Extract from The Guardian
If you want to regain faith in our elected representatives, read some first speeches.
Not necessarily the attention-seeking ones that make the news – such as Pauline Hanson’s fact-free musing on the latest minority group she thinks we should fear the most, or Derryn Hinch’s use of parliamentary privilege to name convicted sex offenders. The other ones. The speeches that seek to answer what Liberal minister Christian Porter described in his own first speech three years ago as “the existential questions of politics: who is the member? Why are they here? What do they believe?”
They’re not all good. Some plod through the not-particularly-interesting attributes of the electorate from which the MP has just been elected, move on to the fairly pedestrian life story of said MP and finish with the ubiquitous heartfelt thanks to spouses, parents and friends.
But some are fascinating and moving – telling personal stories that have shaped and motivated, setting individual goals and priorities before they are diluted by the mendacity of the political process or dulled by meaningless talking points.
Julia Banks, the new Liberal member for the Victorian seat of Chisholm, delivered a particularly powerful one this week, a defence of feminism and multiculturalism and a personal story of the effects of hate speech.
She contradicted John Howard’s view that women would never achieve equal representation in politics, saying it was “never right to say never ever” and describing her own life as a working parent.
“It is true to say that women have borne the brunt of the caring responsibilities, but it is not right to say that we will never achieve a 50-50 ratio simply because that has been the case historically. This is the modern world. Increasingly, men and women share the responsibilities of domestic life and childcare,” she said.
“The impact of male and female models who reverse traditional roles should not be underestimated. The pursuit of gender equality is intrinsically linked to love and respect and the dignity of work.”
She mused that her late father, Sofoulis Phillip Lolatgis, who arrived in Australia in 1949 as a 15-year-old who had fled post-war poverty in Greece without his parents and unable to speak English, would have considered it a “miracle” that his daughter had been elected to parliament.
And she described her own childhood experience of racial abuse and intolerance, back when Greeks were the ethnic group that was being told to go back to where they came from.
“In my early years, prejudice and discrimination shattered my childhood world. Despite what I would describe as my very Aussie upbringing … I did not know what a boy at primary school meant when he said to me, ‘Wog, go back to your home country.’ ‘Home?’ I asked myself. I was born and raised and knew and loved no other country than Australia as my home. I did not know the meaning of the word ‘wog’ and the first thing I did when I got home from school that day was to look up the word in my brother’s dictionary. Incredulously, I read the definition over and over: ‘Someone of dark skin who is foreign to the land on which he lives.’ I was hurt more by the tone of the word and less by its definition. I felt ugly, scared and very alone,” she said, immediately linking that experience to the current debate about hate speech.
“I am a passionate believer in free speech … (but) ‘hate speech’ is simply not part of Australia’s moral code, regardless of our views … whilst this was just a primary school playground experience, it sowed the seeds for my belief that public figures, and those who have a big share of voice in the media and other forums, have a higher duty of care and responsibility to think before they write and speak. This is not ‘political correctness gone mad’; rather, that those who have this voice should apply the test of respect and responsibility, and ask themselves: how would that Australian child who is watching or reading this feel? I suspect the same way I felt that day at primary school.”
Not necessarily the attention-seeking ones that make the news – such as Pauline Hanson’s fact-free musing on the latest minority group she thinks we should fear the most, or Derryn Hinch’s use of parliamentary privilege to name convicted sex offenders. The other ones. The speeches that seek to answer what Liberal minister Christian Porter described in his own first speech three years ago as “the existential questions of politics: who is the member? Why are they here? What do they believe?”
They’re not all good. Some plod through the not-particularly-interesting attributes of the electorate from which the MP has just been elected, move on to the fairly pedestrian life story of said MP and finish with the ubiquitous heartfelt thanks to spouses, parents and friends.
But some are fascinating and moving – telling personal stories that have shaped and motivated, setting individual goals and priorities before they are diluted by the mendacity of the political process or dulled by meaningless talking points.
Julia Banks, the new Liberal member for the Victorian seat of Chisholm, delivered a particularly powerful one this week, a defence of feminism and multiculturalism and a personal story of the effects of hate speech.
She contradicted John Howard’s view that women would never achieve equal representation in politics, saying it was “never right to say never ever” and describing her own life as a working parent.
“It is true to say that women have borne the brunt of the caring responsibilities, but it is not right to say that we will never achieve a 50-50 ratio simply because that has been the case historically. This is the modern world. Increasingly, men and women share the responsibilities of domestic life and childcare,” she said.
“The impact of male and female models who reverse traditional roles should not be underestimated. The pursuit of gender equality is intrinsically linked to love and respect and the dignity of work.”
