John Hogg (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call Senator Ryan, I remind honourable senators that this is his first speech. I, therefore, ask that the usual courtesies be extended to him.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr President. I commence by congratulating you on your election and, through you, thanking the staff of the Senate for all their assistance and support as I have taken office over these last few months. It is with a great deal of humility and pride that I stand here this evening as a senator for Victoria and follow in the footsteps of my good friend and mentor Rod Kemp. He made an enormous contribution to our nation over his ministerial career and to the Senate itself.

I come to this place in a much stronger Australia and Victoria than that of my childhood. I grew up in Victoria in the 1980s. What confronted my generation was very different from that which faced our parents and which confronts people today. In 1990, one in eight people in Victoria could not find work and tens of thousands had simply given up looking. One in three young people could not find work. Education, job training and apprenticeships had been wiped out by the dereliction of a government dedicated to the pursuit of an outdated ideology—the fatal conceit that government could control the economy as simply as driving a car, and that government debt did not matter.

These were state and federal governments who claimed to serve and protect the vulnerable. But, when the state steps beyond the bounds of its competence, it is the most vulnerable who suffer—in the failure to provide the services they need and in preventing them from finding work.

The last 30 years have seen the long march of liberalism, not only in Australia but around the world. I grew up under the shadow of global nuclear holocaust, a threat in the main that now belongs in the history books. I did not understand why nations built walls around their people and raised armies to train their guns on them. I did not understand why Australians would protest against us and our allies trying to bring this tyranny to an end. I learned then that democracy and basic human liberties are not relative concepts. We must always guard against the slippery slope of moral equivalence in such affairs.

Twenty years ago we saw a photo of a young man standing in front of a tank in Beijing—the epitome of the individual defying the coercive power of the state. Just as I was excited at the fall of the Iron Curtain and the looks of joy across the faces of the people of eastern Europe as they tasted freedom for the first time in generations, I look forward to seeing similar looks of joy increasingly in our own region. This may seem a long way from the Lucky Country and this place, but these were the experiences that framed my political outlook. As Abraham Lincoln said:

The legitimate object of Government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all or cannot do so well for themselves in their separate and individual capacities. In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, Government ought not to interfere.

Over the course of the last century it is when this is forgotten that the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity arises. Whenever we choose to do something in this place, we are removing the right and responsibility to make a personal choice—from a family, a community or an individual. Whenever we choose to spend money, we take it from someone’s pocket.

As a young man I was drawn to the Liberal Party by a key principle: the dignity of each and every individual and the value of their own conscience. As a boy I remember reading a union publication called The Metal Workerwell known to some in this place, I am sure. But while I read it I knew that my father was not a member by choice. When I got my first job I had to agree to join a union if required. When I went to university I was forced to join a student union and pay the poll tax that those fees represent—levied regardless of income, means or ability to use the alleged services. The idea that someone in Australia should be forced to join a union in their workplace is now alien to us. I look forward to the day when there is no longer a question that students should also be guaranteed this right.

I am proud to say that I am the product of a Catholic education. As a direct result of the policies of the Liberal Party spanning more than 40 years, choice in education has been made available to thousands. While various vested interests still harbour hopes of ending it, the promotion of school choice is one of the proudest aspects of the Liberal tradition. Contrary to its detractors, school choice is not about playing fields or swimming pools; it is about supporting diversity for all in our society, not just those with means. It is about supporting the thousands of teachers and volunteers, like my own mother, who have built and taught in these schools when conditions and salaries were often better elsewhere.

I arrived at university due to this passion for education that had been instilled in me. I joined the Melbourne University Liberal Club—for a long time one of the nurseries of liberal thought. Through the encouragement of people like Katherine Forrest, Ian Pattison, Chris Muir and Michael O’Brien, my own ideas were debated, tested and refined. They taught me a valuable lesson: it is not what you think that matters most; more important is your willingness to discuss it, debate it and maintain an open mind to new ideas. I am proud to say I have followed a long and diverse line of people from that organisation into this place—from Alan Missen to Rod Kemp, as well as members in the other place. I hope to live up to their record, achievements and decency.

