Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and congratulations on your election. It has occurred to me, I must say, in my naivete as a parliamentarian, that your role is somewhat akin to a judge on a new reality television show called So You Think You Can Talk! But of course there is somewhat more gravity associated with the role and I wish you all the best in it.

I have committed my working life to the cause of fairness and justice in our society. I believe very strongly in a fairer distribution of wealth and opportunity. I have been an advocate for the rights of working people and I have campaigned against injustice. I believe that a strong economy is an essential foundation for social progress and I profoundly believe in our democracy. I am proudly Australian and I believe that, as an independent nation, it would be appropriate to have an Australian head of state.

My values and beliefs have informed my decision to stand for election to the House of Representatives. But the achievement of change, of course, requires more than individual belief or personal effort alone. It requires the collective action of those with common ideals. That is why I have been committed to the labour movement for many years and that is why I am a member of the Australian Labor Party.

As former Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley put it in 1949, Labor is ‘a movement bringing something better to the people, better standards of living, greater happiness to ... the people’. I am grateful for the opportunity that Labor provided me to stand as a candidate in the electorate of Charlton and I am very proud to have been elected. I am also honoured to have been appointed Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement in the Rudd government. I wish to thank the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, for my appointment to this role and to congratulate him and all of the Labor team for the tremendous achievement of winning government.

Many people contributed to my election but I would like at the outset to thank my wife, Petra, for her personal support and sacrifice; and our children, Clara, Anna and Yannis. It has been a major upheaval for my family. I also sincerely thank my mother, Aida; my stepfather, Vic; and my sister, Jennifer—and I acknowledge my late father, Todd—for all that they have done to support me through my life.

Charlton is in the Hunter region of my home state of New South Wales. The electorate is named after former Labor leader and coalminer Matthew Charlton. It encompasses the western areas of Newcastle and Lake Macquarie, a region of considerable geographic beauty in which live very diverse communities. I respectfully acknowledge the work of the previous member, Kelly Hoare, and, before her, Bob Brown. They represented Charlton since its inception in 1984.

While there is growing prosperity in many parts of the electorate, there is also significant disadvantage. Charlton has a large retired population, many of whom depend solely upon the age pension. The electorate has lower than average income levels, a large proportion of people who attended school only to year 10 and youth unemployment which still stands at around 16 per cent, so there is much work to be done. There is also a large Aboriginal community in Charlton, and I extend my respects to the traditional owners of the lands within the electorate, the Awabakal people, and their elders. I respectfully acknowledge the Awabakal and Koompahtoo land councils and affirm my heartfelt support for the apology to the stolen generations. I will cherish the opportunity to work closely with Aboriginal people in the electorate.

Service industries are large employers in Charlton but manufacturing, coalmining and electricity generation are important economic drivers. The failure of the former Howard government on climate change has created uncertainty for the future of the coal and electricity industries in the region. There is apprehension amongst workers about their jobs and uncertainty about investment in the electricity industry. This is a problem area which I will take a keen interest in on behalf of the electorate and the Hunter region generally. In my view, a national trading scheme which effectively prices carbon emissions will be important for my electorate as well as for the country. Not only will it create an incentive to reduce emissions; it will provide greater certainty for jobs and for investment in all forms of energy.

Charlton residents have also suffered from insufficient investment in infrastructure. One of my main priorities will be to campaign for a new integrated rail, road and bus transport centre at Glendale, in the demographic heart of the electorate. Also high on my list is the implementation of the Rudd government’s commitment to a new GP superclinic in the area. The ratio of GPs to the population is now 1 to 2,000, making it far too difficult for many people to see a general practitioner.

I would like to thank not only the voters of Charlton for their support but also the members of the Labor Party and the local community who made a significant contribution to my campaign. There are, as usual, too many to individually name. However, I would like to acknowledge a small number who dedicated very much of their time: Kelly and Lynne Lofberg, Angie Sidonio, Janelle Smee and her family, Yasmin Catley and Megan Montefiore. I also received great support from businesspeople and many unions, and I particularly wish to thank the ACTU, the Maritime Union of Australia, the CFMEU mining and energy division and the Newcastle Trades Hall Council. I have very much appreciated the warmth extended to me from people in the community and I have had some great experiences while campaigning. My great-grandfather, who migrated to the Hunter from France, once owned a wine bar near Cardiff in the electorate. It closed, I think, in the 1950s. Imagine my pleasure when a very elderly and frail man came into my Cardiff campaign office and, after seeing my name on the window, asked if this was where the wine bar had moved to. He did say it was a long time between drinks!

I bring a variety of experiences to my new role. I grew up in Rooty Hill in Western Sydney. At that time it was a diverse, semirural community and a settlement area for many postwar European migrants. My father was a winemaker at Penfolds at the Minchinbury Estate. He died when I was 13 and this remains perhaps the most formative experience of my life. He instilled in me a sense of community, and I recall spending much of my time with him at community service and fundraising events in which he participated as a member of Rotary. Like many of my generation, I was influenced by the major political and cultural events of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly the tumult over the Vietnam War and the excitement surrounding Labor’s political ascendancy under Gough Whitlam—although, I have to say, in Rooty Hill these events were almost eclipsed by the shock and outrage over the nude scene in the rock musical Hair.

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