Wednesday, 26 August 2026

 Mary-Anne THOMAS (Macedon) (18:20): The Macedon electorate encompasses the lands of the Wurundjeri, the Taungurung and the Dja Dja Wurrung peoples, and I pay my respects to their elders past and present. It includes places of profound cultural significance, including Wil-im-ee Moor-ring, the ancient greenstone axe quarry located just out of Lancefield, and Hanging Rock, sometimes known as Ngannelong, a meeting place for the people of the Kulin nations. I have been proud to serve in a government that accepted an invitation from the First Peoples of this state to undertake a journey of reconciliation and understanding, to embrace truth, to give voice to First Peoples and to enable self-determination. I am so proud that our Labor government stared down misinformation and fear to advance that journey and deliver Australia’s first treaty. I was also humbled to appear before the Yoorrook Justice Commission in my capacity as Minister for Health and to be a signatory to the very first Aboriginal health and wellbeing partnership agreement.

In my first speech to this place I spoke about my determination to elevate the voices of women and girls and to ensure that their concerns were a focus of our Labor government. I am very proud to leave a Parliament in which women now take their place in equal numbers to men, thanks to the commitment of our Labor Party to get serious about women’s representation and to the many stellar Labor women who have won the trust of their communities to serve in this place. This is a profound change from the Parliament that I first entered.

I have also been proud to serve in the cabinets of two exceptional Labor leaders: Premier Daniel Andrews and our second-ever female Premier, Premier Jacinta Allan, both of whom championed women’s representation in their cabinets. Some of my constituents ask me why does this matter. I say a Parliament and a government that better reflects the community it serves is more likely to address the issues and concerns of those communities, including issues that have historically been ignored or minimised. Nowhere is that clearer than in two areas that have defined much of my time here: family violence and women’s health.

Yesterday I was pleased to attend the launch of the See the Signs campaign, important work enabled by our government and led by Respect Victoria. This work is about raising awareness of coercive control and complements the important legislation that was being debated in this very chamber today. Ten years on from the Royal Commission into Family Violence, it is time to reflect on the changes that have been delivered. We now have a much-improved service system. We have more empathetic and effective policing and a court system that is ready to hold perpetrators to account. It is easy to forget how radical the royal commission was considered at the time. As our Attorney-General noted yesterday, for the first time government was addressing behaviours that had been hiding in plain sight. Our biggest law and order issue was not happening on the streets but in the bedrooms and living rooms, the homes, of Victorian women and children. I also remember that at the time the opposition dismissed this royal commission as a lawyers picnic.

But changing laws and services was never going to be enough; we also had to change attitudes. In Macedon I was enormously proud to work with more than 30 local sporting clubs, CFAs, schools, businesses and community organisations through our electorate-wide Say No to Family Violence campaign. It was a grassroots campaign, and it mattered. We have achieved a great deal, but women are still dying at the hands of men who profess to love them, so the work must continue. It is incumbent on all political leaders to call out attitudes and behaviours that seek to minimise or normalise violence against women – comments such as Pauline Hanson’s reprehensible description of domestic violence as a ‘two-way street’, as she sought to shift responsibility for violence back onto its victims. Leaders will always speak out and condemn these attitudes, while cowards will remain silent.

Serving as Minister for Health has been the greatest honour of my working life. I remember getting a call back in June 2022 from the Premier’s chief of staff, and she said, ‘The Premier would like to see you tomorrow morning in his office.’ I knew what was happening – I knew that I was going to get a new portfolio – so I rang my mum and I told her that I was having a meeting with Dan the next morning, to which she said, ‘I will pray that you don’t get health.’ While I have loved all of the portfolios in which I have served, including agriculture, regional development, women and medical research, the health portfolio and all the facets of that portfolio have been the greatest privilege, because we have one of the best health systems in the world and without doubt we have the most outstanding and dedicated health workforce.

I am particularly proud of what we have achieved in women’s health, and I want to acknowledge the many health professionals and advocates who have worked alongside the government and our health services, including the members of my ministerial advisory council and lived experience advocates Kat Stanley and Fi Macrae. Having a caucus and a cabinet filled with women has absolutely changed the conversation. It means that menstruation and menopause are no longer taboo. It means women can talk about endometriosis, pelvic pain, prolapse and incontinence conditions that for generations have been shrouded in stigma and shame. And it means that governments can deliver more and better services. Our women’s pain inquiry was absolutely groundbreaking and has led the way for national action. More than 13,000 women and girls came forward and told us their story. They said, ‘We have suffered enough.’

At the heart of why this is so is what has rightly been described as medical misogyny. By this I do not mean individual doctors; I mean a medical system that historically has not prioritised women’s bodies and women’s health. Women have been prescribed the pill or antidepressants as cure-alls. We have been told to lose weight or to exercise more, that our pain is normal or that it is in our heads. The truth is that medical science still does not fully understand the impact of sex and gender on our health and wellbeing. That is why research matters, and it is why dedicated services matter. We have established 20 standalone women’s health clinics, including one in Kyneton, and these are complemented by mobile and virtual services and a dedicated Aboriginal women’s health service. We have delivered 20 ‍sexual and reproductive health hubs to expand access to contraception and to medical and surgical abortion. Our commitment to a women’s research institute is an important, vital next step and one that I look forward to a future Labor government delivering. These are hard-fought gains, and I sound this warning to any future government that seeks to wind them back or interfere with our rights to abortion care: Victorian women will fight to retain these services and their rights.

