Matt Smith (Leichhardt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I stand and acknowledge the traditional owners of the land we stand on today. I pay respects to elders past, present and emerging. I celebrate the world's oldest living culture—65,000 years of songlines and connection to land, sea and country. They tell a story of beauty, resilience and strength.

There have been 1,276 federal members of parliament since Federation. Some have soared and will be remembered as great leaders. Some have broken down barriers and created change. All have entered this place to make Australia better. Their first speech was their way to introduce themselves, their ideas, their values and their ambitions. The tradition has endured, and, 1,270 or so speakers later, it is my turn. This is not as easy as it sounds. How does one person distil everything they are and their ambitions for the electorate and the country into 20 minutes while wearing a tie—a tie he had to buy four weeks ago because he only owned one! That last sentence is not a part of the collective MP experience, and I apologise.

Leichhardt, which I have the honour of representing, stretches from the southern suburbs of Cairns; hugs the coast taking in Kuranda, Mossman and Port Douglas; takes a hard left; and runs up the cape all the way to the Torres Strait. Leichhardt is a place of unfathomable beauty and diversity. It is the most Australian place in Australia. Leichhardt is home to two ancient and distinct cultures: the cultures of Zenadh Kes, meaning the people of the land, sea and sky of the Torres Strait; and, of course, of the Dreaming, the songlines of the many different Aboriginal peoples of the Cape York and the Far North. When you travel to community or to one of the islands in the Torres Strait, the culture breathes. You can feel it. In the Aurukun, children speak to me first in Wik. Everyone else there they know speaks Wik, so they figure I should also speak Wik, and that is beauty.

The Midnight Oil song 'Beds are Burning', allegedly the 18th-best Australian song of all time—it should have been higher, but I didn't vote for it; that's on me—references the forced removal of the people of Mapoon from their traditional homes. Well, this year marks the 50-year anniversary of those people giving the finger to governments and mining companies and going right back. That is resilience.

The Torres Strait also punches hard above its weight. It is of course the birthplace of Uncle Koiki Mabo, a man of Mer Island, who, with his fellow plaintiffs, overturned terra nullius. And that is strength. I am proud to call Maria Tapim, daughter of plaintiff Dave Passi, my friend.

The Cape is the great frontier. There you'll find mining, agriculture, fishing, tourism, small business and services. It is a place where people go to find themselves, or lose themselves. You head up to the Cape to live your last either six months or 30 years. There is no in-between. I met a bloke in Weipa who told me he'd drifted up north on a fishing trip in the mid-eighties, wet a line off the bridge, caught a barra and thought, 'Yep; I live here now'! He got a job at Rio and is proud that his daughter is now working the mines with him and at the lifestyle he has provided for his family across generations.

Beneath the Cape lies the Cairns and Port Douglas area, the tourism heart of Australia. Our tourism industry is second to none and works hard to protect and promote our natural assets, the most important being the Great Barrier Reef, which supplies 64,000 jobs. When international tourists think of Australia they think of our reef. And Cairns is a thriving modern city, welcoming people from all over the world to holiday and to live. This is reflected in the celebrations held by our communities. Each cohort of migrants has brought something new to the area. The Italians played a massive part in our sugar industry. The Chinese ran the market gardens. And now the African- and Nepali-speaking Bhutanese refugees are calling Cairns home, and bringing with them vibrancy and hope for their lives in Australia.

The Far North, especially Leichhardt, sits on the edge of greatness, and we are uniquely positioned. We could be a global powerhouse for renewable energy. We have the wind, we have the rain, we have the space and we have the sun. Our critical minerals are in abundance. If I sound optimistic it's because I am. A future made in Australia could just as easily be a future made in the Far North. Our region has so much untapped potential. We are the gateway to the South Pacific. With our proximity Asia, all roads lead north.

Of course, the area does have its challenges. Our tourism industry is still trying to work its way back from COVID, and the reputational infrastructural damages from natural disasters have not helped. But I say this very clearly: come north; you will have the time of your life. We are open for your business.

