Thursday, 20 September 2018

 Ms ASHER (Brighton) (14:38): In 1976, 42 years ago as a 19-year-old, I joined the Liberal Party. I joined the Liberal Party for three reasons. The first was my reaction to the Whitlam government. The second was my mother. She was a staunch Liberal and an ardent admirer of Sir Robert Menzies, and she wanted me to join the Young Liberals. She made the phone call. On reflection, I think this was because my mother was not happy with the quality of the young men I was bringing home.

For the third reason, I joined the Liberal Party because I was studying political philosophy at university. I had some exposure through my tuition to the world of liberalism and the writings of John Stuart Mill, so I read On Liberty. Everyone has read extracts of On Liberty; it is a driver for me in terms of the liberalism that I aspire to. I also read a treatise written by John Stuart Mill in 1861 called The Subjection of Women.

I want to quote from that because it is relevant now:

… that the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes — the legal subordination of one sex to the other — is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.

That is the reason I joined the Liberal Party. I immediately signed up to the Burwood Young Liberals, and one young Jeffrey Gibb Kennett was the candidate — not the member — for Burwood. He had just won the preselection, and the Liberal Party had to go back and change the rules after that because he exploited them. One of the first things I ever did as a member of the Liberal Party was hand out how-to-vote cards for Jeff Kennett, and I was involved in many, many of his campaigns after that during the 1980s. Actually, as luck would have it, on the day I was elected Young Liberal President in 1982 — it was by a very narrow margin — Jeffrey was one of the tellers, and he was heard to exclaim very, very loudly, ‘Thank God, she’s won’, until I think it was Dame Margaret Guilfoyle had to point out to Jeffrey that tellers were meant to be neutral. I say this because I have always been a Kennett supporter, obviously given that background, but I also say it because there is a significant degree of luck in a political career, and I reckon I had that by landing in Burwood Young Liberals in 1976.

I entered Parliament in 1992. I was a relatively young woman, and I fear the ravages of 26 years of political life are showing badly, because polite young people now often stand up on the train and offer me their seats. I am one of the lucky ones in that I get to leave on my own terms. I was on the front bench for 18 years — two terms as a minister; 11 years as a shadow, unfortunately — and I was deputy leader of my party for 11½ years. Allow me to take this opportunity to thank my numbers men: Philip Davis, Graeme Stoney and Steve McArthur. So there you have it: they were mainly responsible for my being there the first time, and Philip was responsible for my being there the second time, along with Graeme.

It is a great honour to have served in this party and this Parliament, and I am very, very grateful to the Liberal Party. Some of the things of which I am most proud are the work that I did on the back bench on residential tenancies, which ended up in the Rental Bond Board being established; on domestic violence, with more outreach workers being employed; on disability, with more community housing. I do remember vividly the then corrections minister wanted to close Fairlea Women’s Prison and put the women in Jika Jika at Pentridge, a high-security area. I thought this was a trifle unfair given the crimes those women had committed. So I got together this whole heap of Liberal women from the organisation and we went on a bus tour. We visited Fairlea and we visited Pentridge. You will appreciate that in this group of Liberal women none of us had been to Pentridge, none of us had been to a prison, none of us had met a prisoner. We walked through Pentridge in our suits and our high heels and our pantyhose, dripping with jewellery. We had never seen anything like Pentridge and, if I were to gather by the looks on the faces of those prisoners, they had never seen anything like us! Needless to say, the women did not go to Pentridge, and I made a very large enemy in the then Deputy Premier, but who cares, he did not hand out the ministries.

As a former minister, I am proud of the work I did — twice — to increase international and domestic tourism as Minister for Tourism, our second most important export here. I devised the first tourism campaign into regional Victoria and the first campaign into China, now our number one tourism market. I rewrote retail tenancies legislation and liquor law legislation. Again, for anyone who knows me and my fondness for sauvignon blanc, people were amazed that Jeff Kennett put me in charge of liquor! I am very, very proud of the trade mission program, which I devised. It actually has resulted in nearly $5 billion of export opportunities for small businesses. I did bring in some legislation to make it easier to produce films. One time a TV production called Upper Middle Bogan was being filmed in our street, and I explained to my husband that it was now easier to film, to which he said, ‘Well, what idiot did that?’.

My greatest achievement as a local MP was to reopen the New Street gates. It was not a level crossing removal; it was the reopening of a crossing. If you had faced three meetings of 500 angry people — Brighton residents are normally very polite — you too would have changed your mind and opened those New Street gates. I still get thanked for that, walking down the street today. I was particularly pleased as a member of the opposition to be co-chair of the policy review group, with the Leader of the National Party, and working very, very closely with the member for — what is your seat now, Kim?

