Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

on indulgence—I must say, coming fourth in the line after some very fine valedictories, I feel a bit like I'm the last speaker in the session after lunch and I'm stopping people from going to drinks!

Seventeen years—you wouldn't believe it would go so quickly, quite frankly. It's more than a blink. It's more like a hard day's work out in the paddock, quite frankly; it's tough enough while you're there but it's over quite quickly. It doesn't seem it was 17 years ago that I got here. I must admit, I went to a meeting this morning and got out on the wrong floor; I started off 17 years ago like that! I am reminded, in that sense, of the way life rolls on. A good friend of mine, Josie, said one day, 'Life is like a toilet roll; the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes.'

I love this job. I'm not tired of it, and I'm fit enough to keep going. It seems like I've got a growing task sheet; there are as many things on my desk at the moment as there's ever been. And I think, arguably, I'm the best in-form person in Australia in the seat of Grey. So why not keep going? The answer is, quite frankly, as I told my party room back in March, increasingly our friends are falling into three groups: those that are touring either Australia or the world, or towing a caravan around Australia; those are trying to die; and those that have been successful in the attempt. Teresa and I have collectively decided we're going to spend a bit of time in the former group before we get to the latter, and smell the roses along the way—even though, I must admit, Teresa is facing some trepidation at the idea of having me home full time. But we'll get along with that.

This job is never complete in rural and regional Australia. We still have an education gap. We struggle to attract teachers, health workers, aged-care workers and professionals. We have childcare deserts; in fact, Grey is listed as having one of the worst childcare deserts in Australia, and that is holding back communities in my electorate. When you try and get somebody to come, to recruit them to come and work in your business in one of the small towns, the first thing they say is, 'Where do I put my kids in child care?' The government's spent a lot of extra money on child care recently, but we're not getting any new places in regional Australia. We need that to change. Those of us that do live and work in and who were born and raised in regional Australia are a bit bewildered by the fact that so few people want to come and share this lifestyle, as the member for Parkes said. There will be a number of things he had to say that I'll cut across to. It's pretty good out there. For anyone that's got skills, you might be interested to come and live and work in the seat of Grey, and I just say: 'Go for it. You won't regret it.'

Part of that is that Australia doesn't connect as well with its traditional roots—its rural roots, its regional roots. And a lot of that is because, when we were younger, almost everyone in the city knew someone who lived in the country—an uncle or aunty who lived on the farm or a grandma and grandpa. They'd go up in the school holidays. But, increasingly, that's become a rarity more than the norm, and so there are whole swathes of the population now that are basically intimidated by the thought of going into the country for anything more than a short visit.

It's been a privilege to be a member of the federal parliament. I don't think any of us should ever forget what a privilege it is or forget who put us here. And I note, in that sense, the Liberal Party's gone through the process of preselecting someone to run in my place at the next election. I'm very hopeful that he'll be successful, and, to Tom Venning up there—it's his first visit to the parliament, so welcome, Tom. I hope, when you come back, you won't be sitting here; you'll be on the other side of the House. A very enjoyable experience.

It has been 17 years, and there have been some very significant achievements in my electorate in that time, and one would hope, for that kind of timeframe, there would be. On some, I've been the prime mover. On other, I've lent my support to the ideas and the dreams to assist the passions of others. It's how we get things done—working together in our communities for the common good. And I think members of parliament have a unique megaphone. Many times, we can actually use that public megaphone to get somebody in the Public Service to do what they should have been doing in the first place or to draw attention to an opportunity or a miscarriage of justice. But I think that megaphone is best used if it's not overused and if you actually pick your targets in where you can make a difference and throw your shoulders to the wheel on those. Equally, there is so much to do, because we need more of those skilled professionals that I touched on before.