When looking ahead to the challenges facing our nation, I look to history for lessons. Over the last two decades we have implemented a massive program of economic reform in this country. This was bipartisan, at least when we were on this side of the chamber. Opening up Australia’s economy, ending the sclerotic policies of protection, reforming the tax system and reforming the finance and labour markets were not easy decisions. These ideas were generated, debated and promoted outside this place by organisations like the Institute of Public Affairs and the Centre for Independent Studies as well as by members here. Not supported by government funding to this day, they are a critical part of our civil society.

These changes not only provoked howls of outrage from interest groups safe in the bosom of protection paid for by others; they had a heavy cost for many in our community. Thousands of workers, mainly no- or low-skilled or in industries that were simply not competitive, lost their livelihoods. Many of them were never to find work again, not helped by a recession they were told they had to have. But they did not go and burn down the nearest McDonald’s in protest. They did not march in the streets or demand handouts. They realised that change, painful though it may be, was necessary to ensure a better life for their children. Many of our leaders, and especially the Liberal Party in opposition, refused to engage in simple slogans and oppose these policies for partisan advantage. Principle beat populism, and Australia today is undoubtedly the better for it.

This poses a test for us as leaders. As we confront the challenges of today, it is all too easy to fall into political slogans, spin and the 24-hour news cycle. There is always a temptation to simplify complex issues, take advantage of angst and promise to cure the incurable in a futile fight against change. Government is complex, and to attempt to simplify it or promise things we know we cannot deliver is irresponsible—even more so if our leaders know otherwise. When we focus on the billboard outside a GP clinic more than how we are going to staff it with doctors, when we blame the Murray-Darling crisis on climate change rather than what we ourselves are doing to it, we do an injustice to those thousands of people who have made substantial sacrifices over the last 30 years.

To attempt to wind back the clock of economic reform will not deliver a more prosperous Australia. To promise to insulate Australia from change is futile and misleading. It breaks the bonds of trust with those who bore this cost during this period and from which we all benefit today. And these were not the rich, the powerful or the organised; they were the true modern-day forgotten people. They have placed their trust in us and we cannot breach it.

For the first time in a generation the problem of mass unemployment has been resolved, at least for the time being. The previous government achieved levels of employment that I was taught, only 15 years ago, were unattainable. This cannot be sacrificed on the altar of vested interests, outdated ideology or short-term political gain.

I am proud to describe myself as a federalist. It is entirely consistent with liberalism that power should be divided and kept as close as possible to the people. This chamber itself reflects that fact. This Senate is granted a mandate by the people to review, reject or amend legislation. It is an explicit and intentional check on the domination of the other place by the executive. But federalism is complex. It does itself no favours in terms of slogans or press releases and it is not just about borders drawn a century ago. It simply guarantees that decisions should be taken by those whom they will affect.

A bicameral parliament and power divided between states and the Commonwealth concedes that power itself is a dangerous thing. Dividing it is the best way to control it. Robert Menzies appreciated this balance when he wrote:

... in the demarcation of powers between a Central Government and the State governments, there resides one of the true protections of individual freedom.

As the Australian people have constantly shown in virtually every opportunity put to them, they do not want more power centralised in Canberra.

Lately we have heard new slogans such as cooperative federalism. But cooperative federalism can easily become coercive federalism or cartel federalism and it can be too easily used to hide failure. When we hear of the need for a single national curriculum or national control of hospitals for people who move between the states, we fail to see that it is this very diversity that may be one of the reasons they move. When we hear of national control or national consistency, we fail to understand that diversity amongst our states is not merely a product of governments; it is about different communities having different needs and different priorities.

The problem of states deferring their responsibilities is not new to our federation. Robert Menzies also said:

It is so easily said about any local problem, ‘Well, why don’t you take this to Canberra? Why don’t you get the Commonwealth to do something about it?’

The true reason there is occasionally a clamour for the Commonwealth to take control of a particular issue is that the states, especially in recent years, have failed to address some of these issues. I do not see how further removing responsibility solves this. Indeed, the problems would only likely be magnified. Vested interests like centralisation; it is easier to capture one government than six or seven.

The true challenges in many of these areas reside in the power of sectional interests and control over the public sector. An unwillingness to tackle these is not cured by making the problem even more distant from the people. It never ceases to amaze me how the leadership of public sector unions construct such fanciful arguments and go to so much trouble to prevent the public knowing about their performance. Whether it is schools, public hospitals or a raft of other services, why are the leaders of these groups so insistent on keeping their performance a secret from those who utilise their services and pay their wages?