Mr Wells: Rowville.

Ms ASHER: Rowville; it was Scoresby — putting together a package of policies for the 2010 election. I found that work particularly stimulating.

I am the longest serving woman in this Parliament. I was the first Liberal woman who was a minister in the Legislative Council, in 1996. I was the first woman Leader of the House — not my favourite job, that one, when I did not have the numbers — and I was the first woman Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party. I hope many other women on my side of the house will be able to contribute at this level or indeed higher.

I am looking forward to my new life, but I will miss the meaningful opportunity to contribute. Politics should be a noble profession, and unfortunately I do not think the public thinks it is. However, I will not miss the parliamentary sitting schedule which dominated my life — dictated my life — for 26 years. I will not miss the abuse that comes, unfortunately, with public office, and I will not miss public meetings. I will not list all of them, but one memorable one was at Prahran town hall. The then member for Malvern, Robert Doyle, and I were sitting at the front, and the meeting was about the Kennett government’s local government amalgamations. A group of residents in East Malvern in something called the Gascoigne estate were particularly perturbed that they had been put with Glen Eira and not with Stonnington, where the rest of Malvern was. There were thousands of them there. I looked around and I said, ‘Isn’t this lovely that so many of my branch members are here to support the Kennett government’s amalgamation proposals’. Anyway, Doyley said to me, ‘What do we do?’, and I said, ‘Oh, it’s really easy. You just say you’ll take it to the minister’. He said, ‘Oh, it’s that easy, is it?’. It is until you are the minister and you are the one sitting out there. Anyway, the Gascoigne estate went into Stonnington, and I will be really happy not to attend a public meeting sitting at the front of the hall ever again in my life.

Political achievements of course are rarely individual. I want to thank the Liberal Party. I want to thank my voters in Monash Province and in Brighton. I want to thank my branch members; my electorate chairs; the Liberal premiers under whom I have served; my staff — Veronica James, who worked for me for 18 years, Julie Baird, Alison Smith and Jenny Amos, who are hovering around the decade mark; and I want to thank the parliamentary staff. Ray Purdey became my closest friend in the last 18 months of the coalition government. I am very grateful to him and I am very grateful that the government survived, or at least it did not fall on my error. I wish the Leader of the Opposition the very, very best for the next election; I think he is an outstanding young man. I wish James Newbury all the best and every success in the hope he follows me in Brighton.

As I said, I have been very grateful for the opportunities I have been given. However, I am concerned about a number of things. I am concerned about the diminution of respect for others in this Parliament — others have touched on it — and lack of respect for the taxpayer. I am concerned about the disintegration of society’s institutions and the public loss of trust in these institutions. Its banks, its insurance companies, its bureaucracies, the Australian Taxation Office, the major political parties and the churches were all part of this loss of faith in society’s existing institutions, or traditional institutions, and obviously it is behaviour that has driven this.

The people expect us to represent them. I actually think the major parties need to act on this. I do not want to see a Parliament with — let us take it to its logical conclusion — 88 Independent members of Parliament. It will be ungovernable and unworkable, and I do not even like seeing in Parliament the concept of a couple of Independents having disproportionate power over the public purse at minimum. I would like to see both major parties rectify this loss of trust, because if we want to govern in the way in which governments have traditionally governed, I think we need to do so.

I am also deeply concerned about the loss of faith in democracy. I instance Doctor David Zyngier’s work at Monash University, and I refer to some evidence he gave to the Electoral Matters Committee. I quote from the report:

In 2014, only 60 percent of Australians believe that ‘democracy is preferable to any other kind of government’ … only 42 percent of 18 to 29-year‑olds in 2014 view democracy as preferable to any other kind of government …

I think that is shattering for us as democratic legislators to look at those figures, and again I think we need to do something about it.

I would like to thank Ron. He terminated his career for me, and I could not have done all of this without my fabulous husband. So I thank him so much. I am looking forward to my new life. I think it is going to be fabulous spending more time with Ron and with his beautiful grandchildren.

The joke is we met over there in what people called the red morgue. It was not a morgue, and we were not the only ones. I will not name names, and I also thank those very few of my colleagues who did know that I was doing the unthinkable, what I swore to my friends I would never do, and that was go out with a parliamentary colleague — well, I guess he was not a Lib. I thank so much those people who did know about our relationship and who kept quiet about it and did not tell Jeffrey. I told him after I was appointed to the ministry. Given that the Nats thought that Bill Baxter had lost his spot because of me and given that Pat McNamara, the Deputy Premier at the time, lost tourism because of me, I was very, very pleased that Ron had been so discreet and Ron’s friends had been so discreet for so long. I have had a ball, and I thank the house for listening to me.

Honourable members applauded.