Today, of all days, while that motion is being supported in the other chamber—I won't even say debated; supported—it feels a little bit different to come in and talk about a motion and oppose a motion. So I'd like to reflect a little bit on not only what it means to me to be a representative but also what it means to me to be an Australian.

I think something that the Deputy Prime Minister said in his contribution this morning was that it is incumbent on us to see the value in what the other side has to say, and that makes me think about when I'm talking to somebody whom I'm seeking to represent in Forde and we're having a discussion that I completely disagree with. I'll often say to them that there are 140,000 people in Forde and that means that there are 140,000 different right answers. I might disagree, but I don't think that anybody is necessarily right or wrong. If you were somehow able to synthesise all of those 140,000 different opinions, that is probably the most approximate thing that we could get to anything that resembles correctness.

I read this motion and I know that it does ultimately come from a good place. I know that the member for McPherson, with a good heart and a good spirit, is concerned about how tough people are doing it at the moment. Of course, he is not the only one who knows that. We are all aware of that. So today is not the day to come in boots and all and pick apart the motion from the member for McPherson. Even though I oppose it, I do recognise that he, like all of us, wants to make our country better.

I appreciate that that is a very long preamble to this motion that is essentially about economics, but it does talk about the things that I am determined to always bring up in this place for as long as I'm here. The reason we are here today is not because of the decisions made by government over the last three or four or even five years, really. This is about decisions that have been made by governments since the 1980s, when we latched onto this economic rationalist approach of allowing the private sector to do what are, essentially, public services. In housing, electricity and insurance, three areas that the member for McPherson nominates, we have seen an abrogation of the government's responsibility to do its job, which is to provide an efficient and economic level of services.

In housing, we used to have a level of public housing. South Australia had the best example. Somewhere around 40 per cent of every rental in South Australia was public housing. As the member for Makin would know, it was a policy that was brought in by the Liberal government of Thomas Playford and then backed by the Labor government of Don Dunstan. In the nineties something like 40 per cent of every rental was public housing, built around the car industry in many places. In Elizabeth, it was built to actually help the car industry by keeping the cost of labour down, because rents were low. It was actually built into the charter of the South Australian Housing Trust that it would aid in the economic development of the state.

I won't keep on at South Australia's expense; that was how it was done around the whole country. And so it was with ETSA, the Electricity Trust of South Australia. Built into that was the idea that you kept the cost of electricity down not only to help with the cost of living for workers but also to help with the cost of manufacturing for businesses. I will come back to my state. With insurance, we had something called the SGIO, the State Government Insurance Office. The hint was in the name: 'government'. By taking a collective approach to insurance, it could actually cover those costs for the community. That is the whole point of what insurance is supposed to be.

The member for McPherson's motion deserves consideration, but we are here today because of what this government has done. (Time expired)