Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is both my pleasure and my privilege to be giving this address in reply as the federal member for Petrie for a second term. I am humbled by the trust the people of my communities have put in me. I also know that with this trust comes heavy responsibility. For that reason I must start this address by acknowledging the community and saying thank you for making the decision to continue to support me and the Gillard Labor government. I would also like to thank my staff for their tremendous effort and support over the past three years. It has been almost three years to the day since I was first elected, and the staff have been there to support me throughout this entire time, with only one permanent staff member moving on to a higher position within a state government minister’s office.

I would also like to thank the volunteers and relief staff who have worked with me in the office from time to time. They have all played an important role in our office. I would also like to thank the ALP branch members and supporters who have supported me not only through the election this year but since I was first preselected in 2006. They have continued to provide their ongoing support and to work hard with me for the betterment of our local community. No one person can win an election and it is this group of dedicated people who have ensured that I was returned as the member for Petrie.

To the Petrie campaign team, and particularly James Sullivan, the campaign manager, once again I thank you so much for your efforts and the tremendous jobs that you did, especially keeping me moving and out on those stalls at 5.30 every morning during winter, which was certainly a challenge, even with Brisbane weather. As every candidate knows, you certainly go through highs and lows over the period of a campaign and it is the people around you who give you strength to keep going. My supporters and the community did this. Thank you also to the Australian Workers Union. We have heard much criticism today in other debates in the chamber about the union movement throughout Australia, and it is once again disappointing to listen to such arguments. It just reinforces why there are still workers across this country who feel intimidated about belonging to a union and having that membership known openly throughout their workplace and about having the right to representation. I am a union member, I am proud of it, and I will continue to speak publicly about the important roles that unions play in workplaces throughout this country.

That brings me to the most important acknowledgement—that is, to my family. To my broader family—my father, my sister and her family, and my brother and his family—thank you for your support. I said in my first speech that my family and friends could not quite understand why I would want to put my hand up to do a job like this. I do not think their opinions have changed much. If anything, they have watched how hard I have worked and the nights I no longer have with my family and the weekends that I no longer can socialise with others, and are even more surprised that any person would want to be an elected member. But my reasons are clear, and I will go through them shortly.

I must say to my husband, George, that his belief in me gives me the confidence to put myself forward. My children, Emma and Cameron, have grown up so much over the past three years of my first term, and I certainly do not just mean in size—although they are catching up with me quickly. But my children, through my role as an elected representative, are learning more about the world around them, that governments at all levels and people of all political persuasions have an important role to play in shaping that world. I thank my husband and my children for their ongoing love and support.

I have learnt a lot in my first term as the federal member for Petrie. I am certainly wiser to the needs of the community and the challenges that we face in addressing those needs. Having said that, my resolve to work my hardest to advocate strongly on behalf of my communities has not diminished or wavered in any way. In taking a moment to revisit my first speech I was reminded of my words on that Monday, 18 February 2008. I spoke of how the efforts of businesses, community groups and individuals throughout my electorate gave me hope and inspiration, strength and energy. I believe I am even more inspired and more determined today than ever before. I am optimistic about the future for my local communities and for this nation. I am optimistic because I know what Labor was able to achieve in its first three years in government and I am confident of what we can achieve in the future under a Labor government.

I would like to take just a moment to look at what some of those past achievements have been. Labor was the first government of this Commonwealth to hold a welcome to country in this national parliament. Labor was the first government to apologise to the stolen generation, a moment in time that I will forever be proud to have been associated with. Labor was the first government to apologise to the forgotten Australians and Labor is the first government to introduce a paid parental leave scheme. It was the federal Labor government that saw this country through the worst global financial crisis that the world has seen since the Great Depression. It was the Labor government that acted swiftly and decisively, before many countries around the world, to initiate a stimulus package to support local jobs and invest in public infrastructure, where the private sector had all but walked away. It was the Labor government that provided much-needed support to our financial institutions to protect people’s savings. Our government is now the envy of the developed nations for our economic credentials and the strong economic performance that we are exhibiting as a nation.

