Page 36 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 7 December 2004
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volunteered their time during the course of my campaign. Thank you for believing in me, for supporting me and giving up your time to help me. I hope to use well the trust and belief you have shown in me.
I would like to thank in particular the ACT division of the Liberal Party for all the support I received during the campaign. I would like to also particularly acknowledge the work of Justin De Domenico, David Cameron, Artur Stuart and Kate Vaughan, Tim and Lara Kirk, Paul and Michelle Armarego, and Adrian and Matia Wellspring who all in one way or another supported me during my campaign. Your assistance and support was invaluable. To JK, thank you for all you have taught me and for your ongoing role in mentoring me.
To my mum and dad, thank you for raising me with love, patience and perseverance, and also for your amazing support during the campaign. To Branka, Shawn, Nik, Lidia, Zvonimir and Kerryanne, thank you for your encouragement and practical assistance. To Katarina, I forgive you for being overseas on election day and not voting for me. To Michael and Thomas, my boys: you are too young to understand this now but when you read this in years to come, know that I love you with all my heart and only want what is best for you. Thank you for providing me with a pleasant distraction during my campaign and bringing so much joy to my life. I hope to help shape Canberra into a better city for you and for your children.
To Ros, I love you very much. You are the most important person in my life. Thank you for your amazing patience and hard work during the campaign, and for your loving support in all the time I have known you. You are truly a beautiful, talented and loving person and you continue to be an inspiration to me.
Mr Speaker, I began this speech by talking about my Croatian heritage, which clearly is very important to me. I do not believe this makes me any the less a loyal Australian. On the contrary, it helps me to appreciate what is good in Australian society and the importance of defending those aspects if necessary. But my heritage has contributed to making me what I am. My parents’ lives and my own were shaped by what they brought with them and what they left behind. They left behind religious persecution, which made it difficult for people to practise their faith and to pass it to their children. They left behind a government that invaded every aspect of people’s lives, stifling creativity and enterprise and eroding trust. But the human spirit is remarkably resilient. Despite the obstacles, my parents brought with them and passed on to me a habit of self-sufficiency, a belief in hard work and private enterprise and in commonsense, but also in the value of formal education as a means to making one’s way in the world.
I am resistant to universal ideological solutions to individual human problems. I am resistant to the idea that government has all the answers and knows what is best. I believe in good government, not big government. Growing up, I never had a sense that I was on my own against the world. If anything, my belief in the importance of family, of friendship, of community life was strengthened. And if you were fortunate, as we always felt we were, then there was a duty to help those facing disadvantage.
Perhaps most importantly, there was another sense in which we never felt alone. My parents also brought their faith—a faith that I am privileged to share; a faith which recognises and ennobles the use of human reason to benefit human society and which
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