James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

There is no surprise there. It was a fantastic spectacle. And it was great to see that in this huge mass of people in the Royal Albert Hall you could see the Australian flag flying proudly—not just once, not twice, but numerous times you would see the Australian flag being hoisted aloft by Australians enjoying the best of British music that is around.

We raise the flag in triumph at sporting events, we wear it on T-shirts and we paint it on our faces to let the world know who we are cheering for. With the Olympics having only recently wrapped up in Brazil, the first time an Australian flag flew at an Olympics was at the St Louis games in the USA in 1904. In that year the Australian team had a whopping total of one athlete! The first time it was raised to celebrate an Olympics medal win was at the London games in 1908, for our Rugby team. Our flag is displayed as a mark of respect and remembrance for our service men and women who have served under it; 1914 was the year the new Australian flag was first flown in an act of war, when it flew over the army fort at Queenscliff, Victoria, when the fort opened fire to prevent a German steamer from leaving port. One flag fact which is particularly close to me, as my great-uncle was a prisoner of war in Singapore during World War II, is that our flag was the first flag of freedom to fly over liberated Singapore in 1945. That particular flag was one secretly made by prisoners of war in a prison camp.

The Australian flag is our foremost national symbol, a symbol of a peaceful, democratic and just country. It has been a constant while our society, our nation and our world has undergone monumental change. So, not just on National Flag Day, which is 3 September, but on all days I would urge all Australians to fly the flag, to be proud of the flag for what it represents for all of us Australians.

I now want to touch upon the election campaign, and I am going to focus particularly on Queensland. I am a Queenslander first and an Australian second, and I am very proud to say that, in Queensland, the coalition—or the Liberal National Party; we are one party in Queensland—received 54 per cent of the two-party preferred vote, a very strong endorsement in Queensland of the plans and the policies of the coalition government. It was a very strong endorsement of the plans and policies of Malcolm Turnbull and Barnaby Joyce to build a strong Australia, focusing on jobs and growth. At the election, we returned 21 members out of 30 in the House of Representatives, a very, very good result. Sadly, two members who are good friends of mine were not returned: Wyatt Roy and Ewen Jones. They are very different people, but both were united in their desire for a strong Queensland and united in their desire to ensure that their areas, areas that in many aspects have been doing it tough, received the eye of Canberra.

I want to talk about Wyatt. Wyatt, when he was first selected and then elected as the member for Longman back in 2010, was the youngest member ever to enter either chamber, the Senate or the House of Representatives. It is fair to say that many people held Wyatt's youth against him, particularly those from the left of politics, who have quite a patronising approach to youth. Those on the left of politics think that young people are drawn to so-called progressive politics because that is what the young always want to achieve. But Wyatt, I suppose, disappointed the left in that he put forward the idea that young people were attracted to and could deliver on the notions of a smaller government, of lower taxes and of greater freedom. In his six years as the member for Longman, Wyatt delivered massively for the electorate. He delivered for the suburbs of Caboolture and Morayfield. He delivered for Bribie Island. He delivered for Woodford. He is someone whose edifice will be felt by generations to come. The work that he undertook with neighbouring MPs and with the coalition government from 2013 included delivering on the D'Aguilar Highway and the Bruce Highway upgrade and the work he did when Caboolture was hit by floods about 18 months ago. Wyatt will be missed by the people of Longman. In a conversation with him the other day, he mentioned that he could come back into politics in 10 years time and would only be 37. Needless to say, I punched him! Wyatt is someone whose best days are still ahead of him. What he achieved for Longman shows what he can achieve for Australia. I wish him the best.

Ewen Jones is probably the funniest man alive. I was his campaign director—as well as Wyatt's, actually—back in 2010. After I had a couple of meetings with Ewen, I realised he was extremely funny and I issued an edict to him as his campaign director. That was: please, stop making jokes because the left do not have a sense of humour and they will not see that you are just a funny person; they will use political correctness to attack you. The good thing is that Ewen totally ignored me and continued making jokes. I suppose a good thing and a bad thing about Ewen is that, as this larger than life, funny person, people often mistook him or failed to see that underneath Ewen's skin is someone who strongly believes in the concepts and the power of the individual and of liberalism. He often upset his own party with his views.

What I liked about Ewen was that his ideas about liberalism did not come from a university textbook or from being involved, as I was, with Liberal students or the Young Liberals. His ideas about the individual came through the university of life. This is someone who was a single father who moved to Townsville about 20 years ago to restart life. He is someone who understands what it is like when you go to Coles or Woolies and you wonder whether your card is going to allow you to buy food that particular day. He comes from the university of hard knocks. And it was because of that that he was so particularly forthright in his views. And I think the seat of Herbert and Townsville will be the poorer for his loss. And I can say to the voters in these seats—and voters always do make the right decision; I am a strong believer in democracy—Ewen and Wyatt were strong advocates for their particular seats.

