Wednesday, 26 August 2026

 Will FOWLES (Ringwood) (18:00): Eight years ago I stood in this chamber for the first time and spoke about love. Love is perhaps an unusual word to bring into a place where the language is that of power, policy, numbers, tactics, division and divisions. But after eight years of victories and defeats, friendships won and lost, disappointments, mistakes, arguments and the extraordinary privilege of service, I think I understand it better now. I once thought love was principally a feeling. Public life has taught me it is more demanding. It is a discipline. It is choosing to care about people we may never meet, refusing indifference to another person’s suffering and continuing when there is no applause, political advantage or even thanks. At its best politics organises that instinct. Concern becomes institutions, institutions receive budgets, budgets become services and services change lives. I came here believing government could improve people’s lives, and I still do. What changed was my understanding of the difficulty and the vigilance required to make compassion more than a press release. The storylines must become budget lines. The promise must become a project, a building or a service, and that, more than anything, is what eight years in this place has taught me.

First, I would like to thank the people of Burwood and Ringwood. In 2018 the people of Burwood gave me the extraordinary privilege of representing them, and after the electoral boundaries changed and with them the candidates Ringwood did the same in 2022. Winning two marginal seats is exhilarating, but elections only open the door. The real honour begins when people trust you with their most profound problems. They come seeking support for a disabled child, care for an ageing parent, help for a business trapped in bureaucracy or safety from family violence, or too often, way too often, just needing somewhere to sleep. The local member stands at the point where individual experience meets public power, and that is why electorate offices matter. They are where government stops being an abstraction. Some matters are fixed by email, others take months and a few never resolve, but each is a reminder that government is experienced one person at a time. To every constituent who trusted my office with a private difficulty, thank you. I hope we made the machinery of government work a little more humanely for you.

The eastern suburbs are sometimes caricatured as uniformly comfortable, but anyone who has represented them knows better. There is poverty, both seen and unseen; family violence; rough sleeping; families living one rent rise, illness or lost job from a crisis; young people waiting too long for mental health support; and older people experiencing profound loneliness. But there is also an extraordinary civic life, people who see a need and decide to act. Working with Stroke A Chord, Maroondah Winter Shelter, Sharing Hope and Biala have been among the highlights of my time as a local member. They remind us that community is not built by government alone but by volunteers who turn up when no-one is watching.

I have known many local heroes: Martin Semken, Gitta Clayton, Kathy Thompson, Matt Moran and many more whose names will never appear in Hansard. They are the people who make communities work. That heroism extends beyond my electorate and includes A Few Good Folk, ably led by Paul Benveniste, who have raised literally millions for some exceptional causes.

I am proud of what was delivered across the eastern suburbs. Train stations were rebuilt. Roads, schools, parks, sporting facilities and active transport links improved. The long task of removing dangerous and congested level crossings has changed daily life in ways that will eventually become so ordinary that people will forget how frustrating the old arrangements were. That forgetting is not a failure; it is what successful infrastructure looks like. Yesterday’s political argument becomes tomorrow’s ordinary convenience. Schools also received major investments in classrooms, specialist spaces, technology, grounds and sporting facilities. That work rarely makes the front page, but it matters enormously.

I remain deeply invested in Maroondah Hospital’s future. I once stood in this chamber and touted the government’s promised redevelopment. When the timetable slipped and the promise became harder to find in budgets and plans, I pressed for delivery. If you carry a promise into this chamber, you inherit a duty not merely to proclaim it but to pursue it, and loyalty to party must never require disloyalty to the people who sent you here.

But the issue that drew me most insistently towards politics was housing. In my inaugural speech I called housing the platform from which almost every other intervention becomes possible. I said that people in a daily scrap for survival have no capacity to address underlying health problems or secure employment or continue their education, and the cycle of disadvantage will just continue until our social compact breaks and our democracy begins to fray, and fray it has. In 2018 housing barely rated as an election issue. It now dominates debate, although one too often focused on immigration and intergenerational equity rather than homelessness and social justice. Housing instability robs people of dignity, health and opportunity. It robs them of a future. But housing is not merely a privilege, commodity or investment. It is a fundamental human need, and it should be a human right. One experience crystallised that for me. A mother with a two-year-old child and a five-month-old baby faced the prospect of sleeping in a car. My office called housing services, churches and support organisations. All wanted to help, but all were full. Emergency resources were exhausted. There was simply nowhere to go. At that point, policy language falls away. A strategy is not a bed. A press release cannot shelter a baby. A permit is not a home. That day we broke one of the cardinal rules of government and funded a temporary solution ourselves, but it should never have come to that. My greatest public policy aspiration is simple: end rough sleeping. Just end it. We know it can be done because during the pandemic we did it. It is a matter of public policy priorities, like any other. And it is not just a moral imperative and sound social policy; it is good economic policy too. The numbers are simple. It is not just easier; it is cheaper to deliver essential government services to people in secure housing. That requires building more homes, not merely announcing, planning or funding them. Whilst my time in this Parliament is ending, this work is not. If anything from this speech is remembered, let it be these three words: end rough sleeping.

