Thursday, 20 September 2018

 Mr NOONAN (Williamstown) (14:57): Speaker, as fate would have it, you were the guest speaker at my first Labor Party meeting in Greensborough back in May 1997. Two things happened at that meeting. Firstly, you gave an incredibly dry speech about the internals of the Banyule City Council. Secondly, and despite your speech, I did join the party, and I am proud to say we have remained close friends ever since — and I hope in the future too.

In joining the Labor Party I pledged to fight for Labor’s values of social justice, fairness and equality and of course to become a strong voice for working people. After making those pledges 21 years ago, I could not have imagined that a working-class kid from a quiet court in Greensborough could ascend to the rowdy halls of the Victorian Parliament, but that is exactly what has happened. I would like to think that I have extracted every last ounce of my ability to serve as the member for Williamstown, including stints as a shadow minister and as a government minister across multiple portfolios in this term of the Andrews Labor government. I have done so without ever losing sight of the fact that the Labor Party put me here to uphold its values and serve working people, and it is my achievements for working people that I am most proud about.

In opposition I stood with our paramedics when they were fighting for fairness and decency and needed a strong voice in Spring Street to defend their integrity. In government I stood with our police to deliver a landmark enterprise agreement in 2015 — the first in 20 years to be resolved without industrial disputation. As industry minister I stood with an entire community in Portland to save Alcoa’s aluminium smelter. I also stood with thousands of auto workers and supply chain businesses to help them retrain, re-skill and secure new opportunities. Finally, I stood with Hazelwood power station workers in their hour of need and helped deliver Australia’s first-ever worker transfer scheme in the Latrobe Valley. These events were a reminder that Labor’s first responsibility will always be to working people.

Not every moment in public life is littered with fulfilment or joy. I want to touch on a few because I think they provide an insight into the challenges of public life but also the depth of the human spirit. Let me start with the ambulance crisis. This crisis gripped my life for two years between 2012 and 2014. When we were in opposition our leader, Daniel Andrews, appointed me to the position of opposition parliamentary secretary for health and mental health. After taking careful advice from former Bracks minister John Thwaites, I systematically worked every day to reveal cases of ambulance ramping at hospitals, patient waiting times, mismanagement, paramedic stress, health and safety issues and poor staff morale. I travelled to every corner of the state and spoke to every paramedic and local journalist I could about the depth of the crisis. No-one had to be convinced, though, as response times continued to slip to increasingly dangerous levels. I enjoyed a wonderful relationship with paramedics and their union and will always rank Steve McGhie and Danny Hill amongst the best and most respected union leaders of our generation.

During this period I was invited by ABC broadcaster Jon Faine to attend a Southbank studio to discuss the crisis. It was on this morning in August 2013 that I met Julie Wilson and came face to face with a woman so stricken by grief that her on-air account of losing her son Brodie after waiting 27 minutes for an ambulance simply broke my heart. In the months that followed I also met Steve and Jo Gibbs, who lost their gentle giant son Matthew after he collapsed playing indoor soccer and waited 16 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. Their trauma and loss have never left me. Their determination and relentless pursuit of change is something I will never forget, and in my view helped change the government in 2014.

Today almost 84 per cent of code 1 life-threatening ambulance call-outs are arriving within 15 minutes, compared to just 73.7 per cent under the previous Liberal government. This is a truly outstanding achievement. I want to thank the Premier, the health minister and the cabinet for delivering what is arguably the greatest achievement of this government to date. I also want to pay tribute to Steve and Jo Gibbs and Julie Wilson for standing up and fighting for change. Their efforts are helping save lives today.

I now want to turn briefly to two special people who have helped change the way I view my life. I refer to Edith and George McKeon, the parents of Jill Meagher. For privacy reasons I will not reveal the details of our conversations, but I will say that we met and exchanged phone calls and emails during and after my time as Minister for Corrections. They sought my help, and I gave it. During our exchanges Edith and George taught me that regardless of anyone’s circumstances, no-one can ever take away a person’s spirit. Remarkably Edith and George remained a source of support to me during my brief absence from the Parliament, which tells you everything you need to know about these beautiful people.

My break from Parliament in early 2016 is part of my story, but it does not define me. Poor mental health does not discriminate — in fact it is everywhere. Reading the signs and getting help is the key. So is the support I received from members in this place, the media, the community, friends, family and even perfect strangers. It all helped. I do want to single out the Premier, Daniel Andrews, for his wonderful personal and professional support. It has been my privilege to serve this great leader in both opposition and government, but his support during my hour of need is something that I will never forget. Through his support and the support of my colleagues I have been able to reach some wonderful heights. I want to place on record some of the more significant achievements because they serve as an important historical record.

In industry and employment I was proud to develop Australia’s first social enterprise strategy to help build this exciting sector. Similarly it was a great privilege to implement the Jobs Victoria package, which is providing targeted services and securing jobs for 5000 long-term unemployed Victorians. This program has been a resounding success and given so many vulnerable Victorians their first taste of work.

In a wonderful postscript to my first speech to this Parliament I was enormously proud to announce record funding for the YMCA’s Bridge Project, which does outstanding work transitioning young people from incarceration back into the community. Continuing with the theme of helping young people, I was just so proud to be the responsible minister for the implementation of the Major Projects Skills Guarantee, which requires contractors on government projects to employ apprentices, trainees and engineering cadets for at least 10 per cent of their workforce. This wonderful Labor policy has already delivered more than 1000 new opportunities for young people to work on our state-shaping projects.

