Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to sincerely thank the wonderful people of Kingsford Smith for bestowing upon me the great honour and privilege of continuing to represent our wonderful community here in the Commonwealth parliament for the next three years.

When people talk about the community of Kingsford Smith they often mention the natural beauty of our area: the magnificent coastline from Clovelly all the way down to La Perouse and the historic Botany Bay, or Kamay, as it's known in the Bidjigal language, to the south of the electorate. There are the majestic Malabar Headland and the beautiful walking track around that wonderful natural beauty and our sensational parks, like Sir Joseph Banks Park in Botany or Fred Hollows Reserve in Randwick, that provide much-needed green space for the residents of our community.

While all of these natural wonders are certainly a great feature of our area, I often say to people that the best thing about the community of Kingsford Smith is the people, that we look after each other and we care for each other. That was again on display last weekend as our community came together, unfortunately, to recognise those from our community who lost their lives in the Bali bombings 17 years ago. The community of Kingsford Smith was hurt probably more than any other, with 20 people from our community passing away in that terrible tragedy. I attended two services on the weekend where the community came together to let the families and friends of those who perished in that unfortunate tragedy know that they will never be forgotten and that we are here for each other and we care for each other. It's a great symbol of the community that exists in Kingsford Smith, which I am so proud to represent.

Kingsford Smith is a multicultural community. Our population is enriched by migrants from all over the world who have come to our area to make it their home. They make a wonderful contribution to our area. We are very, very proud of our Indigenous heritage, with the Bidjigal people at La Perouse, who've inhabited the shore and waters around Kamay and the coastline of our area for tens of thousands of years. I thank the Aboriginal community for the great contribution that they make to nurturing our natural environment and to the culture and the people of Kingsford Smith. That's reflected in wonderful Indigenous events in our community, events like the Blak markets that occur regularly at Bare Island; IndigiGrow, a program at La Perouse Public School which teaches young people about the benefits of bush tucker and Indigenous horticulture; the Koojay Corroboree that happens every year at Coogee Beach; and, of course, the wonderful work of the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council. I'm very proud to represent that Indigenous heritage here in the Commonwealth parliament.

Our people are passionate about protecting our natural environment and particularly about ocean conservation. We live on the water, and so much of our recreation is enjoyed around our magnificent beaches and coastline. There is historic Botany Bay and the enormous natural heritage and conservation value of Botany Bay and the wonderful green spaces that we have in our area at places like the environment park at Randwick. This of course is reflected in events like the Eco Living Expo, which is put on by Randwick council every year and gets bigger and bigger. Members of our community come together to learn to how to care for our natural environment and how to change their lifestyle to ensure not only that we reduce our carbon footprint but also that we live more sustainably in our local community.

The community of Kingsford Smith believe in the science of climate change and are frustrated by the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government's approach to climate change and their lack of strong action on climate change. It was something that came up regularly during the election campaign. I met with local representatives of climate action groups in my electorate office on several occasions to let them know about Labor's commitment to taking stronger action on climate change, that we believe in the science. Labor understand that if this generation of decision-makers don't take strong action on climate change then it will be our kids who will suffer in the future and will have the pay for the cost of our inaction. There was a lot of support for Labor's stronger approach to climate change at the last election—our programs to boost renewable energy, reduce carbon emissions and, importantly, restore the marine reserves that were cut by the Turnbull government. On behalf of the people of Kingsford Smith, I will be an advocate for stronger action on climate change in this Commonwealth parliament and in our wider community.

Cost-of-living increases have been a huge burden for many living in the community of Kingsford Smith. We all know that Australia has one of the highest levels of household debt of any nation in the OECD. Living expenses in Kingsford Smith tend to be higher than in other areas because of the high cost of housing. Kingsford Smith's proximity to the city, to the magnificent coastline but also to important economic infrastructure like the airport and the port mean that it is a popular area to live. The population has been growing, but the cost of housing has been increasing rapidly. This is putting a lot of pressure on families, on small businesses and on pensioners in our community who are struggling to make ends meet.

