Tuesday 7 February 2023

Address to Parliament

GOVERNOR’S SPEECH

Address-in-reply

President, I am so very grateful to the people of the Southern Metropolitan Region for giving me the honour of representing them in this place, and I look forward to working with you and all members serving the people of Victoria.

Importantly, and firstly, I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land we are meeting on here today and the traditional owners of the lands that now comprise the Southern Metropolitan Region: the Wurundjeri and the Boon Wurrung people of the eastern Kulin nation. I would like to pay my deepest respects to their elders past and present.

As a member of the Victorian Parliament I also accept and acknowledge the role that this institution has played in the systematic dispossession of Aboriginal people from their lands. The qualification for election to this place for much of its history was based on a franchise of land ownership, the same land curated and nurtured for thousands of years by its traditional owners – a franchise enabled by forcible dispossession. The laws that were then made here furthered that dispossession, the incarceration and the removal of children from their families. They are failures of the past and failures of the present and failures we must fix, and I commit as a new member of this place to use the power placed in my hands by the people to work together with Aboriginal Victorians to remedy the injustices of the past and empower them as part of creating a better future together, working with their voice to treaties and truth, here in Victoria and then leading the nation.

All of us come here shaped by the experiences of our lives, and those experiences will in turn shape our actions as representatives. Melbourne’s Southern Metropolitan Region is where I grew up and went to school, and I know it so very, very well. My mum grew up in South Melbourne with her family and my dad with his in Beaumaris. They met and married and bought a house in a bayside suburb at a time, believe it or not, when a trade union official and a typist could afford to do so. It is the house I was raised in and where Mum still lives today. My childhood was spent ranging across these suburbs. I moved to and from my grandparents in Cheltenham and in Ormond. I remember board games being played in the front room of my cousin’s house to the background clanging of the boom gates at the now-removed North Road level crossing. Sadly, there are some childhood memories we can never relive.

In short, it was the best kind of an upbringing that a kid in the suburbs could ask for, and it is the same essential reason that hundreds of thousands of families call this part of Melbourne home – for its great schools, its parklands and beaches, for its libraries, cultural centres and community hubs, for its art and for its music. It is a great place to raise a family. I am very grateful for the opportunity to represent them and will work to keep improving the services and infrastructure that make their lives better.

We all need to listen to what the people tell us at elections. In reflecting on 2022, with elections of significance for our nation and for our state, it is I hope an inflection point that might underscore the importance of purpose in politics. People want governments who do things, and voters will reward governing and especially governing well. They will forgive an occasional misstep and are sick of being told that problems are beyond our ability to control or are someone else’s responsibility. We must not be afraid to tackle the challenges we confront, and we must govern with purpose.

There has been a disturbing tonal shift in the broader political debate in this state. I think that is undeniable. And to me what the last election shows is that we need to be listening more to the hundreds of thousands of quiet Victorians who care more about the quality of the services they receive, about the infrastructure they rely upon and about having a job than being distracted by the braying voices of a few.

In all that noise, however, we must not miss the signals that are being sent our way. For some, the vulnerability created by our current economic and labour market structures makes their experience of precariousness a fertile receptor to messages of fear and division. Harnessing the power of government to strengthen their economic security is our best response. Creating secure jobs, reliable transport, renewable energy, good schools and health care whenever needed is what restores their trust in politics, in government and in us. And with the confidence of the community, we as legislators and policymakers can lead our state forward to even greater things.

Many people worked very hard to see this Labor government re-elected for a third term, and I would like to pay tribute to their efforts. They were ably led of course by the Premier and Deputy Premier. But I would especially like to thank the lower house Labor candidates across the 11 districts in the Southern Metro Region, more of whom were unsuccessful than not but all of whom worked incredibly hard, and the hard work of their campaign teams and each and every booth volunteer who stood through those hours and days of wind and rain and sun – that was the same day! That is the reason the Labor ticket secured my election, so thank you.

The grind of campaigning is well known to my family because ours is a Labor family. In fact it has been 100 years since my great-grandmother Isabel Gwynne was a stalwart in the Granville and Parramatta ALP branches in western Sydney. Thanks to the glory of the national archives I recently discovered a newspaper clipping from the wonderfully named Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate from 1923 that delves into great detail about an intra-branch preselection dispute in which it seems she was involved. So for Labor and the Labor family it seems the more things change, the more they stay the same.

