Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Six across the road! Any advance on six? If we had a government elected for a five-year term, they'd have the ability to come in and make decisions in the long-term interest of our country, without the fear of being voted out in two years or 18 months. They'd have the ability to do some things that hurt a bit to make our nation better, where we don't judge success or failure based on the polls but we judge it based on fairness, we judge it by our GDP or we judge it by the happiness of our nation. Like kids—I always like to include a thingfrom Mary Poppins or another movie!—a spoonful of sugar is what we're giving the nation at the moment. We fix the squeaky wheel. We say what we're doing is better is better than it actually is. It's human nature. This government's not our government; it is people. And I know this: you cannot virtue-signal your way to a better nation. You have to do the work. You can't spin your way to success. You have to do the work.

I have been disappointed in my first 12 months here about the ability I've had to impact that as a senator in this place. I have six years. We work in these committees. We work in this area. I said in my Voice speech the other night that I am going to see a psychologist for the first time since my divorce because I am disappointed about my abilities to deliver here.

But the game has changed. It is everything. It is reaching down through the separation of powers in our Constitution and doing things that are meant to be the responsibility of the states because they are popular and they win us votes on these sugar hits. So many things have changed over the 122 years since this federal government has been here, and it is time to look at that. I am counting the number of senators here and working out if I can run faster than them and say, 'Is this place still relevant to that document?'

We have the NACC and all these other accountabilities coming in. But I love the fact—and from the other side, from the government, I thank the offices and the people of Senator Farrell and Senator Ayres, who have been great taking on the consultancy—that we ourselves talk in the hallways and fix problems, and in our committees we talk and fix problems. At the risk of saying something improper, which I normally do, we come into question time and half the time act like unmedicated patients in a facility. It's not good enough, because that is the fear of what we put in.

So I want to do more to make Australia better. I know most people here do. I think we are hamstrung by the rules. There is a great business that talks about the theory of cohesiveness. It looks at management. It looks at sporting bodies. It looks at these things and at the longevity of time working together, of self-promotion and of having the ability to influence stuff. This parliament and this government are hamstrung by this. Let's face it: you get in, and in year 1 you put in your election agendas; in year 2 you fix up the mistakes that were in your election agendas; and in year 3 you govern to get elected again. Where is the time to make the hard decisions?

It's part of the media. We do not fund our media enough. We don't value it enough to do investigative things. What is now journalism is that we cut and paste press releases, and that makes news. The value we put on print media and investigative journalism is gone. It is not acting as a barrier to this misinformation that is so pervasive. People don't go on the net to look for news to be informed. They go to be emboldened and validated in their views, no matter what they are. So our society has changed but we have stayed the same.

All this time there is a bureaucracy and a civil service—people working hard who are always there. They have career progression. They start off at the bottom and they work through, and they have increasing power, as they are the knowledge base that continues no matter who wins in each election. I look at the efforts—as I said, not having been in office before—of my staff, my EOAs, and I look at what they do in this job. If anyone is listening at home, you get four staff—soon to be five staff—in an office, and they are almost regulated in where they are and how they go. There is almost no career progression for them if they're working in this space. I think they're underpaid by 15 to 20 per cent compared to what they would get in the corporate world. I think they are desperately undervalued for the abuse they sometimes get on the phone and for the efforts they put in. I think there needs to be better remuneration. We're talking about Fair Work and flexibility and these things. I think we as a parliament are cashing in on the belief of these people in what we do in not paying them a fair wage. I think it is potentially wrong. Because they have no career progression, they are there and we lose them. This is part of the cohesiveness, the longevity and the way forward that we don't have in this parliament.

I don't know what the way forward is. In my first 12 months I have loved the learning. There is so much information here. We are looked after, from this chamber with the attendants and the clerks to the drivers and the Parliamentary Library.