Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is something really special about my home in Parramatta. People who move into the area often say after a few months that, 'It gets under your skin like very few places do.' And it does. You do not say you live in Sydney if you live in Parramatta; you say you live in Parramatta. It has an extraordinary sense of place. Perhaps that comes from the same factors that drew the Dharug nation to choose Parramatta as its meeting place every year. Perhaps it is its history. Nearly everything you learn in school about what happened in the early colonial years actually happened in Parramatta, including the Rum Rebellion. Perhaps it is the extraordinary diversity of the place and its energy. But, whatever it is, when you spend time in Parramatta you know where you are. It is a place in its own right. It has an extraordinary sense of place.

But, for those of us who know it really well, it is not what you see which is the great thing about Parramatta. What is visible is extraordinary: incredible energy in its business, language and food diversity. But the great thing is actually the energy that sits underneath. My community speaks every language. It knows every country. It knows every culture. We have businesses that export everything from toilets to dietary supplements to China and India. We have an incredible number of services that we are already exporting on a large scale to some of the major growing powerhouses of the region. It is this energy that sits underneath, this innovation, these ideas that come forth when new business start that we in Parramatta refer to as the berg. It is not the tip of Parramatta—as impressive as that is—that is the great thing; it is this extraordinary energy and potential that sits underneath.

When I look at it from my position as a member of parliament, the thing that I regret most about my community is that that berg, that incredible level of energy, is not always visible to others in the community. It is difficult for one small start-up business to see the possible networks and collaboration partners in the community. It is a lack of a mirror, if you like, for this wonderful energetic part of Parramatta to see itself and see others so that they can collaborate and grow stronger together. There is much to be done on just that in Parramatta.

Recently, I started making very small moves by forming a Go Local campaign that operated through November and December. We are now running a Go Local campaign for Valentine's Day, encouraging people to do what we all need to do to grow stronger communities, which is to spend our money locally. We know that when you spend your money locally it circulates locally. If you spend in small businesses the money circulates more; it has three times more impact on the economy than if you spend in a large chain where the money very quickly flows out of the community to a head office or a supplier elsewhere. Small businesses tend to use local suppliers, and so the money circulates locally. It is a much more powerful use of your purchasing power if you do that.

It is extraordinary to hear the ideas that have come forward since I have done this very small thing. I want to run through some of them, because I want to share them with my community as well. One of my local bike shops said: 'There are 13 gyms in Parramatta and four bike shops. Why don't we have a Parramatta corporate challenge, so that all those sporting businesses can encourage people to come into their business and get fit for the corporate challenge?' It is a great idea. It needs someone to pick it up, but it is a great idea. Just two days ago, someone else talked to me about the extraordinary food that we have in Parramatta—we have some of the best provedores around; in fact, people from the North Shore come to Parramatta for food safaris because of the quality of our food. This person pointed out that if you want chilli bhaji, which are chickpea battered chillies that are deep-fried—talk to the Telugu Association if you want to know what they are—you cannot get them in Parramatta; you have to go up the train line, because they are unique to Pendle Hill. Every station on the train line has a shopping centre which now has a unique food variety because of the community that lives around it. If you want African, you go to Merrylands, but if you particularly want Somali, you have to go to Guildford. If you want Telugu, you have to go to Pendle Hill; if you want Gujarati, you go to Harris Park. All the way along the train line we have these wonderful places where, with proper networking, we have a product which is far more valuable than its individual parts, and cooperation between businesses is what we need to bring that out. I encourage all my local businesses to get into the Go Local campaign. It is worth doing. We can grow much stronger together.