When you add the costs of child care, insurance, education and transport, it makes for a dim picture for many living in our community. This is a community like the rest of Australia that has been weighed down by sluggish wage growth. Their incomes haven't been keeping pace with the cost of living and they are feeling the pressure. Our community is buoyed by a strong services sector, particularly in the restaurant, catering and hospitality sector, which employs so many people. But the people working in that sector have been weighed down again by cuts to their minimum penalty rates. This government stood by and did nothing, whilst the people of Kingsford Smith working in the services sector had their incomes cut. In fact, this government actively opposed Labor's attempts in this parliament to restore the cuts to penalty rates that were undertaken by the Fair Work Commission some years ago. The Liberal Party supported cuts to penalty rates, whereas my Labor colleagues and I have been trying to overturn those disastrous cuts to the incomes of people in our community that have made life harder and reduced their living standards.

Like any other Australian community, the people of Kingsford Smith believe in access to health care and they support and are strong believers in the viability of Medicare. In years gone by, Labor received a lot of support when the Liberal Party proposed to make cuts to Medicare through co-payments and the like. The Prince of Wales Hospital, the principal hospital in my community, has suffered from cuts over the course of this Liberal government. We are now undertaking another battle because the New South Wales Liberal government is proposing to close the paediatric cardiac service at the Sydney Children's Hospital. It is a vital service for people in our community and wider Sydney. The New South Wales Liberal Premier Gladys Berejiklian, at the last New South Wales election back in March, promised in writing to our community that there would be no cuts to the paediatric cardiac service at the Sydney Children's Hospital.

Since the election, after they lost the seat of Coogee to the Labor Party, what we have seen is the New South Wales Liberal government actually proceed with this cut to the paediatric cardiac service at the Sydney Children's Hospital. I've had several meetings and I've attended rallies with surgeons, with nurses, with other allied health staff and, importantly, with the parents of children whose lives have been saved at the Sydney Children's Hospital by the very service that this Liberal government proposes to cut. It is a disgrace. I and many members of my community are fighting this cut to health services in our area. We have a growing population in Kingsford Smith. We need better health services, not cuts to health services, which is exactly what we're getting from the combination of a Liberal federal and state government.

Education is vitally important to the future of our children. I visit a lot of schools in my community, and when I was a senator I visited them across New South Wales. Something that really alarms me is the disparity in resources that you see when you visit different schools. When you visit some public schools you see that those schools are struggling in terms of resources. Then you go to some of the private schools throughout New South Wales and the wider country and you see they have some of the most magnificent playing fields, swimming pools, artistic performance centres and the like. It is not fair that some schools do not have the same resources or access to those resources as others.

Labor's policy at the last election proposed to ensure that there was a fairer allocation of funding for schools in this country based, importantly, on the needs of the student. Labor's proposal was for additional funding for all schools, but importantly for those schools that needed it the most. We were proposing millions of dollars of additional funding for Kingsford Smith schools to ensure that we could employ more teachers and to ensure that students had access to better resources and more support, particularly if those students had a disability, were Indigenous or were falling behind in their literacy and numeracy and needed support to get their level back up.

Also, we all know that TAFE has been decimated by the combination of a Liberal federal and state government. We've seen that in cuts to programs at the Randwick TAFE. You, yourself, Acting Deputy Speaker Bird, have come to our community and visited Randwick TAFE in the past and have seen what a devastating impact the cuts have had on our community. Of course, Labor, at the last election, was proposing to support TAFE and ensure that it provided access to people at affordable prices to get a vocational education, because we know that the cuts to TAFE funding undertaken by this Liberal government have ensured that state governments have put the cost of TAFE up and that some of the course fees have increased by factors of 100 per cent and over. That just means that there are 150,000 fewer apprentices in Australia since this government was elected, and that says everything about this government's commitment to vocational training.

The combination of a Liberal state and federal government has been a disaster for our community in a number of areas. I've mentioned the cuts to health that have already been undertaken at the Sydney Children's Hospital and the Prince of Wales Hospital. We've also had to deal with this light rail debacle, which has gone on in our community for a number of years now. It's a program that is now a billion dollars over budget and years late and from the first day of operation will be at capacity, it will be full, with no room for growth at all, not to mention the effects that it has had on households throughout the community and, importantly, small businesses. Many of those small businesses along Anzac Parade simply couldn't cope because of the disruption to their businesses and have closed down. We've seen marriage break-ups and we've seen mental health issues, all because of this Liberal government's inability to manage a routine infrastructure project.

