Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to acknowledge the First Peoples of Victoria and their enduring connection to science, to nature and to learning. Colleagues, imagine it is 2065, 40 years from now. My time as a parliamentarian is long gone and my world is confined to my home, my family and my memories. This is my vision of the future.

I am 92 years old. As I tend to my veggies, my gaze lifts to the smoke on the horizon. When once I felt fear, I know that that fire will be extinguished by fire-retardant drones, lifting off from stations all around the bush, triggered by satellites. Despite Australia hitting net zero well before 2050, our fire seasons remain intense due to the baked-in impacts of climate change. Earth's fever has not broken, but, on our current trajectory, it will, as vast machines made by gods suck carbon from the air and kelp forests teeming with life trap carbon in our oceans. The tech oligarchs of my working life have been replaced by blue-carbon billionaires.

Some 40 years earlier, a Labor government I served in laid the foundations for our renewable energy transformation. Australia has now become an energy darling feted by global businesses that make products like green steel, which have reduced the world's emissions by eight to 10 per cent as predicted by eminent economist Ross Garnaut decades earlier. We now feed the world's appetite for guilt-free energy, especially in Asia, while creating that holy grail—a high-wage economy delivering sustained prosperity, immune from the boom and bust of mining.

Regional communities like mine have benefited most, with streets abuzz with young families—a good indicator of a thriving community. I am reminded to get dinner on, because my granddaughter will be home soon. She works in our booming biotech sector, making nanoparticles that deliver chemotherapy directly to cancer cells, leaving healthy tissue intact. The scorched-earth side effects of chemo I witnessed as a doctor have been relegated to the history books. Working in the city, she will be home soon, thanks to high-speed trains that practically fly in tunnels at speeds rivalling a jet. I never liked the Melbourne-to-Canberra flight. Now, I never need to take it.

I turn to squeals of delight from my great-grandson, who has spotted a wombat under the deck. I lift him up. The pain of knee osteoarthritis that marred my 60s has eased, thanks to weight loss drugs made affordable decades earlier. These drugs have crushed diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, cancer and sleep apnoea. When I was a doctor, hepatitis C had no cures until antivirals came along. The same has happened with obesity, by far the toughest nut to crack. By blocking the reward centres in the brain, these drugs have also curbed drug and alcohol addiction, saving billions in knock-on social and economic effects.

As evening falls, my tradie granddaughter bounds down the stairs. She found me last week after my AI assistant alerted her to my fall. My patients used to spend upwards of 14 hours on the floor after falls; now, no more. A quick hug, and she heads off to fit out a 3D printed home built in three days. She won't be alone, joined by farmers, construction workers and council workers, who work under floodlights. Heat stress has reset the working patterns of thousands of Australians who, like I once did as a doctor, now work the night shift. An alert from our prime minister pops up. A new respiratory virus has been detected with pandemic potential. 'Rest assured,' she says. A universal vaccine is available to buy us time before a more specific vaccine is approved. Made domestically, the delays will be minimal. With the ranks of our elderly and immunocompromised growing, clean indoor air powered by abundant energy is another layer of protection around vulnerable Australians who do not respond to vaccination. Dinner is a communal affair, with four generations around the table. After a meal of lab grown meat, my great-grandson and I snuggle up together with his favourite book, Diary of a wombat. Some things never change.

Every single concept in this vignette is grounded in science rather than fiction. It is a future where advances in science and tech lift up our living standards, making us more resilient, prosperous and able to withstand whatever the world throws at us. It means delivering investment and policy anchors that give our innovators and startups certainty for the patient, difficult work of R&D. When Pulitzer Prize winning writer Siddhartha Mukherjee said that 'technology dissolves its own past', he meant a leap from analogue to smartphone, from prayer to life-saving drugs, from coal fired power to cities powered by cars and home batteries. As a doctor, scientist and now senator, I'd like to see Aussie fingerprints all over that future tech.

Labor understands that critical mineral processing, agriculture and clean energy are areas where we have a competitive edge. But there is another which is a sleeping giant. Biotech, like clean energy, is an area where we are primed for success. In research excellence, Australia is ranked eighth globally. Our health system, underpinned by that great Labor legacy Medicare, tops the world rankings. And we are one of 10 countries with science and tech clusters in our major cities. Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane are places where high flyers cluster with high flyers, sparking ideas that turn into dollars. But here's the paradox: despite punching above our weight, with good health care, research excellence and great talent, we have not turned ideas into companies. With 1,200 biotech companies and a handful of giants, like Cochlear and CSL, we have the mystery of the missing middle. At a time when Australia urgently needs new revenue streams to pay for the things that matter, we must crack the code in biotech that bridges the middle between minnow and whale. Almost overnight, we could become a knowledge economy, turning Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane into Oxford, Cambridge and Boston, in arguably a shorter time than it takes making batteries.