The true answer to these challenges is to hold governments to account and to ensure voters and consumers have the information to judge the performance of whoever should be held accountable. For that reason, we should consider the creation of a statutory independent agency to collect performance data in all these areas. Like the ABS or the Audit Office, it would set benchmarks and test our various government provided services against them. Independent of the executive, it would report regularly to the people, ensuring they could compare their state, their school or their hospital against the best in the country. Only through freely available and accessible information independent of the distortions of vested interests and executive control can we truly give the people real choice and the opportunity to pass judgement.

As I stated earlier, standing here this evening is a humbling experience and I am under no illusion that it is due purely to my own efforts. My election is the result of the efforts of thousands of members of the Victorian division of the Liberal Party and the trust they and the voters of Victoria have placed in me to serve their common interests and aspirations. They are too numerous to thank individually, but I specifically note the efforts of those who carried the Liberal flag in the seats that we did not win at the last election; I would not be here without them.

I thank all my colleagues, particularly my fellow Victorians here and in the other place. Your support, counsel and wisdom have been and will continue to be especially valued. I also thank the staff of the Victorian division. I have had the privilege of working with them in various capacities over many years and I appreciate their tireless efforts for our cause. As party presidents, fellow new Senator Helen Kroger and Russell Hannan encouraged my passion for reform even when it was not always convenient for them.

In recent years I have had the privilege of working with Dr David Kemp. David’s commitment to the betterment of Australian politics and society and the Liberal Party itself has been demonstrated by his integrity and a career dedicated to public and political life. Michael Kroger has long been a friend—there in the tough times as well as the good and never asking for anything other than a willingness to debate.

It is often said of my generation that our friends form a second family. In this sense, I consider myself doubly lucky. I am fortunate to have a wide circle of friends, without whose support I would not be able to take advantage of this enormous opportunity. I cannot mention them all—and there are several here tonight—but there are a few who I would like to single out. Scott Pearce, Sally Carrick, Jason Aldworth, Andrew Bell, John Snaden, Matthew and Renae Guy, Tony Barry, Jon Mant and Kelly O’Dwyer have been as close as a second family, in my personal life as much as in politics, as anyone could have. If I live up to their hopes and aspirations I know I will have made Australia a better place.

As I am sure my fellow new senators have experienced, finding the words to thank one’s family is particularly difficult. I have been influenced very strongly by the women in my life; my grandmother Mary Coghlan has seen an unfair share of tragedy in hers. I was in the fortunate position of being her eldest grandson, and her love, kindness and faith shaped me as much as anything else. Words cannot do justice to my mother, Anne. Endless patience, never-ending support in all my endeavours and a constant faith in her son—nothing more can be asked of any parent.

One person I would like to thank is not here this evening. He was a quiet man, very different from his eldest son, and he did not have all the opportunities I had, but he made sure I had them all. Taken from us too early, I know he is looking down this evening. I can only hope to act in a way that would make him proud and that I can simply be as decent as he was. Finally, I come to my better half, now my fiancee after a period of time which caused many of my friends to question my judgement. Helen, I simply could not have done this without you, your optimism, your faith and your support. I look forward to sharing our new life.

The last quarter of a century has illustrated exactly what this country and its people are capable of. Over the last decade in particular, the liberal agenda for Australia has delivered not abstract numbers or statistics but meaningful improvements in the lives of all Australians, particularly those most vulnerable. As Winston Churchill said, ‘I fight for my corner,’ and I look forward to working with my colleagues to bring us back to office and continue our work. I thank the Senate for the courtesy it has extended me this evening.

Honourable Senators:

Hear, hear!

John Hogg (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Pursuant to order I now call Senator Ludlam to make his first speech and ask honourable senators that the usual courtesies be extended to him.

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to begin by acknowledging that we meet on the traditional lands of the Ngunawal people and by paying my respects to the custodians of culture and country. After ‘sorry’ comes the other s-word, ‘sovereignty’—sovereignty over this island continent that was never ceded by the traditional owners. The tent embassy just down the hill is one visible reminder of the depth of the unfinished business still before this parliament.

