Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It was an absolute pleasure in the last sitting to listen to all the first speeches from the new MPs. They were very impressive and from a wide variety of backgrounds. It was humbling to hear of the skills, experiences, attributes and backgrounds that this new cohort, the class of 2025, brings to us. It's going to make our parliament better. We're going to make better decisions based on that broad range of experience, as the will of the Australian people was shown.

Of course, there are some outstanding members of the class of 2022, and they continue to impress. My classmates from the class of 2016 and all members of our caucus are united in our vision to deliver for the Australian people. Already in this term we've seen so many examples of that, as we deliver on the commitments that we've made to the Australian people over the last five or so years and in the lead-up to the elections. We maintained those commitments and delivered in the first term, and now we are delivering in the second term.

But, of course, listening to all the first speeches does cause one to reflect on your own first speech. I delivered mine in the main chamber nine years ago almost to the day. In a photo I've got of that delivery is Warren Snowdon, the old man, the then member for Lingiari, who's been capably replaced nowadays by my friend and colleague Marion Scrymgour, the member for Lingiari now. Warren was in that photo and was a great assistance and mentor to me, and he continues to assist the Northern Territory and Australia in our mission for advancing reconciliation and developing the north. He's also very passionate about his veterans work; he was the veterans' affairs minister.

I'm very honoured today to have another veteran, my brother Dan, join us in the Fed Chamber. Dan served in the Australian Army for about 28 years in the infantry and in a variety of roles, but a lot of his work was with both NORFORCE—our Indigenous First Nations soldiers—and the people of Timor-Leste. I refer to my time in both of those places, serving with those cohorts of both Australian and Timor-Leste soldiers, and it very much enriched my life. But a lot of that experience—and a lot of the reason I'm here now in this place, representing the people of Darwin and Palmerston and serving as the Prime Minister's Special Envoy for Defence, Veterans' Affairs and Northern Australia—is down to my brother Daniel. So I wanted to publicly acknowledge that and put it in the Hansard forever and a day that I really appreciate all the support that you've given me over the years, brother.

In my first speech, I spoke about the great privilege of representing the people of Solomon, the northern capital of Australia, where we've got people from over 100 countries that have been generously welcomed to the ancient lands of the Larrakia people and other groups of First Nations people in the north of Australia, who have not only their ancient connection to land but also their 300 to 500 years of relationships with people from other surrounding islands in what is now called Indonesia. Those trading relationships go back a long way, and that relationship with Indonesia and, certainly, Timor-Leste continues to be part of my life but also my service to the nation.

I'll touch on that briefly in the time I've got available. As a proud Territorian, I always tell my colleagues—they're all pretty aware of it; there's no need to bang on and sell the Territory, because everyone's pretty clear about how incredible the place is. I love this territory too, as you do, Deputy Speaker Payne. I spent four years here—three years in the Australian Defence Force Academy and then one year in the Royal Military College, Duntroon. I did came back for some postgrad study later on as well. It's the place that my children call 'the cold place', but they love it all the same. They've got cousins down here. They come down here infrequently.

But my heart has always been in the Northern Territory, ever since Dan and I and the other six kids, and Mum and Dad, headed around Australia in a HiAce van. Mum and Dad took us out of school for about three months and we travelled around Australia, and that's the first time we went to the Territory. I really fell in love with it at that time—Uluru, up the Stuart Highway to Litchfield and Kakadu, and rolling into Darwin. When we think back, it was only 10 years or so after Cyclone Tracy. But the seed was certainly sown on that trip around Australia. A lot of us had fallen in love with the Territory a bit. Dan served there with NORFORCE in the Army, one of our sisters nursed there, our youngest brother worked as a teacher in both Arnhem Land and the Red Centre, another brother has been a Territory firefighter for 16 years, and Mum and Dad still love coming up to see their kids and also their grandkids. So there's a great love affair not just for those Goslings who went on that trip around Australia and made Darwin or the Territory home but for all the rest of the family as well.

I spoke in that first speech about the things that built me in terms of my life experience and my desire to be part of the leadership of the nation that I love so much. I see serving in this place, the federal parliament, as an extension of that service in the military and for non-government organisations. I will briefly touch a couple of those things. I met my wife, Kate, on Anzac Day in Dili. We were both living in Darwin, but for different reasons we were working in Timor-Leste at the time, and we met playing two-up in Dili. So I never forget the anniversary of our meeting; it's Anzac Day.

Recently Kate and I took our two kids, Sally and Frank, over to Timor and we did some diving. Whenever I talk about the tourism potential of Timor, it's not only because it's so beautiful and so different to the Top End of Australia; it's also that you can just marry them up. If you go over to Timor-Leste, you stop in Darwin on the way over. If you come to Darwin to get out to Kakadu or whatever, consider the one-hour flight to get over to Timor-Leste. It's a beautiful place, and it's a really practical way that we can help our good neighbours in their development. Certainly their democracy has been very resilient. They've had five rounds of parliamentary and presidential elections now. It was good to catch up with a lot of friends that my brother Daniel and I served with when we were with the Defence Cooperation Program in Timor-Leste.

Twenty years later—last week—representing the defence minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Richard Marles, I attended the 50th anniversary of the Timor-Leste armed forces, which was a great event. They're obviously very proud of their independence and their defence of their sovereignty. It had been 20 years since I met with a lot of those Timorese generals, and a funny thing that they and I reflected on was that none of us looked any different from how we did 20 years ago! Maybe we do a bit! Maybe we're a bit slower than we were back then. But I was able to catch up with old friends who still have that real desire to strengthen the relationship not only between our military and their military but also between our two countries. The relationship between Timor-Leste and Indonesia is also fantastic these days, on a number of levels, and it's good to see that that reconciliation process has been so successful. I look forward to spending some time here tomorrow with the Indonesian defence minister. He's visiting the parliament.