For its faults, I have seen this place at its best, most particularly during the voluntary assisted dying debate. The subject could hardly have been more serious: suffering, conscience, bodily autonomy, medicine, faith, family and death. Members held sincere and deeply felt views, views sharpened by the heroic battle being fought by my friend the member for Pakenham, surely the member who has given the most of themselves to Victoria’s 60th Parliament. During the long consideration-in-detail proceedings, divisions repeatedly packed members onto one side of the chamber, and something wonderful happened: we talked. Members from different political traditions who had just opposed one another on profound moral questions were wedged together, chatting, laughing and trying to work out what was coming next. It was almost comic but also profound. We had not confused disagreement with enmity. We could believe another member genuinely and passionately wrong without concluding that they were wicked. That is Parliament at its best.

But too much parliamentary debate serves petty political pointscoring. Politics has always been performative, but social media has made the performance continuous. All of us, me included, have chased the sound bite, raised our voices, made personal attacks or reduced complicated questions to slogans, but I know of no modern workplace where the behaviour sometimes seen here would be acceptable or even lawful. Similarly, if any of us turned up at a community meeting where people were shouting or name-calling, we would likely turn heel and depart. What hypocrisy. We can do better and we must do better, because in an environment where as many as a third of voters have parked their vote in an empty chair, the invisible thread of legitimacy that runs between government and the governed has plainly frayed. In this period of profound democratic dissatisfaction, voters are turning towards grievance, populism and reactionary politics. The way politicians treat one another gives people reason to conclude that the system does not deserve their trust. There are people here with whom I disagree profoundly and whom I nevertheless like and respect. I have at times been criticised for believing someone on the other side could be a good person. But virtue is not allocated according to party membership, and our conduct should reflect that. The media makes it harder. ‘Government doing quite a good job at delivering essential services’ is a headline you will never see, and it would not sell many papers. Scandal travels and outrage begets clicks, but that makes our responsibility greater, not smaller.

Before the 2022 election many predicted political insurrection, yet I watched voters quietly enter voting booths, keeping their own counsel and making their judgement. Democracy is often quieter than commentary. We should trust citizens enough to give them argument rather than theatre and treat each other with respect as we do it, because democracy only survives when citizens believe that their participation matters. It survives when governments change peacefully, courts remain independent, critics are protected, losers accept results and winners accept limits.

I cannot give a proper account of my eight years here without speaking about August 2023. My life changed unjustly and irreparably. I was accused of something I did not do. The matter was rigorously and methodically investigated by Victoria Police, and I was cleared. Those are the facts, and I will not labour them further here. But anyone who has lived through a public allegation understands that an investigation may conclude while the consequences continue. Reputations do not heal at the speed of legal processes, and they are rarely restored, irrespective of the outcome. Some stood beside me, some reserved judgement and some judged hastily and unfairly. But the harder people went, the less they were attacking me and the more they were revealing themselves. What matters more than that, though, is what happened around that experience. Friends stayed. Family stayed. Colleagues across the political divide offered quiet gestures of support and comfort when things had gone horribly wrong, gestures I will remember forever.

Politics tempts us to judge people in the easy times, but character reveals itself when everything falls apart. When my life fell apart, Sharon stayed. Her professionalism, judgement and capacity to work through the hardest moments place her in elite company. She is not just the best electorate officer in the country; she was the difference between battling through and simply giving up. She has been a mentor, a guiding light, a moral compass, an adviser and a friend. There were days when she carried an office through circumstances no electorate officer should reasonably have been asked to carry. No amount of thanks will ever do her sacrifices justice, and I will forever be in her debt.

