Mary Aldred (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker, for granting me the call. It is my life's greatest privilege to rise as the member for Monash and an honour to address the House on behalf of my community.

I am the 1,246th Australian elected to this place since Federation. My dad, Ken Aldred, was the 660th. It is 50 years since my dad first rose to speak in this place, in the old parliament. It is nearly a decade since his passing, which remains my deepest trauma and my longest grief. I know that he wouldn't have missed today for quids. My dad's views on the world could be complicated. His love for me was not. While people are sometimes quick to associate my interest in politics with following in my dad's footsteps, they forget to acknowledge my mum's influence, too. My mum, Margie, is a former teacher who ran a number of small businesses over the years, and I would be lucky to count myself as inheriting a fraction of her empathy and charm.

I am the second member for Monash elected to this place. I acknowledge my predecessor, Russell Broadbent, and his wife, Bronwyn, for their service over two and a half decades to the people of Corinella, McMillan and Monash. I know that my predecessor will be best remembered by many colleagues for his eloquent and ineffaceable speech in 2009 after the Black Saturday bushfires, where his words reflected the acute grief of impacted communities such as Jindivick. While we spent the last two years as opponents, the fact is that we were good friends for 20, and it was a privilege to support him over that time. Russell and Bronwyn Broadbent are good people. I wish them well.

I know that I am visiting this place by the grace and goodwill of the people of Monash. Monash is part of the great Gippsland region, where Australia's richest soil meets sea adjoining the world's best beaches. In Monash, it's calloused hands and boots, not suits, that build national progress brick by brick. From dredge to boiler room, paddock to milking shed, harvester to timber yard, workshop to shopfront, I honour these great Australians. Our national success rides on their shoulders.

We are Gippslanders. We are farmers, veterans, tradies and teachers. We are Dorothy Mackellar's thirsty paddocks, sweeping plains and ragged mountain ranges. We are her droughts and flooding rains. People in Monash give back, put in and help out. They look you in the face when you walk down the street, whether you're a friend or a stranger. We don't ask for special treatment—just a fair go, reward for effort and a better tomorrow for the next generation.

Monash is a big electorate. You need to know every blade of grass, the agricultural shows, the community halls, the RSLs, the footy teams and netball clubs, the Rotary and Lions clubs, the chambers of commerce, the men's sheds and the CWA to the CFA. The spirit of volunteerism was born in Australian regions, and we couldn't survive without it. I am proud to come from a region that grows, makes and manufactures things. Victoria succeeds when our region thrives. Families and businesses depend on us to turn on the lights, run water through their taps and put food on the table. Our local resources fuel national economies.

There are many people in the Monash electorate who have taken me under their wing or at least made time to teach me a thing or two. One of those people is Aunty Cheryl Drayton, a Gunaikurnai elder from Drouin. A dairy farmer for many years, Aunty Cheryl is a practical person who likes to get to the point. A cuppa with Aunty Cheryl over the years on the topics we've canvassed has been more valuable than any conference or classroom. She is deeply committed to closing the education and employment gap for her community in Monash, and I commit myself to doing everything I possibly can to support her from this place and back home.

Monash is named after someone who, in my view, is Australia's greatest-ever citizen—General Sir John Monash. Monash was, as Roland Perry's brilliant book says, 'The outsider who won a war.' He was the first person in 200 years to be knighted on the battlefield by a British monarch. Back home, Australia owes him several debts of gratitude. As inaugural chair of the State Electricity Commission in the Latrobe Valley, Monash helped set up Victoria as a manufacturing powerhouse, thanks to the cheap and reliable electricity of those once four, now three, power stations. I honour the contribution of all Latrobe Valley power station workers and their families to our great state of Victoria.

John Monash was a Jewish man. I made time last year to visit the synagogue he was president of in St Kilda. The latent antisemitism of his time could not dim Monash's achievements, despite early efforts to do so. It is tragically ironic that Monash's beloved city and the state that he gave so much to are today in the grips of the oldest hatred in time. This is an offence against Australian values. This is a stain on our good national character. There are not many synagogues in the Monash electorate, as the rabbi at Monash's old shul remarked during my visit, which makes it especially important for regional Australians to stand up and condemn in the strongest terms possible what is happening to our Jewish community right now. I am with you.

