Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Pursuant to order, I now call Senator Collins to make her first speech and ask senators to extend the usual courtesies to her.

Jessica Collins (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a great honour to give my maiden speech in the Senate chamber today. My political journey here has not been a conventional one. I didn't join the Liberal Party as a Young Liberal; I joined the Liberal Party in 2019 as a 35-year-old, when I was eight months pregnant with my fourth child. Five years later, I had the privilege of being preselected for the Senate. Tonight, I'm not going to tell my life story, but I want to share some of the things that shaped me and what I want to achieve in the next six years.

I'm a New Zealand born Australian. I moved with my parents and two big brothers from Queensland to New South Wales when I was 13 years old. When I finished high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I did what so many uninspired 19-year-olds do and enrolled in an arts degree. It led me to anthropology, which, as it turns out, is not the study of ants! Nonetheless, I persevered, and the anthropology of Australia, the Pacific islands and Asia became the focus and passion of the next 10 years of my life.

I loved anthropology because I could immerse myself in cultures and environments unusual to me. I took every opportunity I had to engage with Pacific island culture. I travelled to a small village in the mountains of New Caledonia to better understand peace and conflict and everyday life for the indigenous Kanak people. Back in Brisbane, I would spend my weekends hearing the beautiful songs of Samoan church services and being welcomed into the families to share the umu that followed and to learn more about their experience of life in Australia.

Later I wrote a doctoral thesis about the Karen refugee community's resettlement from Burma to Brisbane. I spent time in their churches too, hearing their beautiful music and sharing in the feasts that followed. I was invited to their homes for tea and to their weddings and funerals. I participated in their ceremonial events. I stayed in refugee camps on the Thai-Burma border to learn about the power of transnational relationships for the over 100,000 people trapped in place and time since the early 1980s. There, I met some of the most resilient and kind-hearted people I've ever come across.

As I was waiting for my thesis to be reviewed, I was approaching 30 and wanted to start a family. However, I was single at the time. So I finally agreed to go on a date with someone I had been friends with for over a decade. Then, five days later, I was offered what I thought was my dream job lecturing at the University of Fiji. I was given the day to decide. I was over the moon, and I called my mother, who was surprisingly unenthusiastic and suggested I take the weekend to think about it. And I'm glad she did because I was given a counteroffer that weekend. Just 10 days after our first date, Ben took me for a walk to my favourite church overlooking the Brisbane River and got down on one knee in the churchyard. He had asked for my parents' permission just a few days earlier.

That weekend, I was faced with a big decision that so many professional women face: career or family. I know that every woman's decision on that is deeply personal and complex. But it was an easy decision for me, and we were married five months later at All Saints' Church, having our first child 12 months after that. We had four kids in four years, none of them being twins. Spending those years at home with my children has been the most rewarding experience of my life. It was also the hardest, for the simple reason that children are hard work. So I kept my mind busy. I wrote papers for publication and studied for a master's in global development, which included an internship with the Minister for International Development and the Pacific. That short time in the minister's office shifted my passion from academic research to policy development. And so, the following year, I nominated for preselection for the division of North Sydney. That preselection didn't eventuate. So, a couple of years later, I tried again, this time for the Senate. I lost that preselection, so I tried again five months later, this time for the now defunct division of North Sydney. But I lost that one too. Three weeks later, I tried again for another Senate casual vacancy, and I lost again.

Having lost three preselections in six months, some people were quietly suggesting to me that constantly losing all the time was making me look bad. But I've always believed that it's not how you win these things; it's how you lose them. As hard as it was to face my children every time I lost, I was never going to let them see me give up. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to all the Liberal Party members who put their faith in me to represent them in the Senate today. There are too many of you to name, and I know some of them would prefer not to be named. But I do want to single out one person and thank my local member, the honourable member for Lane Cove, Anthony Roberts. You backed me from the very start and never gave up on me. I hope I can represent the people of New South Wales with the same unwavering dedication that you have. God bless you, mate.

In all those years at home with the kids, it dawned on me that successive governments have failed to establish a family policy framework that is fit for purpose. The consistently declining Australian birth rate is now at an all-time low of just 1.5 babies per woman. There are many reasons why Australian women are having fewer babies, but we must face up to the reality that a declining birth rate is evidence that Australia's family policy framework is not fit for purpose. Family policy should be the natural home for the Liberal Party. As former prime minister John Howard recognised, we believe that the family unit provides the best social welfare system ever devised. In every culture I've studied and in my own experience family is the glue to a cohesive society and the backbone of a strong nation.

So what does fit-for-purpose family policy look like? Australia has a tax system that recognises the output of individuals but fails to appreciate the contribution of the family. Parents with children should be able to aggregate their marginal tax rates and file jointly. We are a nation of families, not individuals. Income splitting should not just be a tax strategy for the wealthy; it should be a basic right of the home. And we need to encourage bigger families. We should increase the tax-free threshold for a household every time they add a child to the family. When families grow, Australia prospers, and we should be incentivising that.