Consider the clinical trials industry, which pressure tests our drugs before Australians get them. At $450 billion, approaching $700 billion in seven years, I'd like a bigger slice of that pie. And here's the thing. Our multiculturalism puts us in the box seat. This is one of the reasons why a tax on diversity is so misguided, because it blinds us to its economic value. If a drug works in a culturally diverse population, it is likely to work for millions, if not billions, of people. Australia could—should—be a clinical trials destination of the world. A thriving biotech sector means jobs for knowledge workers who, like me, struggled in academia for too long.

Knowledge workers are far more diverse than we think. They are scientists, nurses who run clinical trials, doctors, engineers who design artificial hearts, bioinformaticians who crunch genetic data, geneticists, AI scientists, software engineers, statisticians, roboticists and health economists. These workers cluster in cities but, importantly, aspirants to these jobs are everywhere—all over this country. They are championed by great institutions like the Australian Academy of Science, who are here today.

But even the nobility of science has a dark underbelly. Scientists have all the job security of gig workers. Bullying is underreported and rent seekers demand authorship for little to no work. The 'publish or perish' mentality has driven perverse outcomes, privileging piles of papers over innovating those ideas into marketable products and services. Our young scientists, who are the engines of innovation and patents, have no chance when judged by seniors, who have usually never started companies themselves. If the system feels stacked against our young scientists, it's because it is. And we, as the funder of around $6 billion to $7 billion on behalf of all Australians, are obligated to fix this.

These systemic problems are part of the reason I would like us to bridge the gap to mid-sized companies in biotech. The 8½ thousand PhDs we make every year need jobs outside academia. And I am not alone. A 2024 report by Research Australia revealed that only one in six postdocs would recommend an academic career. India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, said:

The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.

I say yes, but it's our young scientists we really need to be friends with.

As a doctor, I observe the sins of society wash up in two places: the justice system and public hospitals. For 26 years as a generalist, I saw patients at the bottom of the pile. I watched the tsunami of chronic disease, severe mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction and homelessness. Every week I made a cancer diagnosis and alleviated the last moments of a person's life. Some 30 to 55 per cent of health outcomes are due to drivers beyond health. These social determinants, like housing, access to health care, education, employment and discrimination, are core business for Labor governments.

Wearing my other hat in infectious diseases meant fighting small-print infections that nobody has ever heard of in patients with profoundly weak immune systems. I saw patients with blood cancers, autoimmune conditions and transplantation—heart, lung, kidney, bone marrow. The Alfred hospital in Melbourne did cutting-edge medicine and I loved it. Seeing the carnage of infections in leukaemia patients prompted my PhD, spanning health economics, better antibiotic management and artificial intelligence. It was more challenge that meant less time with my then small kids, burning the candle at both ends. It sharpened me up and fostered a love for science which has stood as a protective factor against the shadow that stalks all doctors—burnout.

But research was not easy. As a Research Australia finalist and founder of an AI startup, I encountered too many barriers to commercialisation. It turns out I'm not alone. In 2024 Australian startups founded by women attracted a pitiful two per cent of investment capital. Determined to get funding, I even went to the UK. I thought it was because of my gender, my colour or not enough titles. It was probably a combination of all three.

Enabling women, including those with funny names, to sit rather than serve at the founder table means confronting the uncomfortable truth of unconscious bias. It is structural as the steel beams that hold up this place, but it weakens the whole. It starves the enterprise, including our workplaces, schools, sporting teams and creative arts—indeed, this parliament—of talent, and that is an act of self-harm.

However, it wasn't my patients that led me into politics but rather the people who care for them. During the pandemic, healthcare workers who held up the sky were treated as if we were disposable, gaslit and silenced. I spoke up even against my own profession when I saw the science changing around how the virus was spread. Wiping down surfaces would have been fine had we been facing a pandemic of gastro, but that wasn't the case. I had junior and senior doctors coming to me with their fears and heard nurses weeping behind closed doors, and I went to work. I fought for our safety at work with a coalition of healthcare workers I pulled together. It was the most testing period of my life, hands down—juggling on-calls, kids, late nights, media publishing and giving lectures. Without knowing it, I had become a campaigner.

Taking on the Morrison government as a private citizen over work safety and vaccine rollout was wrath-of-God stuff. The day before my first appearance on Q+A in 2021, I was asked to go easy on the government by a colleague who had been pressured by a then government minister. It left me shaking and nauseated. It was my husband, a man of steel, who told me to say what I thought. I've never disclosed this; it was too raw back in 2022. I even quit my other job as a director of a medtech institute, fearing repercussions on the universities. Today I'd like to thank that politician, because those standover tactics, along with the policy drift of the then government, drove me into the arms of the Labor Party, and the rest, as they say, is history.

