Page 2725 - Week 08 - Thursday, 11 August 2016
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speak to you today, this morning, cognisant that many of my peers have not had this opportunity. It is a rare thing indeed, in political life, to leave at a time of your own choosing. I am most grateful to have been given this opportunity, although some, I am sure, will say that I have well and truly worked my notice.
The role of an elected representative pervades and soaks into your life. It sees all of your time revolve around the life of the community you seek to represent. The life of the city becomes part of your own. We must always be ready to respond to the expectations of those who have put us in this place. In and outside of this building we are no longer defined as simply private citizens. We are proxies for the successes, hopes, aspirations, criticism and disappointments of so many others.
Public office can also bring great opportunity—the opportunity to influence and shape your community; to push the direction of life in a more favourable way for those who need your help; to direct our collective public wealth towards a fairer and more sustainable place in which to live; to learn from others whose stories we would not have otherwise heard; to see and experience the world, and our city’s place in it, in ways that few others get to see.
Madam Speaker, three great influences have shaped my time in this place: first, the Australian Labor Party and the Labor caucus of opposition from 1998 to 2001; second, the offices I have held as a minister and my work with the ACT public service; and third, the life of this beautiful city, my home, and the hopes and aspirations I have held and continue to hold for its future.
I have always sought to hold true to Labor and its objectives for a fairer, just, sustainable and prosperous society. Labor is a party which allows any person to contribute, to make an argument, to advance the cause of fairness and equality. Labor gives everyone a chance to build a better society.
For this grandson and great-grandson of factory workers and labourers from Port Adelaide, an ordinary kid going to public schools in the 1970s in Weston Creek, the first child of my family’s generations, the first of any of my family’s generations, to go to university, Labor welcomed and encouraged me and gave me opportunities to make a difference that I could never have imagined.
I recall attending, in my very early days as a Labor member, party meetings where the likes of Rosemary Follett, David Lamont, John Langmore, Wayne Berry, Terry Connolly, Bob McMullan and Ros Kelly were present. In those meetings, we were all treated as equals. We were entitled to question them, and debate and be part of collective decision-making.
It is fair to say that to be Labor is not always an easy road. Labor as a party can test you and, sometimes, on occasion, it can briefly break your heart, but it is also the case that hope springs eternal in the Labor breast. And as only a party of true believers can inspire, it is this that has kept me in my party.
The chance to have been a member of the Labor caucus in the opposition years of 1998 to 2001 was a formative period in my political life. There is much to be said for
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