There are many people to thank for my journey here. From the Goodings of Moe to the Wakefields of Nilma North and the Cantwells of Korumburra, I am blessed to have benefited from the love and support of many families across Monash. I thank my campaign team, led by the magnificent Gary Blackwood and brilliant Matt Green, with wonderful support from the Hon. Alan Brown, including Andrew Ronalds, Julie Pike, Toni Wakefield, Cara Carter, Jenny Hammett, Sean Dignum, Jeremy Curtis, Tony, Lisa, Kate, Vicki, Harvey, Ash, Leon, Harry, Marney, Kim, Alyce and all of the Monash Liberal Party supporters without whom I simply would not be here. I acknowledge the support of Philip Davis, Stuart Smith and Ben Zerbe too.

I thank my friend and state colleague the member for Narracan, Wayne Farnham, and all of my Victorian Senate colleagues, but especially my patron senator Jane Hume for her limitless support. I am honoured by the presence in the gallery today of my dear friend the Hon. Judith Troeth.

Sussan Ley visited Monash a number of times during the campaign. Whether it was a food bank, a small business or a dairy farm, she was there. She'd also ring me: 'Hi, it's Sussan—just checking in.' In netball parlance, that was a 'here if you need', and it meant a lot to me.

My supporters were there for me every day I was a candidate, which spanned about 18 months—or 538 days if you're counting!—with many of them spent traversing every highway and dirt road across Monash in a 22-seater, big blue bus that had a few nicknames, including the 'Monash express', even though my journey here was not. My Jack Russell terrier would often be riding shotgun in his Liberal-blue bandana.

Above all, it is to my family that I owe my deepest gratitude: my mum, Margie; as well as James and Philippa, Lucy and Phil, John and Sonia, plus the little ones I am aunty to. You are my everything.

It was not an easy campaign, with Labor on the national ascendancy, one of the most cashed-up teal campaigns in the country and a long-term incumbent recontesting. To succeed with a swing to the Liberal Party is a privilege.

I will not meet the opportunity in front of me with reticence. There are many local priorities that I want to achieve on behalf of my community. I will continue to do what I have a track record of doing, and that is push as hard as I possibly can to help get a new West Gippsland Hospital delivered.

During the last few years, I've worked with local communities in Inverloch and Phillip Island who are staring down the barrel of coastal inundation. They cannot afford to wait years for mitigation; their homes will disappear. They face a problem which many other coastal communities are grappling with, which is why I believe we need a national framework to address coastal inundation across Australia.

The Prime Minister was once a transport minister who said nearly a decade and a half ago that he believed that 'Infrastructure is the critical enabler of productivity.' I agree. But, in regions like mine, roads and infrastructure still lag generations behind. It's about levelling up opportunities for manufacturers and primary producers who depend on getting their products to market competitively. I'll work with anyone who's prepared to walk the talk on making that investment. But our regions are tired of inaction.

I'm not a veteran, but I am passionately committed to improving the lives of those who are. Local veterans, led by Bill and including Ben and Lindsay, Lyn, Bob and Christine, have taken the time to share their experiences with me, to my profound gratitude. We must properly address the care and sufficient repatriation to civilian life of those who sign up and are forever changed by that call to serve. I commit myself now, until the end of my time in this place, to that effort.

My family moved to Upper Beaconsfield when I was around 12. My parents ran a small business. I saw them work around the clock, with lean margins and high stress. I wanted to help them so much that I left school at 15 to work full-time as a farm hand. I later went back and completed school. But carting hay in 40-degree heat and doing feed runs in the freezing rain, fixing fences and digging out drains taught me more than I learned from the three university degrees that followed. It taught me about hard work, about patience earnt from the monotony of doing things properly, and those lessons have seldom failed me in the years since.

It is where my passion for small and family businesses was ignited and why I have dedicated such a huge chunk of my working life to being a voice for mum-and-dad operators. It's small-business people who get out of bed every morning and put their house on the line just to give someone else a shot at a job. It's small-business owners who give young people their first opportunity in the workplace. And it's small-business owners who so often put their hands up to help out at our service clubs and put their hands back in their own pockets again and again to sustain our local sporting teams, even in tough times. It's where innovation thrives without the constraints of corporate bureaucracy. But the fact is, Australian small-business people have never worked longer days for less reward or faced more risk and red tape.

While I may have grown up in a Liberal household, I am not a hater of the Labor Party. In fact, my parents instilled in me a clear understanding that political opponents are not enemies, that while we have different—sometimes markedly opposite—views on policy we all love Australia, and that there are good people on both sides. There are Labor people who have been very generous to me. While I won't embarrass them, I would like to acknowledge the Hon. Martin Ferguson for his ongoing commitment to the Gippsland region, which I really just see as an extension of his old-school Labor values in support of blue-collar workers and regional jobs. Those values seem a bit out of vogue these days.