It is customary in valedictory speeches to say that serving in this place has been the greatest honour and privilege of a lifetime, and I understand that the public may treat these words with some cynicism. But I know, looking around this chamber, that you all know that this is true. As parliamentarians, people entrust us with their stories, often at the most difficult and painful times of their lives. I think of the women that I have met seeking to escape family violence; the father whose daughter was murdered by her husband; the victim-survivors of child sexual abuse, of incest and of rape; the mothers whose babies were taken through forced adoption; families who lost a loved one to suicide; women whose healthy ovaries were removed in medically unnecessary surgeries; parents supporting children with profound disabilities; families struggling with addiction; and as health minister, the families I met who had lost children and loved ones when our healthcare system did not deliver the care they had every right to expect. To all of you who entrusted me with those experiences, your stories mattered. I heard you, I believed you and I fought every day to make a difference.

I am proud to have played a part in working to reform the systems that people rely on every day, because Labor governments do not seek simply to right a wrong for the individual; we seek to change the system that allowed that wrong to occur in the first place. We believe in the power of government to serve people and to change lives for the better. We believe in the power of a strong economy to serve people, not the other way around.

When I look across Macedon I am enormously proud of what that belief in government has delivered. We have invested almost $90 million into our schools right across the electorate. Our three government secondary schools have been substantially rebuilt. We have built new primary schools in Kyneton and Gisborne and new kindergartens in Gisborne, Kyneton and Lancefield. We have invested in trades training, Head Start and free TAFE, giving more young people the opportunity to pursue apprenticeships and great careers. We know that free TAFE transforms lives, and I saw that as health minister when I met so many women who told me that they were going to do a diploma of nursing. It is something they had always wanted to do, and for many of them, they went on to further studies and to become registered nurses, because that is what Labor governments do. We create opportunities to change lives.

Our communities have also benefited from major investments in health in Kyneton and Daylesford and through the redevelopment of the Ballarat and Bendigo hospitals and our commitment to urgent and virtual care. The new Melton hospital will bring comprehensive hospital services much closer to people in and around Gisborne. The Macedon Ranges regional sports precinct, which is the largest public infrastructure project ever delivered in the Macedon Ranges, was made possible by more than $11 million committed by our government.

I am immensely proud of what we have achieved together, and as we all know, none of this work is done alone. I want to thank my electorate team, who have provided outstanding and empathetic support to constituents and have ensured that we have always strived to be the most effective advocates for our community that we can be. To Richard, Sharon, Tahli, Liam, Bella, Sue, Carolyn, Georgie, Marg and of course the incomparable Kate, a big thankyou. Thank you also to Chris, Lisa, Emma and Will, who worked in both my electorate and ministerial offices; to my ministerial staff, who supported me across my portfolios, Hannah, James, Robbie, Grace, Dana, Kushan, Andy, Tim, Srishti, Martin, Sam and Max; to my EA Vince; my driver Joe; Deb, my deputy chief of staff; and of course to Melissa Arch, my chief of staff throughout my more than five years as a minister. Archie and I first met as junior staffers to Lynne Kosky back in 1999. She is one of the very best in the business, and I thank her for her judgement, her loyalty, her friendship and her advice. To my media advisers Kieran, Harry, Isobel, Nadia and their teams, a big thankyou. We had so much fun and we worked very, very hard, always in the service of the people of Victoria.

We all know that politics is tough on families, so to Graham and Liv, I say thank you. Liv, I am sorry I missed your graduation. I hope that expensive bottle of champagne made some amends. I will always be grateful for your love and your support.

To the true believers across Macedon and every volunteer who has stood beside me through campaign after campaign, thank you. You are the heart and soul of our great Australian Labor Party. As someone who was getting around primary school with an ‘It’s time’ badge pinned to my chest, serving our great labour movement in Parliament has been an incredible honour and beyond my wildest dreams. Once again, as my mother says, ‘If only your father were here. Who’d have thought, a girl from Sandy Creek!’ Anyway, there you are.

Bridget Noonan, can I thank you and the whole team and all of the parliamentary staff. Thank you for all of your support, particularly in my time as Leader of the House. Speaker, thank you also for your wisdom and guidance at all times.

It has been an absolute blast. This place has been a large part of my life, and I will miss it enormously. But it is time for a new face to fight for working people in the seat of Macedon. Our Labor candidate Annette Death will be a terrific local member. She is a good 20 years younger than me, so she is going to bring that right mix of energy and experience to the role, and I know that she looks forward to serving the people of Macedon. I hope for all Victorians that she will take her place in here as a hardworking member of a Carroll Labor government.

Thank you again to the people of Macedon for placing your trust in me over three terms. I can assure you that I have always done my very best. And to everyone in this chamber – colleagues, friends, staff, the opposition – thank you. I am going to miss all of you.

Members applauded.

The SPEAKER: I would like to acknowledge in the gallery the Honourable Tim Pallas, former member for Werribee and Treasurer.

James Newbury interjected.

The SPEAKER: The member for Brighton is warned.