Page 1441 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 1 May 1990
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a real choice. While independents may appear an attractive alternative, the community may discover to its cost that "what you vote for ain't what you get". The Labor Party seeks always to govern in its own right, with the support of the community earned through its members' efforts - our efforts at probing the government, our efforts at swinging the community around to support our views. We reject coalitions of convenience and alliances of ambition. If we govern, we govern in our own right, albeit at times supported by independents, but independents not in the government.
My involvement with politics and with the Labor Party and the Labor movement grew naturally from my background. I hail from the Port Adelaide area in South Australia. It is traditional for a member addressing a maiden speech to refer to the area in which he grew up, which often is the area he represents. In this community, in Canberra, that often is not the case because so many of us come from outside Canberra. I believe Mr Stefaniak is one of the few members of this Assembly who can proudly claim to have been born and raised in Canberra. Although he went the other way for some years, he returned to live in Canberra.
I came to Canberra originally for a short term but chose to stay. The area in which I grew up is an area in which it is natural to turn to the Australian Labor Party. When one grows up in state schools in a working-class area in the industrial suburbs of Adelaide, or indeed of any other great capital city, it is natural to turn to the Labor Party because one is exposed, at an early age, to the great reality of inequality in this country. It is born and starts in the education system. One realises that one's colleagues at a state primary school and a state high school are assumed not to be going on to university, are assumed to be fit only for other things.
While I grew up I was fortunate that there was a time of hope for the Labor Party and new vision. Don Dunstan was in power in South Australia and Gough Whitlam had assumed power in Canberra. That in itself for me and thousands of others of my generation was of enormous significance because one of the great achievements of the Whitlam Government was to break down the crucial barrier to access to higher education. Prior to Gough Whitlam the only real choice for persons from that sort of background was often the teaching service, because one was offered a tied scholarship. Access to higher education was usually through that route. Whitlam, by abolishing fees, opened access to full university education for all for the first time. I was able to take advantage of that and pursue a career in law.
It was also in South Australia that I grew to see the benefits that could be delivered by government at the local level. While under the Australian federal system power tends to be centralised in the Federal Government and while my career as a constitutional lawyer has tended to be on
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