Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

RAJAH () (): Colleagues, you all know that I'm a frontline doctor, and you all know that I've worked in one of the busiest hospitals and I've been a public servant my whole life. What you may not know is this: a few years ago, it came to my attention that I had been underpaid by my workplace. It was an inadvertent mistake, but it took a lot of advocacy to try and get this rectified. One of the groups I turned to, along with my two colleagues who, incidentally, happen to be other female doctors, was my union. I've been a member of a union my whole career. I joined when I was an intern 26 years ago. My union is called the AMA. It's still a union; it certainly advocates for doctors. The only difference is we have nicer shoes! That's it! Thanks to their advocacy, this wage problem was rectified.

The thing that's important here is I'm a doctor. I've gone through medical school and 12 years of specialist training. I even have a PhD. And it was hard. It was hard for me. It was hard for my colleagues. Imagine how much harder it is for our nurses and how much harder it is for our childcare workers. Imagine how much harder it is for the people who stack our shelves and put food on our table.

In my maiden speech, I said:

Healthy, happy workers make the economy hum …

I meant every word of it because I was talking about my own lived experience. And what do unions do? Unions are the voice for workers. Their mission statement is basically to keep workers healthy and keep workers happy. There is nothing radical about that. It is the right thing to do. And you know what? There is an enormous social and economic benefit that comes with that. We have seen through this pandemic what has happened. It has exposed the fault lines in our society—fault lines that were already there but have now been rent wide open. And what are these fault lines? Poor pay, poor working conditions and, for healthcare workers and aged-care workers and even teachers in schools and our childcare workers, probably suboptimal work health and safety. I have a lot of lived experience in that field.

Those opposite would rather pit Aussie against Aussie. They would rather pit workers against business, workers against industry, schoolteachers against their governments. That's what they peddled for nine long years. It was toxic division. And what has been the end result? The end result is it has weakened us all. It has nearly brought down the house. We as a government are not here to dwell on the past; we are in repair and recovery mode, and we are focused on rebuilding those foundations that have been crumbling under those opposite. We're going to rebuild them, we're going to make them stronger and we're going to rebuild this house called Australia.

I want to speak specifically about health care, aged care and child care. It's one ecosystem. As a working mother I could never have reached the heights that I did without the service and the dedication of childcare workers who looked after my two children. I couldn't have done it. They were like oxygen for me and my career. In health care I have watched nurses, social workers, physiotherapists, pharmacists and all the support staff be run down during this pandemic. There is only one government that is going to bring people together, and that is us. We are working in the national interest to repair these divisions so we can all prosper and we can stop this attrition from these critical industries. That only comes by valuing our essential workers, who, after all, as our Prime Minister said, are a national asset. Without them, mission critical industries like health, aged care, child care and logistics cannot function.

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