We have plenty of critics on the work we do in this place. Someone should come out for a bit of a stroll some time. There are not as many as who would drive you out of it, but there are plenty of people that have a fairly low opinion of politics generally. And I just say to them: 'Okay. I can see that not everything we do in this place is perfect, but where do you think they do it better? Just start pointing to those dots on the map around the world where they have a better democracy and where they have better outcomes,' and, generally speaking, I find them speechless. I do offer in there, if you can find the place, I'll see if I can set up a permanent visa for you. But there is no doubt in my mind that, if you're born in Australia, you have won the lottery of life. We are so lucky. We're the envy of the world in many cases. In most surveys, we're in the top half-dozen economies of the world and the highest incomes. We have the fourth longest uninterrupted democracy in the world. That's a pretty amazing thing for a nation whose Constitution is 123 years old. It just shows you how unstable the world can be—that we are the fourth longest. We have world-class services, generally speaking. They're all under pressure, and we all know that we could all do better in certain areas, but don't undersell what we have here. By comparison with many other nations, this is a very enviable place to live.

On that theme—once again, the member for Parkes touched on it—Donald Horne is the often misquoted author who wrote the book The Lucky Country, but what he was saying was that Australia was lucky, but we're in danger of squandering our luck, and that our luck would run out. I actually think I'm more worried about that today than I would have been in 1963 when he wrote the book, because we seem to be loading the dice against Australia and Australia's industries at the moment and disadvantaging ourselves in comparison with other nations around the world.

I've just come back from leading a delegation to Morocco, joined by some very good parliamentarians, including the member for Adelaide over there—thanks, Steve. And the dynamism of the place—their ability to get something done in a short timeframe—just leaves you wondering whether they're 50 years behind or 50 years in front of us, quite frankly. They've set up a free trade agreement with Europe, and Renault have built this enormous car plant there and are shipping the cars straight back in. They have economic tax-free zones—all these things. They are an innovative country on the move, and I think maybe we need to reflect on how they got to that place.

Our falling per capita productivity is a great concern, as are drifting education standards. We know that our schools are not keeping up with our neighbours', in our own neighbourhood. There are stifling regulations and ever-expanding responsibilities of employers to pick up the bill of national objectives—for example, domestic violence leave. And it's not a bad policy—it's a perfectly admirable thing to do, the right thing to do—but how on earth did it end up being the employer's responsibility rather than the responsibility of general society, of the taxpayer? That's the kind of thing we pop onto employers all the time, such as when a government in South Australia suddenly decides to declare Easter Sunday a holiday and the pay goes from time and a half to double time and a half for people who are trying to run a cafe. It wasn't theirs to give away! They are giving away the money of private individuals and businesses, and I think we always need to be mindful of that in a place like this, where we make decisions about what those impacts are on the ground.

As Australians, we're always seeking increasing standards. The nursing home, the level of health care, the style of holiday and the number of appliances that our parents accepted aren't good enough for us. But it all costs money, and we expect this great country to foot the bill. So, those aged-care facilities that are too small for us and don't have the connected bathroom and all those kinds of things, but that all costs money. I think there's a fair argument that we are actually not contributing enough to our nation to make it successful, to pay for all the things that we are demanding as a population. I think that's something we could all reflect on—how we do a better job for our nation. A very famous president of the US talked about what we could do for our nation rather than the other way around. I think we are reaching that point. So, while people will make claims now to work a four-day week, for instance, or they don't want to come into work at all, thank you very much, or they want to have more holidays, I think we need to reflect on that level of productivity and what on earth is going to pay for all these extra things that we want in our lives. There's a money-go-round effect here.

More and more Australians are involved in the service industries—and good on them; I'm not saying that's a bad thing to do. But, on the other hand, service industries do not create new wealth for this nation; primary producers do. In the very broad term of when I went to school, primary producers were people who actually farmed or produced something from scratch, like a miner or a manufacturer. Increasingly there are fewer in that cohort and more in the area of service delivery. That's all very well as long as the country can pay for it, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so, and I think we need to reflect on that.

The electorate of Grey has achieved much over the last six parliaments. The member for Parkes talked about big shiny things, and I'm very pleased to report that we have a twin bridge in Port Augusta called the Joy Baluch AM Bridge—

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