Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be able to add a contribution to the statements that have been made on the retirement of Joe Hockey, and I join with the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and others, who have acknowledged that Joe Hockey has been one of the most significant figures in the House of Representatives and in Australian politics over the last two decades.

Like me, Joe was elected on 2 March 1996, and immediately after his election he was appointed as chair of the Sydney Airport Community Forum. The Labor Party had made, in the latter years of the Hawke and Keating governments, what I regard as a very bad decision to defer the construction of a second airport for Sydney and to proceed with the third runway. It was the deferral of the construction of a piece of infrastructure that has remained necessary for Sydney; it is still necessary for Sydney and for the nation today. Sydney is Australia's global city, and when the third runway, the parallel runway running north-south at Sydney airport, was opened a decision was made to shut the east-west runway. That was a very bad decision indeed because not only did it lead to considerable insurrection amongst the residents to the north and south of the runway, who suffered from an absolute concentration of noise, it also led to people who had up to that point supported the second airport being at Badgerys Creek, such as the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils and all its member councils, to reassess their decision. It became a debate about aircraft noise rather than a debate about the economic future of Sydney, about jobs and about the nation.

Joe Hockey, in his position as the chair of the Sydney Airport Community Forum, had a series of public meetings around Sydney to develop the long-term operating plan for that airport. There was consultation and cooperation with me personally as a member of that community consultation committee. I had been member of the community consultation committee prior to my election to the national parliament, and I had been involved in what led to the acquisition of more than 150 homes and public buildings, including a church—the oldest Coptic Church in Australia—and other public facilities, in Sydenham. There was also the insulation of more than 10,000 homes, schools, hospitals, churches and other public buildings.

Joe Hockey, during that period, was prepared to come down to Sydenham in my electorate and to sit down in the lounge rooms and the kitchens without media, and we talked through some of the solutions. One of the problems that had occurred was that many of these homes were very much of working people. They were fibro homes. I remember sitting in a house in Tempe that was due to be insulated, yet the walls of the house literally did not meet the floor of the house; there was a gap. Therefore it was completely impossible to get adequate insulation into that home.

Joe Hockey, I think, from that period on showed himself to be someone who was concerned with people. At the end of the day we can have our ideological differences in this place, but the reason why we are here is to assist the lives of people. Joe Hockey and I have major ideological differences about the role of government and the way in which the state can have an impact compared with the free market. I probably am closer to Mr McCormack and some of the Nationals in that respect than either of us would be to Joe Hockey's free market approach.

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