Page 4350 - Week 13 - Thursday, 11 December 2014
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Madam Speaker, to be the seventh person elected Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory is certainly the highest honour of my professional life. But I know I would not be here without the support of the people of Canberra for the Australian Labor Party at the 2012 election and without my Labor colleagues’ support for me as their leader. We should never forget this humble reality: all of us here are representatives. I acknowledge as well this morning the confidence of my ministerial colleague of these past two years, Mr Rattenbury. Shane, we have come a long way together and you are helping us to govern well.
To my supporters and friends in the Labor Party and beyond: I will never forget your work and your words through my 22 years in our movement, my eight years here in the Assembly and in the past eight days. Friends, I will be calling on you again.
To my family: now is not the place or the time for everything I have to say about you all. To my mum, my dad, my brother, Iain, my sister-in-law, Nat, and gorgeous baby Zoe: I know how lucky I am. Anthony: I love you and I look forward to the day when we can legally marry in this country.
Madam Speaker, a predecessor, Jon Stanhope, was elected on a platform to repair our city’s health and education services and our planning system. My predecessor, Katy Gallagher, took office nearly four years ago and promised to focus on the things that matter for Canberra families: health, education, community and municipal services. They both delivered—indeed they delivered in spades—and I have learned so much from both of them.
Jon Stanhope showed me that Canberra wants and deserves leadership with a progressive vision and voice. Our community is not afraid of change and our people’s values should be heard on the national stage. Katy Gallagher taught me, above all, that leadership is about people. She reminds me of it in her words and in her deeds every single day.
I know now I have a new role. I will be out from behind the Treasurer’s desk, in our city’s great suburbs, listening and learning from our people and always part of our community. When I am welcoming the world to our city I will feel a special pride, and on the tough days for our people I will feel a special responsibility. Being Chief Minister will be a wonderful opportunity to work alongside Canberrans in all the many phases of this city’s life—the small businesses, the sportsmen and women, the charity workers, the community organisations, the teachers and the nurses, the police and the emergency service workers and, yes, our fantastic public servants, here in our garden suburbs and in our urban villages.
Madam Speaker, Bill Hayden once said that the life of a community representative was a “school fete worse than death”. I could not disagree more. I cannot wait. I will bring my own background and outlook—knowledge and skills as a student of the economy, as a passionate advocate for economic growth and as Treasurer of the ACT—to the times in which I govern. As chief ministers, Jon Stanhope and Katy Gallagher knew the importance of the city’s economy as the backdrop to service delivery for our community. The Stanhope government was fiscally responsible through a long period of economic growth. The Gallagher government worked hand in glove with federal Labor in office to keep this city strong after the global financial crisis.
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