Thursday, 20 September 2018

 Mr THOMPSON (Sandringham) (14:06): Charles La Trobe, Lieutenant-Governor of Victoria, once caricatured some fellow travellers on a paddle-steamer whilst travelling in the United States. He noted that the pilot was found to be a drunk, the engineer an ignoramus, the steward an economist, the captain a gambler, the firemen insurgent and the passengers riotous. Welcome to Spring Street!

It has been an honour to serve in the Parliament of Victoria, representing the Sandringham electorate, over the past 26 years. I often reflect upon the history of our nation and the presence of many reminders of our post-settlement and Judeo-Christian heritage and the contributions of many faithful men and women. I outline a few examples. Victoria’s motto is ‘Peace and prosperity’, words found at the front of 1 Treasury Place and in the Old Testament. In the parliamentary vestibule are words taken from the Old Testament:

Where no counsel is the people fall; but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety.

The German words ‘Ich dien’, which mean ‘I serve’, are embedded in the front foyer tiles, an allusion to the master-servant.

At the 2007 unveiling of the statue of Indigenous heroes Sir Doug Nicholls and his wife Lady Gladys Nicholls, some 200 metres from where we are gathered, the Age newspaper, in reporting the event, noted that Sir Doug Nicholls’s favourite biblical passage was quoted on the day, and it was:

I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

To the east of Parliament in Burston Reserve on Macarthur Street is a plaque honouring the memory of Caroline Chisholm, who worked tirelessly to support the women of colonial Australia. In the same gardens, adjacent to Tasma Terrace, there is the Great Petition sculpture honouring the women of the suffragette movement. The first signatory was Margaret McLean, a long-serving president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and a feminist. Both Chisholm and McLean were empowered women drawn by their Christian faith to the service of others.

The Bible and the Christ of its narrative have been the cornerstone of our state. The preamble to the Australian constitution includes the words: ‘Humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God’. The Australian House of Representatives convened in this very chamber between 1901 and 1927. The Lord’s Prayer is recited in both the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council before each sitting day. In a commonwealth address the Queen stated:

Forgiveness lies at the heart of the Christian faith. It can heal broken families, it can restore friendships and it can reconcile divided communities.

Another theme of the Queen’s addresses is her references to Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan. The injunction from this wonderful story is: ‘Go thou and do likewise’.

Lieutenant-Governor La Trobe’s family were active in the slave trade abolition movement, as were the family of Victoria’s first education minister, James Wilberforce Stephen, an 1866 state election candidate for part of the area now covered by the Sandringham electorate. His step-grandmother was the sister of William Wilberforce.

When La Trobe arrived in Melbourne in 1839, his address included the following words:

… I pray God, to whom I look for strength and power … that I may be enabled through his grace to know my duty, and to do my duty, diligently, temperately and fearlessly.

…

It will not be by individual aggrandisement, by the possession of numerous flocks and herds … that we shall secure for the country enduring prosperity and happiness, but by the acquisition and maintenance of sound religious and moral institutions, without which no country can become truly great.

In 1838 La Trobe wrote in a report to the House of Commons that the ‘gift of education’ should be:

… not merely based upon worldly morality, but built upon the Holy Scriptures.

In 1835, from Tasmania, Henry Reed financed the early settlement of Melbourne. He led the first lay church service in Melbourne in the spring of that year. Reed later helped fund the Salvation Army in England from his Tasmanian wealth. His grandsons founded Qantas Airways and the Heide art gallery. A granddaughter went to China with the China Inland Mission. Reed believed in engaging people in the commercial life of the community, protecting the vulnerable and addressing social structures which created victims. In Tasmania, Reed spent the last night in the cell of six men condemned to be executed and walked with them to the gallows.

Today legislators confront the challenge of whether pluralism will become society’s new truth: are everyone’s ideas true at the same time? A former Australian Prime Minister noted that we live in a society where children do not know who they are, they do not know where they belong and they do not know what they are here for.

This existential malaise is often compounded by a loss of hope and ever greater levels of addiction, poverty, domestic violence and homelessness. When we have lost the cultural moorings that once gave our community strength and purpose, how can children realise their potential?

There is a portrait of the late Sir Isaac Isaacs some 15 metres away from the Legislative Assembly of Victoria, in the Premiers Corridor. Over the course of a distinguished career across all three arms of government, Isaacs served as solicitor-general of Victoria, Attorney-General of Australia, Chief Justice of the High Court and Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia. Writing in 1934, Isaacs observed that:

The Bible … reminds humanity, if it will but listen, that it is not in the stormy wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, that salvation is to be found, but in the ‘still small voice’ that the sacred volume carries as its message of righteousness, mercy and peace through the ages. This, I believe, is the only real hope, the only firm anchorage of a drifting and struggling world.