Connectivity remains an issue. I was heartened when it was announced during the campaign that we'd be working to get all of Leichhardt to have mobile coverage. This will improve business, health and educational opportunities right throughout the electorate. It will make people safer.

A large chunk of the electorate is cut off by road every wet season and relies on sea freight, driving up costs for small business and creating other challenges.

Climate change is hurting the Torres Strait. On the island of Masig, the bodies of the ancestors and more recently departed family members, including babies, are washed out to sea when the cemetery gets inundated. I have spoken to members of the threatened communities, who have told me quite clearly that they will not leave their babies, and when the sea comes for them they'll sit, wait and accept their fate. For saltwater people, the sea being a threat is an existential crisis of its own, and this is the stark reality. The first lot of climate refugees will not come from the South Pacific but from our own country.

The Far North represents 10 per cent of all domestic violence call outs in Queensland, and we have had enough tragedy. I was deeply affected by a murder-suicide that rocked our region. I attend many rallies calling for an end to domestic and family violence and gendered violence—events like Reclaim the Night. Too often I'm one of the only male voices in the room. Men of Australia, I challenge you to step up on this issue. Recent statistics say 32 per cent of men have confessed to using coercive control on women; 10 per cent copped to using physical violence. To put that into perspective, on a cricket team, statistically one team mate beats his partner.

Far too often, violence begets violence, and intergenerational trauma is a real thing. For children witnessing domestic and family violence, the prism through which they see the world is darkened. Sons are taught to be perpetrators, and our daughters are taught to accept it. As men, we have to call out this behaviour, protect those we love and help other men to break the cycle and deal with the mental health issues that exacerbate violence. We owe this to our children and to ourselves.

I have been an athlete, a sport and rec officer and a union organiser, and now I'm here. 'Why' is a good question. When Senator Green walked into my office last year I'd been in Cairns nearly 20 years. I arrived there at 25 on my last chance in the NBL. I found a good home and good coaches and led the league in field goal percentage in 2007. I won a national championship with the Marlins in the QBL with the first Indigenous NBA player, Nathan Jawai, and the rest of my friends. My NBL career came to an end in 2008-09 when the Taipans went broke. The GFC had hit everyone hard, and the Taipans were not immune. The owner, John O'Brien, generously sponsored most events and sporting teams in Cairns. John came into training one morning and told us what'd happened. It was a hard conversation. It took courage from a man who had lost everything to front us, and it spoke volumes about who he was as a person. We went from preparing to play Sydney to not knowing if we would see out the week. The liquidators were called in, and we were ultimately offered a choice: take a redundancy of sorts, get paid and the Taipans would disappear forever; or play on, take a 75 per cent pay cut and maybe Taipans survive. We the players were also told we had to fire two of our teammates to continue, Dave and Larry. Thankfully, Dave and Larry quit before we were forced to vote. I caught up with Larry a couple of years ago in LA; I have not seen Dave since.

I had just turned 29, my daughter Sienna was not yet walking and many of us were experiencing the early stages of fatherhood. To ask the players to take that he was too much, but we did it. In a unanimous decision we decided to press forward even though we knew in our hearts knew there was precisely zero chance of the Taipans getting sold. It was the height of the GFC, and Cairns was on its knees. No buyer came forth, and we played on with reduced access to training facilities and things like food. Then one of the most audacious plans in Australian sport was hatched by people like Denis Donaghy, Mike Scott and Mark Beecroft: the Taipans would be floated publicly as an incorporated organisation, and the town would buy the team. People who were really struggling dug deep—$50 here, a couple of grand there. The people of Cairns, facing the largest economic downturn they had ever seen, raised the money to buy the licence and keep the Taipans. Every family that comes to games, every business that benefits from the Taipans bringing 4000 people into the CBD, every school clinic, every autograph and every win belong to the 10 young men in that room and the community that decided to back them. It was my proudest moment as an athlete, the day we decided the town and the team were bigger and more important than ourselves, and the town met us. That is what Far North Queensland is: backs against the wall, we come out swinging and we protect what is ours. The season had ended, and I never played NBL again.

