sons, Hamish, Rory, and Jacques—also in the gallery—have adjusted well to their mother suddenly deciding to change everyone's lives by abruptly resigning from paid employment and disappearing on the campaign trail. Their enthusiasm for seeing my face on every Stobie pole in the electorate of Boothby and having their friends report back on what I've done and said hasn't failed. Thank you for your support. I love you all, and I'm putting it on the record: you're all my favourites.

And, finally, my wonderful husband, Kim. Kim and I met when we were both sitting on a not-for-profit board. We often comment that the Institute of Company Directors doesn't advertise meeting the love of your life as a benefit to volunteering on a board. And what a man to take on not only me, but my three then 15-year-old sons!

When Kim and I went on holiday to the Northern Territory last year, we had no idea that we would come back having made such a life-changing decision—for me to run for preselection for Boothby. Kim has been a constant support, a constant enthusiasm and, to my great amusement, took to door knocking like a pro. He took to letter-boxing, corfluting, and spending whole days at pre-poll and polling booths chatting to voters. Mr Speaker, if I might crave your indulgence to directly address my husband: Kim, I love our lives together. I can't thank you enough. I love you, and I truly could haven't done this without your support. In the words of the Kaurna people, 'Ngaityalya.'

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.