Mary Doyle (Aston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This Saturday the voters of Dunkley have an important choice at the ballot box when they vote in the Dunkley by-election. This by-election is a choice between a strong local voice in government, with Labor's candidate, Jodie Belyea, or a candidate who will bring the Liberal Party no closer to meeting its own gender goals.

Just recently, the Liberal Party preselected Manny Cicchiello as their candidate for Aston. Really? This guy has had failed runs for the federal seat of Holt in 2007, Bruce in 2013 and the Victorian upper house in 2018, as well as his aborted attempt to replace Mary Wooldridge in state parliament in 2020. Forced to pull out of that race after it emerged he was ineligible due to having pleaded guilty as a 19-year-old to an offence carrying a prison term of more than five years, having made a improper claim to a concession train fare. All this was reported in the Australian a year ago in an article when Cicchiello was considering sticking his hand up as a candidate for the Aston by-election. This article went on to explain how Cicchiello's 2013 campaign was the highly controversial beneficiary of a fundraising dinner hosted by an alleged mafia figure. To quote one senior Liberal who wanted to remain anonymous, and I can see why, 'I'm not sure Manny would fare well with the scrutiny of a federal by-election.' Yet a year on, all okay for a federal election—'yeah-nah'.

Those opposite can't even listen to their own party or their 2022 election report. They keep preselecting male candidates who lean further and further to the right. Why would they listen to their constituents, then? They want to be part of a bitter opposition under an increasingly angry leader who when he does offer something up to the parliament usually offers the word no and divisive rhetoric. In one of his previous roles as health minister, he made attacks on visiting GPs.

Recently tabled in this House by the Minister for Home Affairs, the honourable Clare O'Neil, there wasn't one, there weren't two, there were three reports into Australia's migration system. I'm only going to talk about one, as I would need at least an hour to take the House through it all and I only have five minutes. I'll try and keep this short and repeat to the House what Minister O'Neil said:

I want to talk now about the report that Christine Nixon wrote into the exploitation in our migration system … In some ways this is actually the most damning report into the Leader of the Opposition. For almost the whole time he's been in parliament, his whole public persona has been puffing himself up as a big tough guy on the border. But what did the Nixon review find? It found that there were serious and systemic problems with exploitation in the migration system. It found that the system had been used to perpetrate some of the worst crimes that there are—sexual slavery and human trafficking—under the watch of the Leader of the Opposition, our so-called tough guy on the beat. She found there was delay and dysfunction in the system. She also found something very interesting: for all the tough talk that we have heard over previous years from the Leader of the Opposition, he halved immigration compliance funding to the Department of Home Affairs.

Getting back to this Saturday, I think that the good people of Dunkley deserve better than Peter Dutton and his candidates. They deserve a representative like Jodie Belyea under the Albanese Labor government, who'll be an excellent advocate for her community. The late Peta Murphy MP and Jodie shared a passion to make a difference. Peta supported Jodie's work with local women doing it tough through the not-for-profit Women's Spirit Project, which Jodie founded. Jodie is a Frankston local who lives with her husband Dave and their son Flynn, who goes to Frankston High School. Jodie studied at Chisholm TAFE. She later taught for a short time at TAFE herself, as well as working in community organisations and government agencies. Fairness and hard work are Jodie's core values.

Jodie Belyea would be part of a team doing well doing all we can to address cost-of-living pressures. It's a big choice for Dunkley this Saturday. The late, great Peta Murphy knew what Jodie could bring to this place, and I really hope that we can welcome Jodie Belyea to Canberra.