Post basketball, like many athletes, I was a bit lost. I worked for the former member for Leichhardt, Jim Turnour, who at the time held the seat, and former senator Jan McLucas, before making my way into the sport and rec industry. Without the structure and identity that basketball gave me I quickly spiralled into depression. I will not pretend that it was fine. I lost five years of my life wildly oscillating between a fight-or-flight response and numb blankness. I looked at every possible option to make it stop. In the end, salvation came from three things: professional help, a renewed focus on my physical fitness and a return to the sport. With the encouragement of my friend Jamie Pearlman, a former Taipans player, I found my way back into the Queensland Basketball League, and then I rediscovered me. I found the strength I needed to get out of depression in asking others for help, not drowning in my own ego and weird perceptions of masculinity. Professional sport asks you to be an invulnerable, unbeatable hero. The people will love you for it, and you will love you for it. When it's all over and the crowds go away, it can be hard for Superman to only be Clark Kent. I said goodbye to elite basketball on my own terms in 2018. We'd had a beautiful run of 20 years together, and as my body aged and my skills diminished I learned that it's nicer being vulnerable, being available, being kind and being a real person—being Clark.

After that I had a brief but stroke impacted dalliance with Australian rules football. I do not recommend strokes—zero out of 10. But years of sport had put me in good stead. I played angry; my best work on court was in an absolute rage, and having a stroke made me really mad. I aggressively attacked rehab and found my way back. I stand before you with no lasting impacts, except this little finger's a bit weird, which only impacts my guitar-playing—which is fine, because after all, how many times do you need to hear Wonderwall? You have no idea how long I debated whether I was going to sing that line. At the end of 2018 I found my partner Renee, or she found me. She is a world-class triathlete and coach, having represented New Zealand numerous times, and recently she became Australian. I love her very much, I'm very proud of her and I love having her in my corner. Through Renee I found a new hobby in scuba diving. Together we take advantage of the World Heritage areas on our doorstep. My children dive too. Renee gave us a gift that we can all enjoy together. I love her; she makes me better. Life is a team sport.

Eventually I answered a job in the Cairns Post and I became a union organiser. It's all very normal; it's very Australian, and that's the point. I've made some interesting career choices, but when Senator Green discovered me and asked me to consider putting my hand up, she found me in an office, not on the basketball court. I said no. I was happy organising, working for Together and helping public sector workers. I'd travel up the cape for work, where I'd run free basketball clinics and the occasional shoe drive. But a few weeks later I did an event with Craig Foster, the former Socceroo captain and great. We chatted about our careers, how fortunate our lives had been and some of the work we've done with community. Craig ended up challenging me: 'What do you do? You've been given a lot by this community. How do you give back?' I'd been in Cairns 20 years; I owe it a lot. I was picked up off the scrap heap by the Taipans. I have a family, a partner, a couple of Chihuahuas, a community and a home. As I considered all of this it dawned on me that this would be the best way to pay down that debt, so I stand here to represent Leichhardt not out of ambition but out of obligation and out of love.

My lens, like everyone's, is tinted by the experience of the people who came before me: a deserter from the Second Fleet, a soldier in the second wave of Gallipoli, an illegal Chinese immigrant during the gold rush and some who were already here when the rest of them arrived. My own immediate family exposed me to people who make a difference. My grandfather Bill was a food scientist at CSIRO who built Australia's first gas chromatograph and invented Twistie flavouring. You're all very welcome. My grandmother Pat was a dispatcher for a taxi company. She took me to the zoo and to the theatre in Melbourne. My other grandfather, John, oversaw the building of the telephone lines in East Gippsland and was mayor of Sale while I was growing up. My grandmother Mary was a teacher. They lived around the corner, and she looked after me as a child. She read me Kipling. They loved me and my sister very much. John taught me pool. It was amazing how close the games were, until the day I beat him—never close again. Bill once called me from his nursing home when he'd heard I got a job with the Together union. The conversation was quick: 'I hear you're a union man now, son—good honest work, unions.' That was it. It occurred to me that this was the first job I'd ever had that he could relate to. I reckon he would probably enjoy this moment. I was lucky to have all four grandparents into my adulthood. They saw me achieve many of my childhood dreams and were an integral part of my life growing up.

