Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to offer my congratulations to a very talented young woman—the recording artist and Frankston Blues basketballer Toni Watson, known more famously as Tones and I. While more recently she has been calling Byron Bay home, Tones and I is a proud product of the people's Byron Bay, Frankston. As she told Triple J Hack last year, the first time anyone told her she could sing was when she was at the park in Frankston with her cousins and her aunt and she was seven years old. It has been a remarkable journey from that Frankston park for Toni. She went north in 2018 and tried her luck busking in Byron Bay. Of course, it wasn't long before her talent was noticed.

Fast-forward and her hit Dance Monkeydon't worry, I'm not going to try to sing it—is a fixture on the radio and a must addition to playlists across the world. She performed to an audience of millions on the US late show starring Jimmy Fallon. She's reached No. 1 for most streamed song around the world. Dance Monkey has reached the top of the charts in more than 18 countries and is currently making its way up the US charts, sitting at No. 19. Last week, Tones and I cleaned up at the ARIA Awards, taking home Best Female Artist, Best Pop Release, Breakthrough Artist and Best Independent Release, and we couldn't be more proud of a girl from Frankston in the Mornington Peninsula region.

But, for all of her success, it is important that we acknowledge that, along with the awards and adulation, Tones and I has been very open and brave about the dark side of her new-found fame, and she's been battling what she has described as relentless bullying. She used the spotlight of her ARIA win to speak out about this because, as she puts it, she wants to help the next generation of artists by telling her fans she has decided to push past the dark times and the judgements to show any artist you can get through it and maintain your sense of self. Here we have a great example of a strong person prepared to talk about hard times, which isn't easy—a young woman on the face of it having her dreams come true yet coming up against some pretty nasty and negative comments. While not everyone in my electorate of Dunkley shares the same vocal talents, resilience is something that we are known for, and I want to commend Toni for having the guts to stand down the haters. Your resilience and what you have done, Toni, with your speech sends a powerful message to young men and women not just in Frankston or the Mornington Peninsula but across the country and across the world: if you have a talent and you have a dream, you can achieve. Congratulations on behalf of everyone in Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula and around the country. We're oh so proud.