During the election I had an older couple from the La Trobe Valley approach me at a listening post outside the little IGA in Trafalgar. 'We're lifelong Labor voters; I've been a worker all my life,' the gentleman said. 'But we're going to vote for you, which means we're going to vote Liberal for the first time,' the lady added. That couple at the IGA didn't so much feel as though they had left the Labor Party as that the Labor Party had left them, by forgetting their history and ignoring their future. I say to that couple, and the many others in my community who shared similar sentiments with me: I will not let you down.

I express my deep concern that as a country we are losing the ability to respectfully disagree with one another on big national issues. Our democracy depends on the premise that we should have big contests, because the ultimate responsibility of government is great. Voters should have a clear choice, and arguments on policy should be made boldly, not timidly. We need to change the tone of Australian political discourse, and as a newcomer to this place I commit to doing my small part constructively, boldly and respectfully in this regard. I will not be shy about speaking up for regional industries that employ people. I believe that strong businesses sustain strong communities. I am particularly passionate about our timber towns, farmers and small businesses. These people take great pride in their craftsmanship, environmental stewardship and community. They do not deserve to have a referendum on their future cast in faraway places that are immune to the outcome.

I'm a proud jack-of-all-trades. As a millennial—by the skin of my teeth, I might add!—I have benefited from the breadth of several careers. As a passionate Gippslander, I've thrown myself into many community organisations over the years. From local hospital and community aged-care boards, plus organisations like Lifeline Gippsland, tertiary education boards and chairing the Gippsland United basketball league, I've seen the transformational impact of what community volunteers mean to regional Australia. I've gleaned many insights from the brilliance of others I've had the privilege of sharing a conversation with. I owe everyone I've worked with in those various roles a huge debt for the generosity of their shared knowledge. One of my greatest honours was as founding CEO of the Committee for Gippsland. Anyone that's started something from nothing can relate to the small celebrations of getting a phone line connected or a sign painted. Having been appointed to that role at the age of 27, I will remain forever grateful to those who took a chance on a young person with a few big ideas but few rungs on the ladder.

As one of our greatest prime ministers John Howard once said, the Liberal Party is 'a broad church', but I like to think of it as a large family—loud, boisterous with bold arguments and real contests that those outside the family may not always understand but they're always for each other when it counts. We are, though, the only party to aspire to represent Australians from all walks of life—every part of society whether you live in the city or the country; no matter if you're an entrepreneur or an employee; no matter who you love; or whether you are newly arrived to our shores, an eighth-generation Australian or part of the oldest continuing culture in the world. The Liberal Party stands for you.

I'm a Liberal whose instincts will always stretch to the empowerment of the individual. You will find in me someone who will protect your right to worship in a manner your beliefs instruct, just as I will stand for your right to love the person you choose. I believe in the rights of the individual and in free enterprise unencumbered by the temptation of government overreach. My Liberal Party does not prescribe the format of your family or curtail the rights of small business in favour of big corporations. My Liberal Party leads on the economy, with a focus on growth and productivity. My liberal values led me to join the party in year 12 and volunteer at every election since, because I believe deeply in what we represent even if the principles by which we seek to govern are not always perfectly enlivened.

I do worry that Australia is losing its way. We are off-course, we are leaving people behind and we are on the wrong track. Australia used to be a leader in the OECD on productivity, yet we now lag in the late teens of the top 20. We now have more than half of the Australian public relying on governments for most of their income. There needs to be some tough national conversations ahead.

My most recent experience working in the private sector with a focus on technology and cybersecurity provided a modern, clear-eye view of the world as it is. The pace and scale of technology innovation is accelerating beyond the regional streets of our OECD neighbourhood and across the globe. We will either keep up or be left behind. The cost of falling behind has profound ramifications for jobs, primary production, medical advancements, cybersecurity and defence. We live in an uncertain Asia-Pacific region, where our security partners like Japan are more important than ever. I am particularly enthusiastic about Aukus Pillar II and the opportunities that presents to Australian SME businesses to contribute their world-class innovation in specialised areas of cyber and technology.

I recognise that each day I spend in this place is a day closer to when I will leave. I plan to make each day count by advancing the cause for which I am here, a passionate belief in the purpose and potential of the people of Monash. To my electorate, I asked for your trust and confidence. You have given me the opportunity of a lifetime. I will work my heart out for you.

I thank the House.

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