My aunt Michelle, who unfortunately couldn't be here today, made a career with the Victorian police and let me live with her early in my basketball career. My aunt Carolyn was a gallery director and mayor of Wellington shire in Gippsland. She lived across the road when I was a child, which was kind of like a communal space for us kids, rather than two separate houses. Both my parents, Mike and Wendy, teach. Over the past 50 years there would be very few kids in Sale that have not had some interaction with my folks. They have helped write the future of thousands and thousands of people. My sister is a geologist who works the mineral sands in Mildura, where she lives with her husband and their two boys. I have two daughters, Sienna and Scarlett, whom I am immensely proud of. They are better than me, they will get to make choices and build their own futures and I can't wait to see it.

It was 12 months ago last week that the Prime Minister came to announce me as the candidate in Leichhardt. We walked the Cairns Show together and, watching him in those interactions, I was struck by the enthusiasm, the kindness and the generosity with which he chatted to show-goers, took selfies and just enjoyed the moment. The PM visited many times over the campaign. On one occasion we ended up playing pickleball. I drop-shotted him, just to test the legs a little bit. He got onto it a little bit faster than I would have liked, so I started hitting it to the kid after that. I'm not losing on TV. Thank you, Prime Minister, for starting me on this journey. Thank you for your support and your confidence, even when mine would sometimes waver.

In the intervening 12 months as a candidate and now as a member I have been asked lots of questions about myself. To answer them, I have used the first person a lot—'I did this, I did that, I played in the NBL, I, I, I.' But, when I take step back and look at my whole life, the 'I' doesn't exist. I grew up in a stable home with food, good medical care and love. I built off the back of my parents and my grandparents. We wanted for nothing. I became good at basketball because my parents, Mike and Wendy, drove me everywhere, investing time and money in the dreams of a gangly youth. Other enthusiastic parents of friends tried their best to coach us and travelled to Melbourne and rebounded shots so that we could all enjoy our favourite sport. I got my first NBL look because a man I had never met saw me at a development camp and called in some favours. I got up to Cairns because my friend Vince Crivelli coached me and helped me through some tough times to get me back into the league and made some calls to NBL teams, asking them, pleading, to give me a shot. I had my first-ever office job at age 30 because former senator Jan McLucas took the time to house-train me. And I got my shot at organising because Kate Flanders and Alex Scott from the Together Union saw something in a sport and rec officer and took a flyer on some of their schemes.

None of this happens alone. The 'I' is always a 'we'. I stand before you today not because of my own brilliance but because of people like the Prime Minister, Senator Murray Watt, Carolyn MacDonald, Kate Flanders, Heather Hayes, Tony Fulton, Alex Scott, Dee Spink and especially Senator Nita Green—she was there on day one and has travelled all the way from the Senate to hear me speak today! They all encouraged me. They helped me decide to put my hand up and supported me through the campaign. This seat was won not on the back of my magnificent oration but on the back of the thousands of hours of work done by an army of volunteers in a truly unforgiving wet season, some of whom had been hoping for Labor to take Leichhardt for 15 years.

Since the election, my transition has been made smoother not because of my awesome knowledge of parliamentary procedure but because former member Warren Entsch, despite coming from the opposite side of the aisle, has helped me navigate this large and diverse electorate. This is a collaborative approach. I am drawn to teams and, with my staff, our volunteers, my fellow caucus members, my family and my community, led by the Prime Minister, this is what I am a part of. It is what drew me to the union movement, it's what drew me to the Labor Party and it's what put me here in Parliament House.

I thank my parents, my sister, my aunts, my cousins Steve and Belinda, my daughters and my partner, Renee, for all their support in all aspects of my life and in helping me get here today. I hope I can honour the love that they have shown me and that they are proud as I do my bit for improving the lives of the people of Leichhardt and Australians everywhere.

Let me say it again. Australia's Far North is a place of unmatched beauty and potential, but potential without work is unrealised. Potential without work is wasted. I stand ready to work on behalf of the people who put me here. Let's do this. Thank you.

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