So too those who joined after some of the noise subsided. Jessica, an author of elite communications and someone who gave everything to the voluntary assisted dying debate and the careful consideration of a slew of amendments I believe will one day reach the statute book. Abdul worked tirelessly on that debate and helped navigate the Victorian Electoral Commission’s complex and inconsistently administered funding regime. Adam brought a different political perspective and a determination to help those doing it toughest. Bay enlightened us with his quiet but determined advocacy for Burmese refugees. To everyone who worked with me, friend or foe: thank you for serving our communities. Outside the office, Jamie Bunn taught me to focus on what mattered and what I could control, and to keep my head up. Gus Carfi was always there, especially on days when the tears prevailed.

Public life attracts those for whom your name is useful; difficulty reveals those who value you when it is not. To the many friends who stayed when the going got tough: from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Newer friends have reminded me that kindness travels and life still holds good surprises. To my family: thank you for the sacrifices you made, the profound impacts on your time, your businesses, your privacy and your peace. Public life is never borne by the elected alone, especially when it becomes controversial and chaotic. My parents and my brothers and their families endured much that they never invited, and for that I am deeply sorry and eternally grateful for their love and support. To the mothers of my children, thank you for the patience and understanding you have shown me. I know there have been sacrifices along the way, and I am deeply grateful for everything you have done, everything you have given and, above all, for you being magnificent mothers. Our children are better for your love and steadfastness. And to my children, whatever else I have done or failed to do, being your dad is my most important and cherished role. When the political noise fades, I hope you judge these years not by the headlines but by whether I tried to leave the world a little kinder and a little fairer.

I never quite got a normal year in this job – learning the ropes in 2019 and then becoming front-page news, navigating the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, a re-election year in 2022 and then the horror of 2023 and the years following. For most of my parliamentary life I sat as a Labor member, and I am proud of much that the Labor government achieved in that time: the transformative infrastructure, the response to family violence, the equality reforms, the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System and the willingness to use government actively rather than apologetically. I did not agree with every decision. Nobody who has thought seriously about government for eight years should. Loyalty is not pretending every decision by your side is right. Sometimes it means saying, ‘This is not good enough.’ Beyond Labor, I have been lucky to serve with members across this chamber whom I respect and members spanning the ideological breadth of the federal Parliament too. I particularly thank my neighbour and friend the member for Croydon. Many years ago he did me a great kindness during a tough period, and I shall never forget it. I am grateful to the many members from and beyond Labor who showed generosity when it carried consequence rather than reward. At times their support kept me standing. I will not embarrass you by naming you. You know who you are and I know too.

This term did not pan out as I hoped. That is the plain truth. The last three years have been the hardest of my life and tarnished what should otherwise have been the great honour of serving in this place. But tarnished is not erased. I have not always got everything right. I have sometimes been too certain, too impatient or too combative. But I also worked hard, tried to be useful and remained, by and large, faithful to the principles that brought me here. I am leaving Parliament without leaving public service. There are houses to build, institutions to fix and community organisations to grow. There are people who still need someone to make a phone call, open a door or simply refuse to accept that nothing can be done. I stand ready to help any person in this Parliament or the next, or the one after that, regardless of party, to do something good, however small.

Eight years ago I spoke about love. At times since then I have wondered whether that was naive. Politics has shown me ambition and courage, kindness and cruelty, loyalty and betrayal. It has taught me that reputations can be destroyed in an evening and may never be rebuilt. It has taught me that staying through the storm matters so much more than showing up for the sunshine. And it has taught me that grace is not surrender. Yet I return to the same word, ‘love’ – not sentimental love, not the love of slogans, parties or political tribes, but the harder kind, the kind that asks us to care for people we do not know, the kind that requires us to provide a home to someone who cannot repay us, a hospital bed to someone whose name we will never learn and dignity to a person whose choices we may never understand, the kind that lets us argue furiously in this chamber and still recognise one another’s equal worth when the bells stop ringing. Perhaps politics at its best is the attempt to give practical form to the proposition that other people’s lives matter. I leave this place bruised but nonetheless grateful. I leave with my head held high. I leave believing more strongly than I did when I arrived that public life is worthwhile because people are worthwhile, that dignity matters, that service matters, that grace matters and that in the end, above all, love matters. I thank the house.

Members applauded.