But of course my father Peter – and I am very grateful he is here today – was a member of this Parliament in the other place for 20 years, and he made an enormous contribution to the Parliament, to the people of Victoria, to politics and to the Labor Party through his lifetime of tireless work for the causes he believed in. If I can replicate just some of that contribution, it will be an achievement that I can be proud of, because I am very proud of him.

For many, my connection to the Labor family is mostly what they know about me – they often do not look far past my surname – but today is an opportunity to tell a bit more of that story, and in doing so there is no more important person to understand me and my life than my mother. This is going to be tough. Alice Reilly was a working-class kid who grew up in church-owned housing in South Melbourne, the daughter of post-war Scottish migrants. Her dad was a linesman for the SEC and her mum was a cleaner. She left school at 15 and went to work in a typing pool, often shouldering the responsibility of looking after her brothers and sister as her mum left the house to clean offices in the city, returning late at night. Her piercing blue eyes and sharp brain set her apart. She was tenacious and smart and worked incredibly hard. She lives her life with epilepsy, and with that have come good days and bad, but nothing has ever stopped her, and woe betide anything that tries.

She is also the most courageous person I know – a woman who took the very difficult decision, especially for a girl brought up in the Catholic Church, to end her marriage and set out on her own with a three-year-old son, me, because it turns out life around politics and the Labor Party just was not her cup of tea. She had her own path to forge. She also, though, had a young kid, no formal education and a house with a mortgage to pay. But she knew and instilled in me over my life that education matters most. She knew she needed more of it, at least in a formal sense, and so she set out on a special entry pathway for early school leavers to get a university degree. So reading and learning were, to her, the most important things that I could do. So I did, a lot – and I loved it.

She worked nights waiting tables at the local hotel to make sure we had enough money to pay the bills and got jobs on campus working in administration, all while studying and being a single mum. Everyone helped – family, friends, the succession of boarders we had renting out the spare room – and the support network she made during those years was so strong it has sustained to this day. She was always loyal, and people were loyal to her. She graduated university when I was eight, setting up her next career phase in office administration, and in the late 1980s she was learning about computers and automation and helping others adjust to the nascent technological revolution. She knew how rapidly the world was changing and why we all needed to be ready to learn and adapt. She did get a break from me every second weekend. I spent that with my dad, and she deserved every moment’s rest. All the time I was learning about hard work and about her never stopping, being resilient and caring and thinking about others and the world around us. She worried about the planet long before it was front-page news, and she taught me to stand up for what was important.

Mum cannot be with us in the gallery today. These days her body just is not well enough, but she is watching at home with her partner Greg – so hi, Mum. And importantly, she is here, in me, and she is the reason I am who I am. Her values shaped me, and I hope you will get to see me with those values during my time in this chamber.

While today I am less of a hands-on rabble-rouser than I was in the mid to late 1990s – while I was finding my own voice protesting as a schoolkid against Pacific nuclear testing and education cuts – my passion for and commitment to achieving change remains, because we should all be here to change things. I have had unparalleled opportunities as a researcher, as a public servant and as a policy adviser to witness good governments changing people’s lives. I know the power of good public policy. What I have also learned is that the task of policy reform is never done. There are always new challenges to confront, and we cannot rest on our laurels or be zealously uncritical of work already done.

I worked during the last federal Labor government to help set up the national disability insurance scheme, and it is one of the things that I am professionally proudest of – supporting the Prime Minister as she signed agreements with premiers to deliver the scheme. But I know that the NDIS has its challenges and is far from the promise that we hoped to deliver. Reform is never done. So we can defend universal health care while acknowledging the system can improve its patient outcomes. We can support our public schools while admitting our kids need to be better taught basic reading and writing and maths.

As a policy wonk I am incredibly excited about the government’s Best Start, Best Life reforms – like, do not start me. Kinder for three-year-olds, more pre-prep for four-year-olds – it will transform lives. Fifteen years ago I had the absolute privilege of working with Jenny Macklin and Kevin Rudd to write the then federal Labor opposition’s first policy document to deliver 15 hours of universal preschool for four-year-olds, but Victoria’s efforts today show us that that was nowhere near ambitious enough. There is always more to be done.

