Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I'm sure you do! This next short while will be a period of self-reflection, because it's important that we take a good, long, hard look at ourselves to see where we went wrong. I've lost a lot of good friends that are not here today, not here in this sitting term, because of the many things we did that we shouldn't have done and the many things that we didn't do that we should have done. I'm very sad for them, and I hope that they're getting over what is no doubt the pretty significant grief of not being in this special place serving their communities.

But since the election, I've hit the ground running. In my usual style, I've done 20 listening posts since the election, because it's really important that we do listen. I always draw upon the analogy that the good Lord gave us two ears and one mouth and that we should use them in that order. We need to listen a lot more than we speak, and the vicar general in the church service yesterday spoke about that very thing.

As I sit and listen to those members opposite on what is for many of them a victory lap—I will not criticise the newbies, because it's a very special time for them—clearly, the Prime Minister is on a victory lap. I would just say to the Prime Minister and senior members of the government that it is incredibly important that they understand that Australians are still absolutely hurting. Nothing has changed. We are still in a period where more small businesses have gone to the wall in the last three years than in any other period in modern Australian history. As a small-business man of some 30 years before I went into politics, I feel their pain. It seems like the world is just getting more and more complicated, and that's not just at the feet of the current government; I think that's almost universal. I think back to my days when I was a young carpenter swinging a hammer for a living, and life seemed to be so much simpler in the eighties. But, of course, we can't just hanker for the past; we have to live in the future. But we really do, in this place, need to take stock. As lawmakers and parliamentarians, we should take stock of every single bill that gets tabled in this place and stop and think about how they will impact mum and dad Australia and small businesses. Small businesses are not just the backbone of my electorate in Fisher. They are the backbone of the Australian economy. They don't have human resources departments. They don't have in-house lawyers. They don't have IT specialists. It's mum, dad or maybe both sitting up at night doing the books. My dad used to say he felt like an unpaid tax collector when he was a motor mechanic for nearly 70 years. And nothing's changed. If anything, it's just gotten a whole lot worse. So I call upon my colleagues in this place to think about every single law that we look to pass and the consequences that they cause for everyday Australians. Every law that we pass often makes life more and more complicated.

Of course, over the last three years in particular, we have seen a significant increase in the cost of living. Groceries are up. Rents are up. Mortgages have been significantly up. Everything has gone up—the cost of energy. The cost of energy under this government is crippling Australian families. There are now 300,000 Australians in energy debt—300,000 Australians who cannot pay their energy bills. Just stop and think about that for a moment. Those are people who, in summertime, can't afford to turn the air conditioner on. In wintertime, they can't afford to turn the heater on. There are so many Australians who can't heat and eat together. They've got to make a decision: do I stay warm and not eat, or do I eat and not stay warm? That includes families across my own electorate. So my heart goes out to those people and those small businesses that are doing it tough.

I often remark, and have remarked over the last nine years, that unless you have sweated blood, wondering about how you are going to make payroll tomorrow, as many small businesses are doing tonight—it's payday tomorrow, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses are making decisions tonight about how they're going to pay their staff. And do you know what? They are very often dipping into their mortgages. They are very often dipping into their overdrafts to pay their staff tomorrow. So many small-business owners put themselves last. They will pay their staff before they pay themselves. And so I say to those small-business people out there in Australia: we hear you. We understand the pain that you are going through. But I'm not sure that the government does. In fact, I'm quite certain that they don't.