Now they want to heap on our community a cruise ship terminal at Yarra Bay. This is opposed by the local Aboriginal community. It will ensure that their traditional fishing areas that they use for food are disrupted and affected. It will be a disaster for the natural environment, particularly if they have to dredge Botany Bay on the northern side for the third time in recent history. It will have an effect on Bare Island and the weedy sea dragon and the pygmy pipehorse—protected species that exist in those areas. The seagrass in Botany Bay has just started to come back after dredging having been done in the past. That will again be affected. It will be an environmental disaster for Botany Bay. It will affect recreational fishers, and there are many people in our community that fish off the breakwall at Yarra Bay and Molineaux Point. This project will have a direct effect on the ability of people to undertake recreational fishing in our community. It would be a disaster for the dive industry, which is an important employer of people in our area. It will have a disastrous effect on the community through increasing traffic on local roads and the noise associated with it—and we get enough noise from the port and from other heavy industry that exists in the area, including the airport. It's something that is vehemently opposed by our community and it's something that I will fight my hardest against in this place.

I want to finish by congratulating the new Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, on his position and his election as the Leader of the Labor Party. I thank him for bestowing upon me the great honour of being an assistant shadow minister in the area of financial services and the republic. I also congratulate and thank Bill Shorten on the wonderful job that he did as the Leader of the Labor Party over the course of the last six years. It was a pleasure to have been a member of his shadow ministry for a number of those years.

On the first day of the 46th Parliament in July, when we all came back to parliament, the first thing that we did was take an oath. The first words that we utter in this place are an oath. We swear allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II, her heirs and successors. We do that because we are required to do that under the Australian Constitution. I would much prefer to swear an oath of allegiance to the people of Australia, who elected us—specifically the people of Kingsford Smith. I would much prefer to swear allegiance to the people of Australia and to swear to serve them diligently and faithfully in this place. Instead, we swear allegiance to a foreigner in another country. It is outdated. It perfectly highlights the archaic nature of our Constitution not only in this area but also in the area of Indigenous recognition in our Constitution.

We all know that, for a number of years, the Uluru statement has united the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community in Australia. It represents their wish about how they can work with Australian governments to improve the living standards of Indigenous people in this country. We should get on with the task of reforming our Constitution to recognise the contribution of Indigenous Australians and to enshrine the principles of the Uluru Statement from the Heart in our Constitution. I commit, on behalf of our community, to work with the government to achieve that. But we also should be looking longer term, and that includes looking at finally having an Australian as our head of state. I recognise Mr Falinski and I thank him for his contribution to this important debate. We've known each other for many, many years and, since our days in Young Labor and Young Liberals, we've worked together in a bipartisan manner to ensure that one day we have an Australian as our head of state. I am very, very proud to have been given this honour by Anthony Albanese, the Leader of the Labor Party, to work with the Australian people and people like Mr Falinski to ensure that we make this a reality in our lifetime.

I want to thank all of the wonderful volunteers that contributed to our campaign in Kingsford Smith. I say to you: I simply would not be here without your support, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. All of the hours that you spent in helping with letterboxing, with doorknocking, with prepoll and with other aspects of the campaign, including election day, made it possible for me to have the strong result that we had in Kingsford Smith, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I thank my staff, my very dedicated and talented staff, for their hard work—Leigh Heaney, Ben Leeson, Lachlan McGrath, Clare Cullen, Alexi Cassis, Lorena White and Dylan Parker—and for their dedication and service not only to me but to our wider community and the Labor Party.

In conclusion, I again thank the wonderful people of Kingsford Smith. I'm very, very proud to be your local member and I look forward to working with you to make our community a better place to live in over the course of the next three years and beyond.

Debate adjourned.

Proceedings suspended fr om 12:50 to 16:00

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