As the first Labor member for Higgins in the seat's 75-year history, I respected its gravitas as a seat of leaders, including four former Liberal prime ministers—Holt and Gorton, along with Menzies and Fraser, who lived there—and, of course, Australia's longest-serving Treasurer. I showed up and advocated as best I could during an inflationary crisis, a cost-of-living squeeze and a highly volatile period for my large Jewish community. I brought the same care and intensity I had for my patients to my constituents. But this community gave me so much more: people with skills, expertise and a moral ambition for this nation down every street I doorknocked.

The abolition of Higgins in 2024, then, was as cold as a surgeon's knife. It was devastating. I grieved for what I had left behind in medicine and for what I had wanted to achieve. However, not one to ruminate, I crisscrossed Victoria as a member of the health committee, determined to stay present. At 6½ million and counting, Victoria needs infrastructure and services. The regions need doctors like oxygen. The long-acting contraception we funded will stop women in border communities near South Australia from travelling long distances to Warrnambool for surgical abortions. Quality aged care in Leongatha and Ararat makes hospital a place of last resort for confused elderly. Violet Town's aged-care workforce is overwhelmingly of South Asian ancestry like me, underscoring the vital importance of the role migrants play, especially in the regions. Stoic farmers submit to health checks in the saleyards run by Yea hospital. Drug addiction is dragged out of the shadows by a rehab centre in Molyullah, amidst rolling hills and birdsong. The outstanding South West TAFE in Warrnambool would like a bus so that mums need not drive their kids in predawn darkness on country roads to get to class. Sandy Creek will get new netball courts thanks to our sports funding.

In Victoria's burgeoning South Asian community of nearly half a million, I was welcomed as the first Tamil member of parliament, even though I'm pretty watered down. Growing up I was unsure whether I belonged or whether I was pretending. At some point, I laid down roots. But the nation changed around me. Suddenly fitting in did not mean shedding your culture like a coat. To paraphrase the foreign minister, our cultural diversity is an element of our national power, which, in combination with our stable democracy, natural resources and skilled capability, is this middle power's superpower.

But who says lightning can't strike twice? To be here now as a senator for Victoria, a position that Labor has not held in nearly 20 years, is testament to the trust Victorians put in Labor, the Prime Minister's extraordinary work ethic, this Labor government, which did the work, our living treasures, the Labor rank and file, and Vic Labor, who backed my Senate run. Only 56 parliamentarians, including myself, have served in both houses since Federation. Only one senator has gone on to become Prime Minister—John Gorton, in 1968, following the death of Prime Minister Harold Holt. Both were my predecessors as members for Higgins. I can assure you that history will not repeat, but it does rhyme.

There are a few people to thank. I will be forever indebted to Paul Erikson, Jett Fogarty and Josh Pelach. As mentors you guided me to Higgins and then here. These were unwinnable seats until they weren't thanks to your cool heads. You are Labor's rainmakers. The Deputy Prime Minister and the member for Hawke are my mentors and therapists on speed dial who have been there every step of the way, even when Higgins was a mere twinkle in our eyes. Toughest for me was that prolonged period of uncertainty, and you, along with the Chief Government Whip, steadied the ship. I could not be here without my trusted staff and my backers in Higgins who believed in Project Michelle. Thank you.

My family are relieved that I am back to work. As a FIFO worker, my husband and daughter keep the home fires burning. Annika was absent during my first speech in 2022 due to year 12. This time it's Ash's turn. It's a gen Z house filled with laughter, K-pop, piercing bagpipe practice, cooking safaris and too much dog hair—clean it up, guys, clean it up! I am proud of the capable, resilient and good-humoured people you have become.

My parents, Robert and Vimala, are my biggest fans. They trod the familiar migrant path of self-determination when Labor luminaries Hawke and Keating were terraforming a modern Australia. As Tamils, they left Sri Lanka in the sixties for the UK, where I was born. They then forged a life in Zambia for 10 years, before choosing Australia over Canada—good call! They instilled in me a steely determination not to succeed but rather to get up, dust yourself off and keep going. I can assure you there was no tiara in our house. My sister, Romayne, is my closest confidante and like my brother, Steve, keeps the wheels on and turning.

My vision of the future 40 years from now is not rose-coloured but neither is it dystopian—in fact, far from it. It is a legacy that will be written on the faces of Australians as either the furrowed brow of worry, the set jaw of resolve or the squeals of delight in our grandkids. Which face greets us in our old age depends on whether we find the middle ground in this place. That middle ground, it turns out, is where most Australians are and likely to remain. It also means making tough decisions and explaining rather than weaponising the trade-offs, or else what is our problem today will be an even bigger one for our counterparts tomorrow. If politics is the art of what's possible, then, as a hardcore pragmatist, I will take the possible over the perfect any day. I thank the house.