We also need to accept that the childcare subsidy system is broken. Childcare subsidies are not bringing down the cost of your child care; they are just increasing the burden of your taxes. The childcare subsidy should be abandoned and replaced with a childcare tax deduction. Parents should be free to choose where that childcare tax deduction is applied, because, if parents choose in-home care over private-equity-backed childcare conglomerates, they should not be disadvantaged. We need to rebalance the childcare industry back to its natural state—where child care is a community service, not a profit-making machine.

After being a stay-at-home mum for seven years, I became a research fellow at the Lowy Institute, where I had the opportunity to develop Pacific islands policy and engage with Pacific leaders. I'd particularly like to thank Michael Fullilove, Herve Lemahieu, Amy Dobbin and Dan Flitton for their support during my time at the Lowy Institute. And I give a very special thank you to Jonathan Pryke, the ultimate legend of Pacific islands affairs, who first hired me at Lowy. You saw my time as a stay-at-home mum as a career strength, never a weakness, and, if there were more people with that kind of mindset, this country would be better off.

When Sir Frank Lowy founded the Lowy Institute in 2003, he had a vision: to help Australians better understand the global challenges shaping their lives. He wanted to take Australia to the world and bring the world to Australia. It was, in Sir Frank's words, 'an investment in ideas'. That vision is more important today than it ever was, because, while I grew up with relative peace in our region, my children are growing up in a very different geopolitical environment. In Australia, we need to have an honest conversation about what is going on in the world and what we will do to protect our place in it. As a baseline, we need a comprehensive national security strategy that articulates internal and external threats facing Australia and how we will get ahead of them. A current national security strategy will guide the political, intelligence and defence communities and inform the Australian people about the harsh realities we are facing—something that has not been done by the political leadership for over a decade—because, if Australia's political leadership were completely honest with the Australian people, the case for increasing defence spending would be a no-brainer.

In my third week of being a senator, I took part in the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program, which is led by Lieutenant Colonel Andy Martin. I was embedded in the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, known as 3RAR, or 'Old Faithful'. I joined them in Townsville as they commenced Exercise Talisman Sabre, where, in 2025, more than 30,000 military personnel from 19 nations honed their war-fighting skills. Old Faithful has a lethal reputation, and the heroes I had the honour of working alongside embodied its tradition of duty, honour, sacrifice and lethality. Over the week, we spent a few days riding in armoured personnel carriers, or APCs. I rode with commanding officer Dan Ellis and RSM Jai Cosgrove. We linked up with the soldiers across the massive training area as they prepared for an upcoming attack, and I had the immense privilege of speaking with many of these Australians who'd made the brave decision to serve their country. And it really hit home that the most powerful weapons we have are our people in uniform. While governments are willing to invest in hardware and technologies, too often they forget that people need investment too.

I was talking to one digger who has a one-year-old daughter and another on the way. He reckoned his baby girl was going to take her first steps any day now, and he knew it was unlikely that he would be there for that. Ultimately, this brave digger knew that sometimes you have to give up the things you love to protect the things you love. Even in peace time, our uniformed men and women give up so much that we easily take for granted. Sometimes it's the small things, like a shower. I didn't shower for a few days, but some of these soldiers will go for weeks, even months, without one. And sometimes it's the bigger things, like missing those first precious steps or the birth of the next child. Then there are the diggers who will pay the ultimate price for training at the highest intensity. It was a privilege to ride in the APCs with these soldiers. It was an honour just to stand next to them.

But our soldiers, sailors and airmen need more. They need weapons, not white papers. They need an industry ready to be repurposed should the need arise—an industry that's continuously building, spurred on by hard and fast rules about minimum local content. Our top-heavy Defence Force needs to be more nimble and less risk averse. Removing personnel caps will help us grow our enlisted ranks. We need to bring recruitment back in house and give units the ability to recruit directly to their ranks. AUKUS is vital to our defence strategy, but we must ensure it does not compromise the resourcing needs of our other force elements.

We need to do so much better for our veterans, who spend years battling the effects of war and service, only to be failed by a clumsy and slow bureaucracy that has been holding back support for too many years and, for some, forever. We must never forget these are real people with real stories who were prepared to give up their lives for us and our children, and too many of them ultimately did.

War is always the last resort. Well before that comes deterrence and diplomacy. Our alliances abroad are critical to our security at home, but we cannot allow dependency to breed complacency. In our region we have a unique vulnerability. Next to us we have not small island states but a large ocean continent. We need a regional security strategy with integration at its core.

The Australian Defence Force has developed deep partnerships with Pacific nations, and we need to build on that. Australia should raise a seventh regular infantry regiment—a Pacific regiment—as an entirely rotational force. While Australia based, the Pacific regiment would take every opportunity offered by its regional allies to train in the islands. Pacific Islanders from nations without a defence force could enlist if their nation has a relevant security agreement with Australia. Pacific nations that already have a defence force could rotate their soldiers through the regiment if they have a security agreement with Australia too.