I am the fifth Greens senator that Western Australians have dispatched to Canberra. Four strong women led the way here, which is a wonderful political lineage. In 1984 Jo Vallentine was the first person to win a seat in any parliament in the world on a platform of nuclear disarmament. I am delighted to acknowledge Jo’s presence as a mentor and friend in the public gallery tonight and to use this occasion as a dedication to carry forward her work to set these weapons to rest, once and for all. Jo was followed by Christabel Chamarette and then Dee Margetts, who carried the load of the balance of power in here for several eventful years. More recently, Senator Rachel Siewert joined an expanded Greens team with Senators Brown and Milne, and Kerry Nettle, who is greatly missed in here. I had the extraordinarily good fortune to work for Rachel in her Senate office for 2½ years and I know that many senators appreciate Rachel’s special brand of passion and tenacity. I really thank her for the opportunity that she gave me to support her work in here.

I cannot go past this opportunity without also thanking Robin Chapple and the rest of the wonderful Greens WA team. Robin is the once—and, it has just been announced, future—MP for the mining and pastoral region of Western Australia, who mentored me through four good years on the road, during which time I discovered a lot about my own state.

I am very proud to be here this evening representing the state of Western Australia—not just the 100,000 Greens voters who sent me here but everyone who holds aspirations for an economy that serves the community and protects our spectacular environment. And this is the theme of what I wanted to say tonight.

I grew up in the back of a van which was somewhere different every day, with my loving and generous parents Graham and Jude, whom I am really happy are here tonight, and my dear brother Glen, who is going to be a father in a matter of a few weeks. So my earliest childhood memories, after distant impressions of New Zealand, are of Indian back roads, London snow and African railways. But since the age of eight I have lived in Perth, and Western Australia has been a good place to call home. It is a place that has been kind to me and I love the prospect of being able to give something back at a time like this.

My central preoccupation and reason for being here is that I share with my Greens colleagues the optimistic sense that Australia—and the world—is poised on the edge of a historic transformation. I am convinced that we are up to this challenge. We are surrounded by events that are just unremittingly bleak. In our relentless insistence on pursuing the fossil-fuel growth economy, the industrialised nations have melted the North Polar ice cap. It happened a hundred years earlier than the world’s most sophisticated computer models said it would, so now within a year or two there will be no summer sea ice at all. That eight million square kilometre mirror was reflecting a lot of sunlight back into space. That was keeping the Arctic Ocean cold enough to hold the Greenland icesheet together in one piece—and, you know, we really need it to stay that way. Instead, it is coming apart so fast that there is now a discernable tenor of panic creeping into reports from front-line climate scientists. There are 2.8 million cubic kilometres of ice perched above sea level there, and a similar amount impounded in the West Antarctic icesheet, where the situation is just as fragile and changing just as rapidly.

Mr President, humankind has kicked over the first domino. It begins with the vanishing sea ice. If we get the next hundred months wrong it will end with something in the order of a five-metre sea-level rise this century, the death of the Barrier Reef, the passing of ecosystems all over the world and the combustion of the Amazon rainforest as the carbon cycle slams into reverse. To any climate sceptics whose company I have joined this evening, I say that I celebrate scepticism. Without scepticism we would probably still be living in caves. Denial, on the other hand, has now brought humankind to the edge of something almost unthinkable. I, also, wish this was not happening to our battered little planet, but it is. It is time for determined, intelligent, coordinated action.

In a perverse twist, the northern ice melt has touched off a mad scramble to peg the Arctic seafloor for oil and gas acreage—an example of market forces at work which I would find darkly satirical if the stakes were not quite so high. I imagine historians of the future looking back on this time as the beginning of the oil endgame: the age in which Australia sleepwalked along behind a tiny handful of powerful nations armed with nuclear weapons into a disastrous occupation of Iraq, with the singular objective of cornering the world’s shrinking reserves of cheap oil. China’s behaviour in Burma and Sudan, and Russian aggression in Georgia, flow from this same terrible imperative.