Of course it is this Labor government that has put in place—and the analysis shows it is on track—measures to get the budget back into surplus by 2012-13. It was the stimulus announced in October 2008 and the Nation Building Program introduced in February 2009 that helped my local communities. The injection of payments to many pensioners and low- to middle-income earners, and an urging by the government to spend that money locally, meant local businesses, especially the retail sector, were able to weather the financial storm over the Christmas period in 2008 much better than they otherwise would have. This meant that jobs were saved. The investment in community projects through the Jobs Fund and the local governments meant additional work in the local area. The knock-on effect in infrastructure investment also meant that the government was supporting jobs not only in construction but in the retail, wholesale and manufacturing sectors and where the materials were being sourced. For all of its faults, we should also acknowledge that thousands of homes were insulated by reputable companies and that that insulation is serving those homeowners well.

To my mind, the greatest investment of all has been the investment in education. The Nation Building Program included the largest investment in capital infrastructure that our schools have ever seen. Across the electorate of Petrie we have new multipurpose halls and fantastic libraries. We have refurbished classrooms in our primary and secondary schools, we have new outdoor learning areas, we have new courtyards, we have new shaded areas. These schools have been transformed. Whether it is Clontarf Beach State School, Kippa-Ring State School, Aspley State School, Bald Hills State School, St Paul’s School, Grace Lutheran Primary School, Grace Lutheran College or many more, they all tell me the same thing: they are thrilled with their new facilities. The principals, teachers, parents and students are celebrating the fact that they have facilities which they never envisaged they would have. The contractors tell me about the jobs that have been saved. I hear a chorus of contractors telling me that if it were not for the school building work their businesses would have collapsed a year ago.

Much more work is still being done. Buildings are still being erected and new science and language centres are near completion. In addition, schools across the electorate have received computers under the computers in schools program and these schools are now at a two for one ratio. Trade training centres are being built. Schools are now getting new projects and new facilities under the Local Schools Working Together pilot project. Two schools in my electorate, a state government school and a private school—Redcliffe State High School and Southern Cross Catholic College—have joined together, through Local Schools Working Together, to build a performing arts centre. That centre will be used not only by the students but by the broader community, as will the school halls. Quite often I drive past these school halls—after school hours, in the evenings or on weekends—and I can see them being used by our local church and community groups. These are facilities for the whole community.

Our investment in schools goes well beyond infrastructure. It includes the development of national curricula, the My School website, the national partnership program and more support for national numeracy and literacy programs. These are all positive things that this government started in just its first term of government.

It was this Labor government, in its first term, that increased the base rate of the pension, providing people with much needed additional income. The Labor government did so much in just its first term. We must not forget that, in that first term, we did what we promised the Australian people we would do—we got rid of Work Choices. We provided three lots of tax cuts; we increased the childcare rebate; we invested massively in health, in GP training places and in nurses; and we continue to invest and move forward with our health reform agenda. These are all great things that we did in just our first term.

I am very proud, my electorate of Petrie having chosen to return me as their representative, to talk about some of the new initiatives that we are now taking on as part of our second term. The most important initiative is one that our local community has been wanting for a hundred years, with a corridor having been set aside for it for 32 years. This federal Labor government has delivered an agreement with our local council, the Moreton Bay Regional Council, and the Bligh state government to finally get a real commitment to the Moreton Bay Rail Link. The project will deliver a 12.6-kilometre rail line from Petrie to Kippa-Ring and six new train stations at Kallangur, Murrumba Downs, Mango Hill, Kinsellas Road, Rothwell and Kippa-Ring.

The people in the electorate of Petrie never thought they would see this happen. It is this federal government that made sure that we delivered. What does this project mean for our community? With 84,000 people living along the line, it will mean an incredible change. Every full train will take some 600 cars off the road and reduce carbon emissions. There will be increases in business opportunities and benefits for our schools. The schools in the area have been saying to me, ‘We have to hire a coach to try to go into the city, to the museum, to take the kids on excursions, but now we will be able to catch public transport.’ In the past, there have been parents who could not afford the high cost of some of those excursions. Now those excursions will be much more affordable.

