Wednesday, 21 September 2022

 Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (10:57): I am enjoying the challenge of leading the Independence Party. The Independence Party members want a change of government. They want hope and freedom. I want to thank all of those who have supported me as a member of Parliament: my children, my friends, community groups, sporting clubs, the local government areas and the many people who I have met as a member of Parliament. I hope that I have actually helped you in some way. I truly want to just say to my children that I love them very dearly. To my mother, who is sitting in a nursing home in Yarraville at this time, for the many years that she worked at Margaret’s Bazaar and looked after my family, I want to say again, ‘Mum, I love you so much’.

Also too I want to correct on the record something that I said in my maiden speech that was incorrect. When my aunty passed away on 1 October my Aunty Shirley gave me a story about my grandfather, who was her father. Because my father passed when I was 16 years old, the story that had always been relayed to me, which I laid down in my maiden speech, was actually a story of my grandfather’s brother. My grandfather was a bit of a larrikin in Scotland. He jumped ship in Scotland to get his passage here to Australia, and the story that I relayed was actually about his brother up in the Mallee. My grandfather did have a wonderful little farm in the Mallee, but it was not exactly the same.

I also want to acknowledge the one-year anniversary of what occurred on the West Gate Bridge and at the Shrine of Remembrance—some of the most shocking things that I have seen as a Victorian. It has been one year, and I hope that in the years to come we can actually heal from what occurred on the West Gate Bridge as well as at the Shrine of Remembrance. I look forward, not back I am hoping, to a wonderful Parliament in the 60th Parliament.