Over the last nine years, I have been absolutely driven, as the federal member for Fisher, to deliver for my local community, essentially on four pillars. Those four pillars are infrastructure, health care, small businesses, which I've spoken a lot about already, and protecting our future and the safety of Australians. In my first two terms in this place, the first six years, I was able to secure funding, when we were in government, for increases and better funding for the Bruce Highway—$3.4 billion to bring rail from Beerwah to Birtinya. I got funding for the Mooloolah River Interchange. I got funding for Third Avenue upgrades. Unfortunately, though, the member for Ballarat, who is the Minister for Infrastructure, cut the funding for the Mooloolah River Interchange in her infrastructure cuts. She cut the funding for Third Avenue. And what really upsets me, what really gets up my goat, is that members opposite talk about all they're doing in relation to the housing crisis, like building 1.2 million homes. But when this callous federal Labor government cut funding for the Mooloolah River Interchange, the then state Labor government had demolished over 100 homes to make way for the Mooloolah River Interchange upgrade. That's hundreds of Sunshine Coast locals that were evicted from their homes to make way for a road that the federal government then cut funding for. And yet, this government talks about all they're doing in relation to building homes, which has never eventuated. There was some $10 billion in their Housing Australia Future Fund. Actually, homes were demolished and people were evicted, and for nothing. Until, of course, the Crisafulli government in Queensland was elected. To their eternal credit, David Crisafulli reinstated 100 per cent of the funding for the Mooloolah River Interchange. As it turns out, those people weren't evicted from their homes for nothing, but they would have been but for David Crisafulli and the LNP state government.

Mr Deputy Speaker, one of my passions in this place, and you know this pretty well, has been my great interest in mental health. There are millions of Australians tonight who aren't just sad or down about something but suffer from anywhere from mild to very chronic mental health conditions. My family has walked that path for more than 20 years, and I want to say to those millions of Australians, particularly in my electorate of Fisher, that, even though we are in opposition, I will continue to hold this government to account in relation to issues around mental health.

In the six years that we were in government, I was able to secure funding for $12 million to build the Wishlist House, which provides accommodation for families with a sick person at the Sunshine Coast University Hospital. I was able to secure more than $20 million for the Thompson Institute, which is the first research centre for post-traumatic stress disorder for our first responders and our veterans.

I was able to secure more than $6 million to build Australia's first residential eating disorder facility. Based on the experiences that we learnt from in that process, when Greg Hunt was the health minister, he allocated $70 million to build a dedicated residential eating disorder facility in every state in this country. Prior to that, if you had a loved one that suffered from a chronic eating disorder, you had to travel to Sweden or the United States. Whilst the rollout by the states has been appallingly slow, I'm very pleased to see that they are finally starting to get on with spending that money and building facilities in their respective states.

We live in uncertain times. Everybody talks about that. I'm the former deputy chair of the PJCIS, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. The member for Bruce served admirably on that committee as well. We worked very well together. There is no doubt in my mind that we live in perilous days. The security of Australians, from a national security perspective, is at greater risk today than it has ever been, perhaps with the exception of the period leading up to 1945. Australian government departments and businesses are subject to constant cyber attacks from the likes of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. It is incredibly important that we, as a parliament, ensure that our security agencies are properly equipped with the legislation, the tools and the funding they need to keep our country safe.

I take this opportunity, once again, to implore the government to look at the national security strategy Jim Molan put up in the past. It is not enough, as the government has done, to institute a national defence strategy. A national defence strategy is just one aspect of a national security strategy. The defence of our nation involves the entire community—local government, state governments, territory governments, the business community both small and large. The whole entire civil society needs to be on board to assist us to defend this nation, because, make no mistake, this country is under attack. It is under attack every single second of every single minute of every single hour of every single day. It's all very well for the Prime Minister to be in China, but, if we do not recognise the threats we constantly face from the likes of the Chinese Communist Party, North Korea, Iran and Russia, we are turning a blind eye to those risks—and we do that at our peril.

The last election was a sobering experience for my colleagues. I acknowledge in the chamber the member for Monash—and the member for McPherson, who used to work for me; I'm very proud of him being in this place. Still, it is a very sobering moment. We have much to learn. We have to go through this period of listening, as to where we went wrong. We need to develop our policies without losing our values. I know that the shadow defence minister, sitting at the table here, will play a very important role in that policy development, and I look forward to working with him.

There are many other things I could say in the time remaining, but I want to thank my family for putting up with me and this very strange career that we have all chosen. I want to thank all 573 volunteers that helped me on my campaign. I would not be standing here representing my electorate but for those 573 people. I am immensely humbled by the hard work you put in. I thank you, and I thank the people of Fisher for showing their support. I will not let you down. I will work hard every single day I'm in this place.

See this speech in context