The program is for construction to start in 2012 and by 2016 the six stations will be operational. But we are not waiting until 2012. The surveying work has already started and this Saturday the first public consultation on the project will take place in the North Lakes community. People will be able to come along, see the proposed line and talk about the proposed train stations and what the project means for our local area. It is only a matter of weeks since the election and we have started work on this line. That is absolutely incredible.

That is not all we are doing for our local community. We are building a GP superclinic. We started this superclinic in the first term of government but we have invested further money into this clinic so that when it opens in June next year this will be a state-of-the-art clinic. The additional funding we have promised the Redcliffe Hospital Foundation, as the provider of this superclinic, means that they are going to be able to go out and start delivering health services and programs in planned aged care and outreach services even sooner—before the centre is even opened. This is fantastic. This centre will have a dental school and GPs will be trained for the first time on the Redcliffe Peninsula. There is not one GP being trained in the area. This new GP superclinic will be training.

There are new stormwater initiatives—the Fitzgibbon Stormwater Harvesting Project and the Fitzgibbon Potable Roofwater Project. These are amazing projects that will deliver 133 million litres of new water supplies to the area. That is equivalent to 53 Olympic size swimming pools. These new estates will have their own water and take pressure off our existing dams. These are wonderful initiatives. The federal government has committed $7.13 million for those two projects to be rolled out by the Queensland Urban Land Development Authority.

Last but not least—and one which is very close to my heart—deals with the young people in our area. We will be building a North Lakes Youth Space. It is so desperately needed in this area that is growing so rapidly. This suburb has been there for only 10 years, but it still has another five years of growth to occur before it gets to capacity and we do not have sufficient youth services. The fact is that new families have come in over the last 10 years and these kids have grown up and are now teenagers and they do not have much to do in the area. We have invested $3 million to build a new Youth Space. We will not only provide a safe place for these young people to come but also have support services, counselling and services to assist them in getting skills and going into the workplace and assisting those most in need in our local community.

These are just some of the things that we are doing. Of course, the National Broadband Network is so important in our area. Mr Deputy Speaker, you would appreciate the need for the National Broadband Network. We may be just outer metropolitan areas but we have many suburbs where people cannot get connection in their home. We need a fast broadband system. The people in the electorate of Petrie want a fast broadband system, and that is what we as a Labor government will be delivering to them.

We will continue our investment in education and I will continue to be a very passionate advocate for investing in our schools and working with our schools in some many areas—not just the curriculum or the capital investment. There is an important funding review going on. I meet regularly with my schools across the private and public sectors and the state education bodies so that we can talk about the issues important to them and I can be a strong advocate on their behalf in this parliament.

We will continue with our health reforms. Our local hospitals are very excited about where we are going in the future with health reform. We have amazing nurse practitioners already operating in our emergency departments and we want to see more of them. We are training nurse practitioners for other hospitals in the region now because of the excellent work that our nurse practitioners are doing and the pressure they are taking off the emergency department by supporting those doctors. They will be working directly in conjunction with our new superclinic. If a person comes in they are triaged as category 4 or 5 and they are sent straight over to the clinic, which is open until 10 pm at night seven days a week and is bulkbilled, and they will be able to get treated there, taking pressure off the emergency department.

These are fantastic initiatives. This is what the Labor government are doing. We have done so much in our first three years and we have so much more to do. I look forward to working with my communities to achieve that.

My communities are doing such amazing things. The networking that I am seeing—the cooperation between community organisations, not-for-profit organisations, and businesses—in my electorate now is incredible. Big businesses such as car dealerships are joining with our community associations to help our youths. Many local restaurants are helping community organisations to raise funds for our young kids, to make sure that their basic needs are met for going to school. So they have books and pencils, they have school uniforms and shoes, and they are able to go on excursions. That is what bringing businesses in with community organisations can do. And by partnering with the government we can achieve so much for our local area.

I look forward to facing those challenges—and we do have many challenges, especially with the growth in our area, which is significant. Ours is the third fastest growing area in South-East Queensland. We do need to face those challenges. But together, as a community, we can face those challenges, and I look forward to continuing my strong advocacy on behalf of the people in the electorate of Petrie.

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