When I entered politics the issues confronting the Sandringham community were economic: unemployment running at 11.3 per cent, company receiverships, personal bankruptcies and high levels of personal debt. Victoria had lost the Victorian Economic Development Corporation, the State Bank of Victoria and its AAA credit rating. I had the privilege of serving as a member of a reforming government which built infrastructure, transformed a broken economy, created jobs and branded Melbourne and Victoria to global markets. Out of these foundations grew a Victorian community that punched above its weight and took on the world.

Between 2010 and 2014 the coalition government had a strategic focus on maintaining a budget surplus, increasing productivity, improving service delivery, assisting industries in transition, expanding export markets in the Middle East, Indonesia, South-East Asia, the USA and Chile, and sending trade missions of unprecedented significance into China, India and Japan.

In 1998 I met in Melbourne with Leonid Kravchuk, one of the three people who signed the dissolution of the Soviet Union and later became President of Ukraine, the food bowl of Europe. I asked him why, as a former minister for propaganda in the Soviet Union, he signed the dissolution. He replied to me, ‘I saw that people valued their freedom’. Time Man of the Year Lech Wałęsa, the shipyard worker who took on the Soviet regime, argued during a visit to Melbourne in 2003 that communism had cost the lives of 200 million people during the course of the 20th century. In the philosophical contest between communism and capitalism, the cause of freedom triumphed. Wałęsa also further argued that Poland needed more generals — General Electric and General Motors.

The ability of nations to develop industries can be hampered by the approach of the left:

If it moves, tax it, if it keeps moving, regulate it, and if it stops moving, subsidise it —

as noted by Reagan. Margaret Thatcher stated:

Socialism is a good idea, until of course they run out of other people’s money.

Sir Charles Carter, a British scientist, stated:

Unfortunately in our society in recent years there has been a tendency for bias against wealth creation in favour of so-called socially significant activities, but which, ironically, depend for their support in the first place upon wealth creation.

As a member of Parliament I have seen the realisation of legislative amendments which were first raised in my Sandringham office being written into the statute books of Victoria, including the Crimes (Questioning of Suspects) Act 2000, the National Parks (Marine National Parks and Marine Sanctuaries) Bill 2002, the Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Miscellaneous Amendment Bill 2017 and the Legal Practice Act 1996.

I have had the opportunity to oversee the development of major community infrastructure, initiatives and services within the Sandringham electorate, including in the areas of health, education, law and order, planning, sport, public transport, the environment, coastal management and disability support. I have endeavoured in every way to give voice to those who have had no voice in the pursuit of just outcomes.

As the Liberal spokesperson for multicultural affairs, veterans affairs and citizenship, and as shadow minister for housing and Aboriginal affairs, I learned much from these responsibilities and sought to keenly advance policy initiatives. I acknowledge many keen-minded and purposeful Indigenous Victorians with whom I had the privilege of working. I also had the extraordinary privilege of working with many Australians who came to this country as migrants: fleeing tyranny, seeking opportunity or working to provide a better future for their children. One migrant noted that Australia gave him the chance to start a new life. It goes without saying that we live in a wonderful country; let us not take it for granted. Another immigrant once remarked to me that you only understand the true meaning of freedom when it is taken away from you.

Today I wish to acknowledge the undergirding support and sacrifices made by my family: my dear wife, Theana, and our children, Alex, Alithea and Theo. Without their love, commitment and support I could not have pursued my career in politics. I acknowledge my mother, Joan Thompson, who has supported two careers in the Victorian Parliament spanning almost 54 years, the first of which commenced 63 years ago. My father, when he retired in 1982, was described by the Age newspaper as having served the state of Victoria with ‘rare decency, dedication and distinction’.

I thank my long-serving full-time staff for their extraordinary dedication to their work and service to the constituents of the Sandringham electorate: Robyn McNaught, Annette Burrowes, Leanne Whitechurch, Rachel Reid, Tim Neve, researcher Jenni Howell, Angie Gledhill, Madeleine Grey and Gaelle Broad.

I pay tribute to Matthew Guy, an outstanding leader of the Liberal Party and the coalition team in the 58th Parliament, and all my parliamentary colleagues. I acknowledge the great work of hundreds of federal and state Liberal Party members who have sought to build a better Australia. I acknowledge electorate chairs Ian Cox, John Foley, Paul Nettelbeck, John Knight, Brad Rowswell and Jennifer O’Brien, whose volunteer efforts were integral to the effective work of the Liberal Party. I further pay tribute to Brad Rowswell, a great young Australian and endorsed candidate for the seat of Sandringham. I thank all parliamentary staff, including the highly skilled parliamentary librarians.

The world is in a constant state of challenge, but I am encouraged by and pay tribute to the thousands of my constituents and other good people who I have met through my parliamentary work across Victoria in every walk of life — change makers, mighty citizens, humble people who have sought to build the economic, community, family, sporting and spiritual life of our nation and outworked the injunction of John Wesley to do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, to all the people you can, as long as you possibly can. Vale, Spring Street.

Honourable members applauded.