There are many lessons to learn about how to be an effective activist and policy agitator, and there is one that I learned from the late Dorothy Reading, my father’s long-term partner and my brother’s mother and, it is fair to say to those who knew her, a force of nature in politics, policy and public health advocacy. Faced with a choice between expressing sentiment and taking action, Dorothy would always insist on the latter. Dorothy’s work helped Victoria be a global leader in tobacco control, which has delivered us enormous public health dividends, but 30 years of sustained efforts are at risk with the rise of vaping in our community. Five years ago the rates of young people starting smoking cigarettes were negligible, and today youth vaping rates are exploding, as is the related harm. So much has changed so fast.

Children are calling the Quitline addicted to nicotine. They are vaping in class. And if our regulatory model allows this to happen, then it is broken and needs to be fixed. We know that inhaling substances into our lungs is dangerous. Whether it is nicotine or asbestos or silica dust, it kills, and we do not have the luxury of time to wait and see. We must act. Vaping products are dangerous and should be treated as such, and I believe federal and state governments must act quickly and decisively. This is a crisis, I believe, that must be resolved before the Parliament contemplates any further progress on drug law reform.

As parliamentarians we do not achieve change ourselves. Yes, we can pass laws, but change is created by movements, and none have had more of an impact on positive change for people in this country than the trade union movement. Unions have always been a big part of my life, both personally and professionally. I remember as a kid with my Uncle Dave marching with what was then known as the Federated Engine Drivers’ and Firemen’s Association of Australasia against Kennett’s cuts in 1992. We were with the Maritime Union of Australia on the waterfront in 1998, and I remember listening to and learning from the WA metalworkers during my uni days in Perth. Professionally as an adviser and researcher while in Canberra I worked with the ASU on equal pay, with the ACTU on paid parental leave and the then United Voice on better pay for early childhood educators – and most recently here with Trades Hall on safety for young apprentices. So across the movement, comrades, you continue to inspire, and I will continue to work side by side with you from this place.

Walking across the entry to Parliament from Spring Street we are reminded by the floor that there is safety in a multitude of counsellors, and I am fortunate to have many whose counsel I can rely upon. There are many who have given me support over many years in politics, and I cannot mention them all, but I especially want to thank Paul Erickson, Susie Byers, Andrew Giles and Linda White for their constant wisdom and advice. To those members and ministers who have employed me along the journey, starting with Alan Carpenter, Jenny Macklin, Julia Gillard and Anthony Albanese, the opportunities that you gave me were priceless and the lessons you taught me about being a good representative, about remembering why we are here and who we are here for, will guide me in this place. Importantly, to the brilliant staff that I worked alongside in those offices and who remain my good friends, when we did our jobs well our efforts were unseen and achievements unnoticed by many, but it all added up to Labor governments changing people’s lives for the better. Those ex-staffers are an unparalleled network of whip-smart strategic thinkers, and I know their phones are always on, so I will be calling.

At the end of it all, though, there is nothing without our family. I have already spoken – and blubbed – about what my mum means to me, how I would not be who I am without her, but I would not be here today if not for the love, the support and a fair amount of forbearance from my partner Rosie. Her intellect and achievements in her field of medicine are astounding, but it is her passion for what she believes in that helps sustain me and reminds me constantly of what matters: yes, our family, of course, but there must always be more than just us. There is injustice to address, systemic disadvantage to overcome and constantly thinking about how to improve the services our community relies upon. There is definitely something bigger that we are trying to achieve. And, Rosie, each in our own way, we will achieve it together.

But I want to end the speech with our two kids, just over there, Lewis and Clement. The joy and wonder they constantly bring to our lives is invigorating. Their thirst for learning and knowledge is an inspiration. And I know that it is not always easy growing up around politics. You get well practised at hanging around that boring stuff waiting to do something fun. But I hope they know that those meetings and phone calls and late nights are all for a purpose, because the future will pass on to them and their generation, and we have an obligation to make that future better. So let us get on with it.

Members applauded.