Senator Macdonald, my colleague to my right here, has been in this place since 1990. His office is in Townsville. He is the uncrowned king of the North. He has said that he has never seen Townsville receive so much support from a federal government as it has under this government that was elected in 2013. That is due to the work of Senator Macdonald. It is particularly due to the work of Ewen Jones and his forthright advocacy for Townsville and for the greater region. Whether it is the stadium, whether it is the rail line extension, whether it is the fantastic multibillion-dollar deal with Singapore that will enhance the regional economies of Townsville and Rockhampton, Ewen Jones should be very proud of the work he undertook in the six years that he was in this parliament. He is missed and, like Wyatt, I hope he does come back, sooner rather than later, because this place is a lot quieter and there is a lot less laughter in this place in Ewen's absence.

Also in Queensland we lost Senator Lindgren who, sadly, was No. 6 on our ticket. Senator Lindgren had been here for only a short period of time. She is someone who travelled throughout the state and brought with her a perspective on Queensland that added to the senators' team. She is a teacher by training. Neville Bonner was her great-uncle. She was our second Indigenous senator from Queensland, following in her great-uncle's footsteps. Joanna was a strong voice for those who were less well-off. She is someone who comes from southern Brisbane, someone who understands what it is like to deal with children who come from a background that is dissimilar to that of many people who happen to live in this place at the moment. Senator Lindgren is someone who will be missed and someone who I hope will return to this place sooner rather than later.

One of the things I will touch upon is the Queensland Liberal-Nationals Senate team. The members of this team are all very different people. You could not get two more dissimilar people than Barry O'Sullivan and myself, or myself and George Brandis. We all come from different backgrounds. What is interesting about our team is that we have not been chosen by factional lords; there is no deal like that. The LNP is a particularly strong and vibrant democracy. We have 14,000 members who choose who will run on behalf of the party in its state seat, in the federal seat or in the Senate. We do not have factions. If you join our party and wait for 12 months you can vote in your local preselection. I know that in some other divisions of the Liberal Party across Australia the idea of what are called plebiscites is quite controversial, but we have that in Queensland and it works perfectly well. The party, through this democratic process, chooses people who represent all of Queensland.

I look at our team of senators. We have Ian Macdonald, who comes from Ayr, a local solicitor and former councillor elected to this place in 1990. His office is based in Townsville. All of us LNP senators in Queensland have a physical office—mine is in Nambour—but our real offices are where we happen to be that day. The LNP Senate team do a horrendous amount of travel around the state. Ian Macdonald is always travelling over North Queensland. Senator Canavan is now in the cabinet. His office is in Rockhampton and he lives in Yeppoon. He takes a very strong interest in Central Queensland. We had a particularly good result in the federal election, with Michelle Landry and Ken O'Dowd holding tough seats. Against a ferocious, unruly, disgraceful, despicable, disgusting campaign by Labor and the unions, Michelle Landry and Ken O'Dowd were able to hold those seats, and Senator Canavan certainly deserves credit for assisting them.

Senator O'Sullivan is based in Toowoomba. I call him the senator for the great west. He knows so much about Western Queensland, particularly about our farming and agricultural sector. Senator O'Sullivan speaks a language that I think is dying in Australia. I call it 'old Australian'. He has the best turn of phrase of anyone in this chamber. I am slightly terrified of Senator O'Sullivan—please do not tell him this—because he is a former Queensland policeman and I do not really want to end up in the boot of his car! But Senator O'Sullivan is a massively strong voice for rural and regional Queensland. Senator Brandis is Leader of the Government in the Senate and, I think, the first Queenslander to hold that position for decades. An amazing intellect, he is based in Brisbane and is probably the most intelligent Attorney-General we have seen in Australia for a considerable period of time. And, of course, we have yours truly, based in Nambour, on the Sunshine Coast. The five senators we have in Queensland are all very different people and provide a very strong level of service to the people of Queensland on behalf of our party, the Liberal National Party.

The Liberal National Party is a fantastic party. I love my party. If there was a party that I had to design and it was not to be called the 'James McGrath party', I would design a party called the Liberal National Party. It has the best of liberalism and the best of nationalism, or of the Nationals, as such. We are a very strong, hardworking election machine. Our new president, Gary Spence, along with the vice-presidents and the other members of the state executive, all elected by the party members, have a particular viewpoint on why we exist as a political party, and that is to fight and win elections to implement our manifestos.

We can do that because we have wonderful volunteers, who humble me every time I speak to them—I get paid to do this and the volunteers in the Liberal National Party do not get paid. To those who worked on the election campaign in 2016, thank you for your support. To everybody at headquarters, led by Michael O'Dwyer, Lincoln Folo, Ben Riley, Rebecca Docherty and Angela Awabdy, thank you for your support and for what you did to return 21 out of 30 members and five senators, with the Liberal National Party receiving 54 per cent of the two-party preferred vote in Queensland.

Queensland is a strong bastion of support for Malcolm Turnbull and for Barnaby Joyce. We understand that the economy of Australia is far too important to be left in the hands of reprobates and union thugs like Bill Shorten and the other members of the Labor shadow cabinet. Australia deserves better. It has got better under Malcolm Turnbull and Barnaby Joyce and will continue to grow.