The Pacific regiment would be online to respond to civil unrest, natural disasters, election integrity and law and order requests from Pacific island governments. The regiment would integrate the region, institutionalise strategic trust and strengthen cultural ties through exchange. History has taught us that Pacific islands are a potential theatre of war. The knowledge exchange and training in Pacific islands terrain for Australian and Pacific soldiers would better prepare them for any conflict that may arise

Defence integration is important, but so too is economic integration. Australia's geopolitical strategy must be coupled with a competitive geoeconomic strategy. The PALM scheme represents one of our greatest opportunities to bring these together. The PALM scheme is a temporary visa program allowing Pacific island workers to plug labour gaps in Australia's primary industries. It's a brilliant piece of foreign and domestic policy, enhancing people-to-people links across our region, bringing economic sustainability to many Pacific islands and productivity to Australia. But it's failing because of red tape.

Look at a country like Tonga. Tongan workers in Australia send more money to Tonga than the Australian government does. Remittances far outweigh aid. This is important. Remittances are not money sent to Australian contractors or big bureaucracies, like most of our aid money is. These are hard-earned wages sent by Pacific Islander workers to support their families back home. This money is putting more food on the table, helping kids to get to school, paying for the GP, financing small businesses and stimulating local economies. Unfortunately, too much of this money sent home is swallowed up by fees, which can be as high as over 15 per cent of the remittance. Bringing down the cost of remitting is vital to a strong geoeconomic strategy for the region.

I don't have the room in this speech to detail my policy solutions on bringing down the cost of remittances—it's a complex space, and I've published on it before—but I will highlight one opportunity. Australia can help Pacific Islander workers to receive a portion of their weekly pay, including their superannuation, in their home countries. This is already happening in New Zealand. Setting up superannuation portability schemes, alongside removing the superannuation withdrawal tax, would have huge impacts on the livelihoods of Pacific Islanders. This early-withdrawal tax is unfair and overly burdensome.

Our Pacific family needs labour mobility, but it needs international trade too. Much like Australia, China is their biggest trading partner, but that too can shift. Pacific countries want to move beyond the aid relationship with Australia. We need to look at where we can bring Australian investment back to the region and take our starting position from aid and dependency to trade and prosperity.

Finally, a competitive geoeconomic strategy in the region would address the alarming problem of debanking. Our declining financial relationships with the region are a critical vulnerability for us and Pacific nations and are weaponised by geopolitical competitors to undermine us. We must help our Pacific family develop a harmonised banking regulation framework that will integrate with Australia's. This will reduce the cost of compliance, lower the risk profile and encourage more Australian and American banks to do business there.

We are blessed to live in the best country in the world, but we must never take it for granted. The freedoms we enjoy today exist because of the brave men and women before us who offered their lives to uphold the rules based order. As a middle power, Australians have a moral obligation to help where we can, understanding the limitations we have. While we swiftly imposed sanctions on Russia for its illegal invasion of Ukraine, for some reason we took a wet-wipe approach to a despotic regime much closer to home. Most of the refugees I met on the border were displaced from Burma, not Myanmar. Any subsequent name change by this antidemocratic government lacks legitimacy. These persecuted people and other minority ethnicities of Burma are innocent victims of the world's longest-running civil war.

We need to expand our economic sanctions, including on Burma's central bank, the primary instrument through which the Tatmadaw, the brutal army governing Burma, finances its wicked war against its own people. This is a pathetic regime that aims for nothing more than to oppress and kill and intimidate its own people. Don't fear what the sanctions will do to the people on the ground; the state has already failed them. Their services barely exist. I've seen, firsthand, Karen soldiers smuggling books and pencils so the children could learn how to read and write. I've seen temporary huts still housing people four decades later—black plastic sheet roofs scorching in the heat of more than 40 summers—where food is scarce but hopes run high. The lucky ones who eventually found a home in Australia had a second chance at a better life.

Before I close, I'd like to thank you all for being here tonight to hear what I have to say. I am deeply humbled. Thank you, mum and dad. The values I am here to fight for are the ones that you instilled in me. My 105-year-old grandmother, Pat, is watching from Wellington in New Zealand. Nana was the 11th person to sign up to the Women's Royal New Zealand Naval Service after World War II broke out. Nan, I love you so very much. Your grace and service inspire me every day. God bless you, and thank you for always answering your mobile phone so we can stay connected, even if it does take a few rings.

To my big brothers: I am the favourite child—and it's now in the Hansard. Thank you for always looking out for me and always being there whenever I'd needed you.

And to my husband, Ben, who believes in me more than anybody else: I'm so glad that I agreed to marry you. That was the easiest and best choice I've ever made.

And to my beautiful children: you always gave me a reason to dust myself off and keep going. I will always put you first when I make my decisions. I will work hard to preserve and protect your hopes, aspirations and freedoms, because, when I fight for you, I fight for the rest of the people in the greatest country in the world. Thank you, Madam President. God bless you all, and may God bless Australia.