Page175 - Week 01 - Thursday, 3 December 2020
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . 2020 Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
offer to you, Madam Speaker, and to our fellow Brindabella colleagues Mr Parton, Ms Lawder and Mr Gentleman. I believe that ours is the best community in Canberra, although I accept that I am a little bit biased. I especially look forward to working with you to ensure the best representation for our community and that the people of Tuggeranong are most effectively represented in this place.
It is in that vein that I would like to encourage all of you to join me for an informal Brindabella caucus in this Tenth Assembly—a non-partisan effort that sees all five of us working together and meeting regularly to discuss issues of concern to our constituents. I am happy to facilitate the first meeting. We can have it at Brew Bar on Anketell Street, and I will even shout you to lunch.
Although I stand proudly today as the 82nd person elected to this place, it is not my first time in this building. In fact, the by-product of my campaign against the school closures of 2006 was a period of work with then Liberal MLAs Brendan Smyth and Steve Pratt. Suffice to say that the development of my political values and ideology has not seen me as an advocate for the Liberal cause. However, through my work with Mr Pratt and Mr Smyth I developed a deep appreciation for the awesome impact of the work of this place and the impact that that work can have on everyday people in our communities. They demonstrated to me at a young age a model for parliamentarism for which I am very grateful.
However, what I learnt through that experience was that the Liberal Party did not reflect my values, yet I had a yearning to contribute to public policy and politics. In my time here, I did get to witness firsthand the hard work of the late ACT Greens member for Brindabella, Dr Deb Foskey, and her team. They inspired me to take another look at the Greens. I say “another look” on purpose because the Greens were often referred to in my home, rather disparagingly, as an intellectual inner-city elite. “Latte sippers,” Dad would say. I am more of a flat white guy myself! I thought it was a party that did not and could not represent me or my values. The work of the late Dr Deb Foskey and her team showed me that this was not true; in fact, it was often only the Greens who were ever really standing up for working-class people and people living in poverty.
Another core reason for my ever-developing interest in the Greens at that time was the dinnertime conversations in my family that were, to be kind, disparaging towards all politicians and politics in general. Of the many expressions that my dad has used over time—and members, I warn you, you will hear many of them over the course of the next four years, most of them terribly unparliamentary—one of my dad’s more famous quotes was to “follow the money”. When following the money, it shocked me to learn about the mega amounts of cash donated often by profitable corporate interests and the wealthy elite that swirls through the two old parties. I could not understand why these people and their businesses would give so much to these two political parties. I then spent some time working in small business, and even owning and operating a few small businesses myself. I learnt that no businessperson makes an investment without expecting a return. That begged the obvious question: what was it exactly that these big corporations and wealthy elite were getting out of the two old parties?
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . 2020 Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video