And so now there are more than six billion people sharing the globe, one-third of them children. More than half of us now live in cities, with fully one billion people crowded into simmering slum encampments. All of us, to a greater or lesser degree, are bound together unknowingly in near-total dependence on fossil fuel, fossil agriculture and fossil architecture. This fossil economy knows only how to grow. It has to be larger this year than it was last year, lest its debts and contradictions collapse upon itself and people’s lives and careers get crushed in the wreckage. When our economy fails to grow we call it a recession, but an entity that knows only blind growth we call a cancer. The fossil growth economy gives us pulp mills that erase ecosystems while showering its neighbours with toxic emissions; it gives us the tragic industrial vandalism of the Ice Age heritage on the Burrup Peninsula; it gives us the expansion of uranium mining to feed the 436 plutonium factories that we know as nuclear power stations; it gives us burnout, family breakdown and fly-in fly-out workforces; and it gives us an industrial relations system that sought to treat working Australians as components to be deployed and discarded like any other business asset. Can you believe that we live in a country that throws away $5.3 billion worth of food a year and now dumps 40 million tonnes of waste each year?

Our greatest tragedy is to imagine that this is the only kind of economy there is. My favourite author, William Gibson, observes that:

The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet.

What would a closed loop conserver economy look like if it became widely distributed—one in which every industrial output became an input for something else in cradle-to-cradle product cycles, one in which chemical toxins were not proliferated under voluntary industry codes but designed out of the system entirely, an economy under democratic control which resumed its role as an essential subset of exchange and allocation within our community rather than this blind growth machine which is asset-stripping the biosphere? What would our economy look like if we substituted the frenzied incineration of our finite energy base with the limitless and infinite flows of renewable energy? Most importantly, what would our economy look like if we erased the degrading word ‘consumer’ from our vocabulary and took back our power as citizens of this wonderful country, which has so much to offer the people of the world.

This kind of Australia is not merely possible; it is coming into being right now by the sheer force of will of thousands of people in every town and city in the country. Some of the ideas are new; some of them are very old. What keeps me optimistic is the collective vision held out by so many people working everywhere toward a renewable community, because that is the place I want to live. This is not the end of economic growth but the beginning of a conversation about what kind of growth we need and what kind we can no longer afford. It is about how to truly live as human beings on a fragile planet.

In the early 19th century it was discovered that all you needed to do to generate an electric current was to spin a magnet. So let us go back to first principles. In a few metres of seawater off the coast of Fremantle there is a beautifully simple device attached to the seabed that harvests the energy of the incoming swells and pumps water at very high pressure through a Pelton generator onshore, producing electricity. Throw a switch and the salt water diverts through a reverse osmosis filter and out comes fresh water. The company is so impressed after several years of testing that they are now proposing wave energy farms with dozens of these devices arrayed together on the sea floor, generating baseload electricity and fresh water day and night.

Senators might also be aware of the quiet genius behind the oil mallee plant under development in the Western Australian town of Narrogin. It is a facility that will produce electricity for domestic use as well as exporting activated carbon and eucalyptus oil. It gives farmers a cash crop and a chance to restore the landscape of some of our most important agricultural areas. You are probably also aware of the modest uptake of wind energy under the former government’s mandatory renewable energy target. That restricted program could have laid the groundwork for world-class wind energy hubs and community owned wind farms that give regional areas another badly needed revenue stream while drawing cheap, reliable, large-scale renewable energy out of the air itself.

A couple of weeks ago some of us attended a briefing here by one of Australia’s pre-eminent geothermal energy companies, who are poised over the next few years to affordably tap the heat of the deep inner earth for the first time anywhere in the world. Hot rocks technology is deceptively simple but its potential is virtually limitless. And it is an acknowledged tragedy that a decade of neglect saw Australia lose our edge in the field of solar research and development. But we are going to get it back. Give us a national feed-in tariff and legislated renewable energy targets and within a few years we will be on our way to living in a solar nation. We are going to transform our sunburnt country with PV on every roof and large solar thermal plants feeding baseload electricity into the grid around the clock.

A couple of years ago the federal government’s own studies showed that with off-the-shelf technology with an average payback time of four years we could cut domestic energy consumption by a massive 30 per cent. Up the ante with more ambitious efficiency measures with an average eight-year payback and we could cut demand by 70 per cent. Efficiency is the hidden gift in energy policy that we have ignored for far too long. With the kind of leadership inspired by Senator Christine Milne’s energy efficiency access and savings initiative—EASI—it is time to grab this gift with both hands and pursue energy efficiency as though our lives depended upon it.

