Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to make a few remarks about the current situation in Australia. I've heard many of the contributions throughout the week, and I concur almost entirely with all of them. We are really lucky to be living in Australia. Through the enforced isolation and the many briefings we get at 1 o'clock or 2 o'clock every day, it's occurred to me that that we've been able to show a great deal of unanimity among our states and territories. Whilst there have clearly been diverging views about the way forward, the way the national cabinet has worked has been very comforting to the entire population. It makes you realise that what makes Australia so strong—apart from its great health system, its rule of law and its freedom of speech—is that the population get it when there is an emergency like this. They've accepted isolation. They've accepted the closure of schools, the closure of hotels and the loss of jobs. With very few exceptions, there has been no aberrant behaviour. Mystifyingly, people decided to overstock on toilet paper. But it didn't affect my household because we have a very efficient quartermaster who saw no need to restock the pantry—or we didn't run out! But it really does make you proud to be an Australian and live in this country.

Our first responders have been absolutely excellent. I have had some experience with the health system for the first time in my life recently, and I have never met more dedicated, professional and committed people than I met at every level in that system. We have true exemplars of decency and bravery and courage in that area. And that's backed up by the cleaners, the childcare workers, the teachers, the police, the firefighters and the transport workers—people who are very close to me—a lot of whom have not lost a day of work. A lot of them have been working harder than normal keeping the arterial roads of this country operating and moving vital cargo around the place. It does make you exceedingly proud to be an Australian. It shows that we are capable of getting together in times of need and working collectively.

The real challenge in this space is that we don't lose that ability in the next six months—because there is going to be a political contest. I will grudgingly give credit to all those Liberal leaders in the states and territories—it is probably only the states. They have done good work, along with Labor leaders. And the national cabinet has done good work. But this is now becoming more of an economic issue than a health issue—and, quite clearly, that is when we are going to start to fragment. But we shouldn't lose sight of what we achieved during the health crisis—and I dare say that we are over the curve of that. When we go on to deal with the economic crisis, we should capture the same spirit of genuine unity and a way forward that we've had in the health crisis. If we can distil that into some sort of spirit, Australia will be a much better place.

Our leader, Mr Albanese, is proposing a better, fairer and less fragmented workforce, a place where people don't do seven years as a part-timer or a casual; they may do a year as a part-timer or casual, but they aspire to a permanent job. That's the land I grew up in: you may have been a casual for six or 12 months but if you worked hard, attended work, took up the training and were loyal to your employer and your job, you eventually got permanent work. That's almost disappeared. Mother's Day lunch in my house—a 22-year-old; six years as a part-time casual at Coles. Six years! It's almost onto long-service leave, and still in part-time casual work. That's not the Australia we want to see for our children and grandchildren. I think we have to distil and capture the special spirit in this moment of time where we did work together to get a better outcome. It's going to be an economic argument, so it's going to be vigorous. It's going to be debated. We'll throw things at each other. But let's try to get unity about proper jobs for our children, grandchildren and people in the workforce and less insecure employment.