Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 2 December it is a very special day for the Labor Party. It is the date in 1972 that Gough ended 23 years of conservative rule but also the date in 1989 when Wayne Goss ended 32 years of National Party government in Queensland. Today is the 30th anniversary of that remarkable moment in time. 'Goss the boss' was inspirational and his Queensland Labor government was transformational. He campaigned as 'the only change for the better'. He delivered electoral reform, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, the abolition of the police special branch, the lifting of the ban on street marches and the Queensland conservation act, and he stopped rainforest logging, put wet tropics on the World Heritage List, put the teaching of Asian languages in Queensland schools and modernised the Queensland state economy. These were the tangible things. Wayne Goss changed the way that we govern ourselves, but he also changed the way that we see ourselves. He represented my local community and he led our state. He made us proud to be Queenslanders after a long and bleak period of cronyism and corruption under the National Party. He was our Hawke. He was our Rann. He was our Dunstan. He dragged our state out of the darkness and into the light. We thank his family for it and we won't ever forget it.