She mused that her late father, Sofoulis Phillip Lolatgis, who arrived in Australia in 1949 as a 15-year-old who had fled post-war poverty in Greece without his parents and unable to speak English, would have considered it a “miracle” that his daughter had been elected to parliament.
And she described her own childhood experience of racial abuse and intolerance, back when Greeks were the ethnic group that was being told to go back to where they came from.
“In my early years, prejudice and discrimination shattered my childhood world. Despite what I would describe as my very Aussie upbringing … I did not know what a boy at primary school meant when he said to me, ‘Wog, go back to your home country.’ ‘Home?’ I asked myself. I was born and raised and knew and loved no other country than Australia as my home. I did not know the meaning of the word ‘wog’ and the first thing I did when I got home from school that day was to look up the word in my brother’s dictionary. Incredulously, I read the definition over and over: ‘Someone of dark skin who is foreign to the land on which he lives.’ I was hurt more by the tone of the word and less by its definition. I felt ugly, scared and very alone,” she said, immediately linking that experience to the current debate about hate speech.
“I am a passionate believer in free speech … (but) ‘hate speech’ is simply not part of Australia’s moral code, regardless of our views … whilst this was just a primary school playground experience, it sowed the seeds for my belief that public figures, and those who have a big share of voice in the media and other forums, have a higher duty of care and responsibility to think before they write and speak. This is not ‘political correctness gone mad’; rather, that those who have this voice should apply the test of respect and responsibility, and ask themselves: how would that Australian child who is watching or reading this feel? I suspect the same way I felt that day at primary school.”
A few days earlier, Peter Khalil, the son of Egyptian migrants, who won the seat of Wills for Labor, had nailed his colours to the mast on the issue of asylum policy.
“I believe Australia has a moral obligation, at the minimum, to take responsibility for the care of those refugees that have been physically or emotionally damaged by the long-term detention that we have submitted them to,” he said.
“I also think we should re-examine the assumed nexus between detention centres and discouraging people smugglers to ascertain how much this argument holds in the context of robust turn-back policies.
“I supported our leader, Bill Shorten, when he made clear that if we won the election one of his first acts would be to negotiate with the UNHCR the resettlement of the refugees to safe and secure countries … But I recognise that even this falls far too short in our moral, legal and international obligations as a good international citizen.”
Julian Leeser, the new Liberal member of the New South Wales seat of Berowra gave a searing account of his father’s suicide 20 years ago, including finding his final note “on the glass-topped table in the hall”.
“Like so many of the notes from my father [it was] written in red pen on the back of a used envelope. It said simply: ‘I am sorry Sylvia. I just can’t cope, love, John’.”
Leeser was open about his regrets at not noticing the signals his father had been giving and his view that despite many many programs and millions of dollars in spending, Australia is still failing in mental health services and suicide prevention.
Susan Templeman, the new Labor member for Macquarie, described how, 10 years ago, her “family’s foundations were rocked” by her daughter’s first experience of mental illness, something that started Templeman on the path that led to this speech, watched by her family from the public gallery, including her daughter who was “determined that her history is something not to be ashamed of”.
“I vividly remember a distressing night, standing in my kitchen with my husband, asking: how do other families do this?,” Templeman recounted.
“And while I did not then and there declare my intention to run for parliament, that was the moment I look back on as transformative, when something in me shifted. It turned out we were not the only ones facing the same challenge. Having mental illness in a family makes you question your parenting and your values, and I have learned more from that experience than any other in my life … So that was how I became someone who did not just sit around solving the problems of the world at a dinner party, but an advocate and an activist … The funny thing about standing up on an issue is that once you start it is hard to stop. Injustice is injustice, no matter what form it takes.”
There was Mike Freelander, the new Labor member for Macarthur, describing his work as a doctor with children with developmental problems and illnesses and how it motivated him to fight inequality on healthcare. Anne Aly, the new Labor member for Cowan, an anti-radicalisation expert whose work was used by the Coalition during the election campaign to make claims she was “soft on terrorism”, and who saw her election as a kind of vindication.
“It is no secret that I find the politics of division, this attempt to ... set people against each other to win votes, to be desperate, dangerous and undemocratic, especially at times like this, when unwise words can be bullets,” she said.
Parliamentarians can mostly blame themselves for the fact the public view them with mounting disdain. Voters think politicians put political power and tactics ahead of real world problem solving because very often they do.
But it is also true that we don’t always see the best of them, the people committed to being good representatives, according to their own beliefs and ideologies, motivated to serve by their own diverse human experiences.
First speeches are a benchmark, a permanent record of a politicians’ starting-line ideals and aspirations, words that will be used as a reference point for the rest of their careers. Reading them reveals that, despite our cynicism, we seem to have elected some very good ones.
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