One rather profound consequence of a renewable energy system is that, once the infrastructure is in place, the fuel costs are largely free. No-one can own the sun, the wind and the tides—and perhaps it is this which scares the fossil corporations more than anything. I think it is time we admitted that, far from being an economic and social disaster, greening our communities is going to transform our society for the better. Traffic congestion, for example, is something that we can leave behind as our urban areas evolve toward pedestrianised, human-scale urban villages linked together with world-class broadband and fast, affordable mass transit. Transit oriented developments like these are taking shape all over Europe, East Asia and North America, anchored by medium- and high-density cores that blend affordable housing with retail services, health care, education, childcare centres and cultural institutions.

Electrified light rail systems and electric vehicles hold out the promise of transport network that runs on sunlight. Imagine if we could invent a zero carbon form of personal transport that had no fuel costs, emitted no toxic chemicals and improved the physical health of the passenger. Such an invention is already in wide use in parts of our community where planning policies favour bicycles and pedestrians instead of cars. In a renewable society we will no longer have the debatable luxury of eating heavily processed, overpackaged food-like products from the far side of the planet when community supported agriculture is restored to its rightful place at the foundation of good health and neighbourhood development. Instead of condemning families on low incomes to badly designed, mass produced, car-dependent housing in bleak fringe areas, Australian cities can become places of artful beauty again, with a diverse mix of private and affordable community housing more appropriate to an ageing population and changing demographics and lifestyles.

An energy-efficient Australia can be renewably powered within a generation. With determination and a bit of foresight, we can step past the desperate handful of fossil advocates who are scaremongering about the end of the economy as they know it and demanding that Australia should not get too far in front of the rest of the world. The most damaging myth of all is the one that says this cannot be done. People who say it cannot be done need to get out of the way of those who are doing it.

The Greens are the tip of the iceberg, really—the parliamentary expression of much deeper currents within society—and I would not be here tonight without the work of thousands of Greens WA volunteers who gave up a Saturday last November to work on a polling booth, or the wonderful campaign team who gave up the better part of 2007 so that we would have a fighting chance come election day. Four good friends saw me through the personal highs and lows, so, to Elize, Steph, Rina and Marie, thank you. The warmest possible thanks are also due to Ray, Trish, Luke and Khristo, who were the nucleus of this huge effort. In particular, my thanks go to Dave and Alison, who were there for me right from day one until we saw it through. Having you here tonight is really a gift, so thank you.

We had a superb team of lower house candidates and their supporters who put in the hard work in their local communities all over Western Australia, and in turn we were part of a huge mobilisation nationally, guided by the inspiring, gentle-humoured and seemingly inexhaustible Senator Bob Brown. I cannot help but reflect on what might have been for those who shared the roller-coaster with Sarah and me—Richard, Larissa, Alan, Kerrie Tucker and, of course, Kerry Nettle—but for the capriciousness of our electoral system. I know you are here with us in spirit as we carry this work forward. Senators will notice a number of new faces and some familiar ones behind the scenes. With formal party status for the first time, the five of us in here are supported by an expanded and very talented team of researchers, advisers and campaigners who are already too numerous to thank individually for their work. But I will settle for singling out my team for huge gratitude. Trish, Ray and Flick, thanks for being here and taking this journey with me.

In my work as a campaigner and researcher over the last few years, I have come into contact with some exceptional people. My enduring passion has been for an end to the nuclear age, and this has taken me from the blockade of Jabiluka as a guest of the Mirrar to the heavily contaminated villages surrounding the Jadugoda uranium mine in India, where the struggle is the same. Last month Flick and I spent the 63rd anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as guests of Mayor Akiba in Hiroshima, which has left afterimages that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. So tonight is dedicated to the atomic survivors, the Hibakusha, and to people like Uncle Kevin, Mitch, the Kungkas and their supporters everywhere. Our work for a world free of the curse of uranium mining, nuclear weapons and nuclear waste began on the humid morning of 6 August 1945. May we successfully conclude this work before the next Chernobyl is visited on some familiar city or Hiroshima comes home in the back of a parked van.