It is 50 years. A lot of things happened at that time—1974 and 1975. There are some big anniversaries. One of those is the anniversary of the Timorese refugees arriving into Darwin and the compassion and solidarity that we showed with them because of, in many ways, the solidarity and compassion that was shown to our Australian soldiers in World War II by the Timorese.

In the veteran space, I continue to work with the Minister for Veterans' Affairs to roll out the recommendations that came from the royal commission, which I've worked very hard to see put into place with many others, including the families of those whose sons or daughters had unfortunately made the decision to die by suicide. I think we are making good progress. In my electorate, we had a recent veterans conference. It was excellent. It was a veterans and families conference, because families are so important. That was excellent. The Scott Palmer Services Centre is now with the Salvos as part of a federally funded program where the Salvos will be purchasing some units that we will be making available for veterans if they become homeless or at risk of homelessness. So that's something that I'm very passionate around. I want to give a shout out to Colin Heard, the single remaining World War II veteran in the Northern Territory. He was in the Air Force as a pilot in World War II, and I send my regards to him on the 80th anniversary of the end of that awful conflict.

I've been very pleased to get out and see some of the people I served with in NORFORCE and certainly with a northern Australia lens and a defence lens. The best thing we can do with young people who are not sure what they want to do is cadets, the Army Indigenous Development Program, the Navy Indigenous Development Program and servicing NORFORCE 51 Far North Queensland Regiment and the Pilbara Regiment. They remain our eyes and ears throughout northern Australia, and I would certainly recommend to young people in the north that I come across, whether they be Indigenous or not, to consider service, whether it be reserve service or full-time service.

I was very thankful—and I'm conscious of time; there are other issues in my electorate that I'll reflect on at future opportunities. But the Army is doing fantastic things in Indigenous communities in a program called AACAP. That's where the National Indigenous Australians Agency joins with Army and builds infrastructure in communities. Just recently, Senator Malarndirri McCarthy, the Minister for Indigenous Australians, was there in Gapuwiyak, a place very familiar to us in the Arnhem squadron of NORFORCE. They built a brilliant new community and arts centre, and that will drive local employment. And that's what the best projects are—where we have our First Nations brothers and sisters in the workforce, whether it be building roads, just making their art, which is incredible, and having opportunities to get their product to market, working as rangers, protecting country, or working with the Defence Force. There are fantastic job opportunities in health as well and in doing a lot of the tasks that they naturally do in the community, such as child care and aged care.

As I said, 1974-75 was a significant time for Darwin, and one of the reasons for that is that 50 years ago, on Christmas Eve, Cyclone Tracy hit Darwin with a big loss of life. I'll be forever thankful to the Prime Minister and the Governor-General and the Chief of Defence Force, for that matter, Admiral Johnston, who actually was a young boy in Darwin when Cyclone Tracy hit. To have those three esteemed people from our nation attend and give up their Christmas morning with their families to be there with us in Darwin to mark the 50th anniversary of Cyclone Tracy was very important to the people of Darwin and the survivors and to our whole community.

I'm very proud to have achieved 40 Commonwealth funded medical places so that our university, Charles Darwin University, is going to have next year a medical program for the first time. We're very thankful to Flinders University, who will continue to provide a medical program. But, when you consider that the Northern Territory is about 60 doctors short, it's about our ability to get a pipeline of doctors, including First Nations doctors, but with a preference for Territorians so that there's a better chance of them hanging around rather than us training up doctors and then seeing them disappear down south.

We are building the north. We're building the Territory. The way we are doing that is through things like fee-free TAFE and things like having young Territorians able to purchase their first home and become homeowners with just a five per cent deposit and, if they happen to be studying, knocking 20 per cent off their HECS debt. It all helps—tax cuts and the whole lot helps. Assisting Territorians with the cost of living has been very important for me, as it is for our whole government. When it comes to youth, I particularly want to make sure that we've got opportunities for young Territorians. They'll always seek to go interstate to have the adventure of living in a big city interstate, but I want to make sure that there's enough going on in Darwin and Palmerston and that we're building our population and infrastructure, social and otherwise, so that Territory kids say, 'I've heard from my schoolmates about great employment opportunities happening back at home in Darwin'—or in Palmerston or anywhere in the Top End.

The infrastructure builds, the logistics hubs, the focus on solar and the focus on how we utilise our gas reserves in environmentally sustainable ways and turn Territory sunshine into energy security is not only for us in the north. It's to power green industry, because that's where the future is, but it's also to send overseas—undersea, in fact, through cables to Singapore and, in the future, Indonesia as well to help them with their energy security. We've certainly got the land to do that, and we've got some of the best solar radiance in the world, so that is really exciting, and it's really exciting for young Territorians to know that there are going to be so many future energy, renewable energy and critical minerals jobs in the NT.

I'll touch on defence. Obviously, having served in the Defence Force, I'm incredibly proud of our serving men and women and those who have worn the uniform. They are great ambassadors for the country. I met this morning with the very impressive deputy chief of Army, Chris Smith, and we talked about a lot of issues that came out of the royal commission and the way Army is changing in ways subtle and significant to make sure that we optimise the human capital of the patriots who sign up to serve in our defence forces, particularly when it comes to looking after people who are using weaponry. That is serious weaponry that we need as an insurance policy for our nation. We need a strong military. I'm proud of those that are working on the AUKUS endeavour. I'm proud of those who are making sure that our men and women have got the best possible support that they can. And, as a special envoy, that is exactly what I'm committed to.

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