Rowan Holzberger (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for the protection, Deputy Speaker. I'm not sure the member for Goldstein has had the unique pleasure of listening to one of my speeches, so I feel very lucky that he is here today to listen to that. On my own personal and political journey, one of the many books I read—I live by one of the maxims in that, which is 'Seek first to understand and then to be understood'. Unfortunately, standing up in parliament, despite the opportunity for people to interject, isn't exactly a good opportunity for me to listen to what the shadow Treasurer has to say. I would like to talk a little bit about whether I've got it right—what the shadow Treasurer actually believes. While he may not be able to interject throughout this to set me right, I would like to see whether or not I'm correct on this.

I think I know where the shadow Treasurer is coming from. In many ways, he has a very admirable world view. Even if it is ultra-ideological and totally impractical, I sort of get the theory. There's a little bit of my own story that I'd like to tell through all of this as well. I came into politics quite young, from Broken Hill, a country town.

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