I was also thrilled to launch a blueprint for the future of manufacturing in Victoria, which I believe has helped inspire new confidence in the sector. This confidence has undoubtedly been assisted by our government’s steadfast commitment to mandate local content in each of its major projects. This confidence has, I think, undoubtedly been assisted by our government’s commitment in this area. Nothing gave me more satisfaction as industry minister than to set minimum local content requirements for our major projects, knowing that these requirements would translate to new jobs and business opportunities — again, great policy.

I have already mentioned the outstanding work our government has done to support workers in transition, particularly in the Latrobe Valley and the automotive sector. This wonderful work would not have been possible without the outstanding efforts of so many people, including public servants, community leaders, businesses, unions, industry associations and local government. I am also very proud of my successor and loyal friend Ben Carroll, who has worked tirelessly to continue this important work. I congratulate Ben and the Treasurer, Tim Pallas, for helping to drive down Victoria’s unemployment rate to 4.8 per cent — the lowest it has been for seven years.

In the resources portfolio I will never forget when on 30 August 2016 the Premier and I stood in the pristine hills down in South Gippsland and announced that Victoria would ban fracking for good. In a nation first the permanent ban protects our farmers and preserves Victoria’s hard-won reputation for producing high-quality food. Our announcement sent Twitter into meltdown, and for a time we were in fact trending, which was pretty exciting, although I had to ask one of my staffers what that actually meant. Community power across Victoria helped win this ban, with extraordinary people like Alison Marchant becoming extraordinary advocates during this campaign.

To the police and corrections areas — two of the more challenging areas of government, as evidenced by that rather large prison riot back in 2015. I have the utmost respect for our police and correctional staff, and I was proud to serve as their minister. During my time as police minister I was able to secure more than 1100 additional police personnel, including new custody offices, public order response, special operations, forensics and protective services officers. We doubled Victoria Police’s counterterrorism capability, delivered 10 new drug and booze buses, funded digital radio communication in regional Victoria, cracked down on ice dealers, targeted illegal guns and, importantly, launched a new phone app to promote better mental health awareness among police.

In corrections we strengthened the management of serious sex offenders, made record investments in community corrections and targeted the unacceptably high levels of recidivism by improving education and vocational skills in prison. This is where I met Jeff Kennett — no, not because he was trying to draw me across to the Liberal fold. In fact I met Jeff Kennett as the chair of The Torch. Jeff lobbied me to permit Indigenous prisoners to sell their art whilst incarcerated, which we did. We also significantly increased funding for the Indigenous arts program managed by The Torch. This program is giving new hope to our Indigenous prisoners, and I am grateful to the former corrections commissioner, Jan Shuard, for her leadership in this area.

Before I thank a few people I want to briefly mention a few achievements in my electorate of Williamstown. My predecessors and in fact good friends, Labor greats Steve Bracks and Joan Kirner, both told me I had the best electorate in the state, and they were not wrong. Following the arrival of my ancestors in Hobsons Bay in the 1840s, I have become the fourth generation of my family to live in the inner west and now the sixth member for Williamstown to serve the electorate for a period greater than 10 years. I love my community and I am proud of Labor’s legacies in the inner west. I am proud of our investments in our local schools, including Bayside College, Williamstown High School and Newport Gardens, Newport Lakes and Spotswood primary schools, just to name a few. A special thanks to the retiring member for Footscray for her leadership and vision in developing the Footscray Learning Precinct, which includes a new secondary campus in Seddon.

I am also proud of the magnificent upgrades to the Williamstown football ground, the Yarraville Community Centre, the Newport Substation community arts centre and Seaworks in Williamstown. I am proud that we were able to invest in a new renal dialysis unit at Williamstown Hospital. I am proud that we are building new trains in Newport, where my grandfather, Henry Noonan, worked as a boilermaker back in the 1940s, and I am extremely proud that our government will take thousands of trucks off local roads and provide a much-needed alternative to the West Gate Bridge by building a new road tunnel underneath Yarraville. Only Labor governments invest in the west.

I want to wish Labor’s candidate for Williamstown, Melissa Horne, every success. She has certainly earned her opportunity. To the people that made it all possible, I want to sincerely thank you. I want to thank my staff who I individually named in a members statement on 21 August, all of my comrades in the Parliament for their support and friendship, Labor staffers, the many dedicated public servants I have worked with, the parliamentary staff, the countless community and local government representatives and the ordinary people I have met along the way.

Finally, I want to thank my family. When I walked into this place my father said, ‘You bring with you your integrity, and the challenge is to keep it to the last day when you walk out’, and I have never forgotten that advice. My mother, Colleen, inspired me to read, laugh, travel and enjoy a drink, and I am very grateful for that last point. My sister, Lisa, brother-in-law, Eugene, and their kids, Mackenzie and Archie, have always brought fun and love to my life. Finally, to my beautiful wife, Julie, and our sons, William and Henry, thank you for standing with me regardless of the circumstances and for always being the loves of my life. I could not have done this job without you.

Thank you sincerely to the entire Parliament for giving me this opportunity. I will certainly treasure it for the rest of my life.

Honourable members applauded.