Tonight is dedicated to Nic and the rest of the Sea Shepherds who are gearing up for the next voyage to Antarctica to stay the harpoons on behalf of our ecological cousins, the great whales. It is dedicated to the crew camped in the Weld Valley tonight, in East Gippsland and Chester forest in the wild south-west, who have pledged to silence the chainsaws that are still hacking into our country’s precious native forests, our irreplaceable carbon banks. It is dedicated to those who stood up against the Burmese military a year ago this week in pursuit of democracy in their country, and to their supporters and family members here in Australia who remind us to never take our democratic safeguards for granted. And it is dedicated to the new generation of young activists who held Australia’s first camp for climate action in the coal terminals of Newcastle in July. They are acting because of our failure to act, and they are doing so with such powerful grace and good humour that it is impossible not to be inspired by their clarity of purpose. These young Australians are your sons and daughters, and they must be heard. They are from the same lineage as the people who raised the Southern Cross over the goldfields of Victoria or stood up for land rights, for an end to the carnage in Vietnam, for the right to organise collectively in the workplace and for every woman’s right to vote. Rather than reflexively setting our security forces against them, tapping their phones, vilifying them in the media or playing out all the other rituals of state intimidation, I urge the government to pause and reflect on their message of collective survival. Please do not baton-charge the messenger.

Many of the people who do this work are tired of fighting against poorly conceived megaproposals, toxic developments and wars, one after another. It is exhausting work and, even when you win, often all you have to show for your efforts is the absence of something awful. At our campaign launch last year I recalled an allegory that I had read of a group of washerwomen on a river bank who noticed a young child floating past, clearly in trouble. They waded in and managed to rescue the child. Then they noticed another and they saved that one too. And then another floated by, and another, and soon they were struggling to cope. Finally one of the women threw up her hands and retreated from the riverbank. The others panicked: ‘We need you here, comrade! Where are you going?’ Without breaking stride she replied, ‘I’m going to find whoever it is who’s throwing them in.’ It is up to every one of us to keep rescuing the children, but we also need to figure out what it is we are doing collectively that is putting them in harm’s way in such great numbers. Millions of us marched to prevent harm coming to the children of Iraq. Starting here in Australia on 15 February 2003, millions of people around the globe in more than 800 cities warned against going to war in Iraq over weapons of mass destruction that were not there. George Bush called us a ‘focus group’. In fact it was the largest protest in world history, and history has proven us right.

What we need is a mass destruction of weapons. The Iraq war must teach us this lesson, and it can become the exit strategy from war itself. This year the world will spend $1.3 trillion on narrow-minded military security, in the pursuit of ever more efficient and deadly forms of state-sanctioned violence. Australia’s contribution to this wilful ‘theft from those who hunger and are not fed’, as President Eisenhower put it, is $62 million a day according to forward estimates. This is feeding back predictably into regional arms races. You do not have to be a pacifist to recognise that this is a pathological and tragic misallocation of resources that cannot be allowed to continue. We need those resources to buy climate change mitigation and adaptation, to build sustainable cities, to close the gap and to bring about the transition to a world where this vast infrastructure of collective insecurity will be obsolete.

As a society, we have inherited an interlocking set of crises that were set in motion long before any of us were born. Climate change was not caused by people in this parliament. Peak oil is manifestly not the fault of anyone sitting here tonight. But a failure to act decisively given the stark evidence piling up all around us is no longer excusable. There are so many signs of hope. The apology in February lifted the spirits of the whole nation. The Prime Minister’s commission on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament is a truly welcome initiative. This country is overflowing with good ideas and a willingness to get on with this great work, but people are looking to this house for a sign that the political will exists to harness our national and global collective intelligence.

I am starting my time in here on the assumption that every one of us in this building wants the best for our families and friends, wants to serve the community, and wants to pass the place on to our kids in better condition than we found it.

We know that the media dines out on the spectacle of conflict and abuse which our Westminster system seems to imply, but in my very short time here it is already apparent that a vast amount of what the Senate does is based on collaboration, hard work and a certain grudging respect for different points of view.

Mr President, in the time it has taken me to deliver this speech, three thousand children were born into the human family, 300,000 tonnes of greenhouse pollution was injected into the warming air and $51 million was wasted on global military spending. We have only a short time to set our house in order and bring these priorities into balance.

I realise it is an exceptionally rare thing to have the undivided attention of this room; I thank you for that, and I really look forward to working with you as we bring our collective efforts, wisdom and good grace to bear on the challenges which confront us all. Thank you.