The Hon Dr David Gillespie has delivered his Valedictory speech as the Member for Lyne.
It has been truly an honour and a privilege for me to serve the people of Lyne in this House in the Commonwealth Parliament of Australia. First and foremost, I would like to thank the people of Lyne who have continued to send me here since 2013. For nearly 12 years I have given my best, but many of you who know me better than some of the others who know me okay realise that I haven’t been my best during this past term. I have had my annus horribilis and I was not able to perform at my peak. Starting at the top, I’ll give you a quick run through: vaccine side-effects followed by a serious bike accident—fractured ribs, sternum, vertebra, amnesia for a day or two, pneumonia then pleurisy, kidney damage—and then the ignominy of injuring myself playing cricket. I now have the experience of driving a four-wheel buggy.
It’s a bittersweet moment for me to be leaving now as I have really enjoyed my time as an MP in this House, and I will enjoy it to the day this parliament rises. But serving here in parliament as a politician in a big country electorate comes at a cost to other really important parts of one’s life, particularly as this is my second career. I had a full-on 33- year career doing even longer hours as a GP, followed by these five campaigns.
I have a whole lot of thank you’s to people who helped me get here. Firstly, a massive thank you to my beautiful wife, Charlotte, hiding in the back there, my greatest friend and confidante through this, which is our latest journey but not our last. In fact, it’s been a long journey, since 1988. Thirty-four years go in a flash like that. Charlotte has been a constant support throughout all my careers, doing all the hard yards in my junior medical years, coping with me being away on antisocial long hospital shifts by day and night and weekends, then coming home to sit in a room and study and then study again and study a bit more and keep doing exams until I passed. I did not get it the first go and that was the toughest lesson in my life because I used to pass everything first up, but eventually you get there. She then left her international merchant banking career to start our family.
We then moved up to Port Macquarie with Isabel—our little three-month-old over there—where we had no family connections to start my gastro enterology practice. Soon enough we had Ollie and Alice as well. Charlotte was doing it all, being a supermum as well as running the practice and the day surgery which we built for our patients as well, and together we also built our family cattle operation. As many of us realise, after I volunteered, our family—my family—were conscripted.
At the beginning of my political career the kids, especially Alice, explained they were being ‘weirded out’ by seeing their dad on billboards, on buses and on TV ads like I was stalking them. Thankfully, they are no longer permanently scarred, and all three of my adult children are now confident young adults with careers of their own. I’m so proud of you all. And Ollie, if you are watching or listening over in London, I’m proud of you all and what you have achieved. It’s fantastic to see your children flourishing. My deepest apologies for being absent from all your big moments, from family holidays, and from school, university and sports celebrations that I’ve missed. Thank you, Char, again for your patience, in particular for giving me the time to pursue the latest outrageous idea—that was, to run for federal parliament.
It is a challenge for families, as we all know. Many of you here in the chamber have had similar experiences, but once you put your head above the parapet and you declare yourself as running for a political party and parliament, you’re breaking cover. Sometimes that can mean losing some friendships and groups that see the world totally differently to what you’re committing your life to. But Charlotte has supported me through all those, usually with frank, fearless and—it’s uncanny, she’s always right. She’s been my biggest supporter and wisest counsel. I’m really looking forward to our next adventures, which we will do together.
I also thank my father-in-law, Martin, who is up there, and my late mother-in-law, Elizabeth Maynard, who can’t be with us, and all the Maynards for being great in-laws, great grandparents, and great cousins. They have supported Char in my many absences.
Thanks to all the Gillespie crowd up there—my siblings, Maryanne, Mike, Andy, John, Jane. They’re all there. Sadly, Pete, my brother could never be here. Mum and Dad are both gone. They would’ve loved to have been here. Mum got to see me enter parliament. Thanks to Patrick and all the other in-laws, to Pru and Andy for all your support and to all my brothers and sisters, who’ve encouraged me and supported me. I can’t thank you enough.
Next goes a big shout-out to my staff members over the years. You’ve all been great and you’ve all worked really hard and for long hours, particularly during campaigns, but mainly on solving problems for my constituents. They’ve been very well served by your efforts. You’ve helped them with federal, state and council regulations and bureaucracies. Many of my staff have been there all the way through, from the early years. But long before I had any political office, Rob Nardella was there, helping me as a newbie aspiring candidate. He’s been there from day one, and he sits here now. He’s been instrumental to my time as the member for Lyne. But I’d like to thank all the others, including Georgie McDooling, Noel Atkins, Jane Corcoran, and Bill Yates from way back in 2009 and 2010, when this journey started.
Thanks to all the National Party branch members across the original and slightly different distribution of Lyne and the current Lyne. There are over 700 of those people who can proudly call themselves members of the Nationals. I give a shout-out to them all. Together with my staff and hundreds of other supporters, volunteers and booth workers, they have combined to deliver me into this parliament for four terms, and I thank them. There are some who really went above and beyond – an awful lot of them went above and beyond. They know who they are and I know they are, and a special thank you goes out to them.
To all of my Nationals colleagues here that have sat in this House with me over the four terms, thank you for your support. All my colleagues in the opposition, I thank you for all your friendship, counsel and advice in the good times and the bad times. We’ve been through a lot.
I’d like to thank the late Bruce Cowan, Mark Vale, ‘Wacka’ Williams, Warren Truss and Andrew Stoner. I also thank Tony Abbott, with whom for years I’ve plotted politics. He gave me much wise advice and help. Thank you all. I’d also like to thank Barnaby, who called me into the ministry on two occasions.
Being a member of the House of Representatives is a great privilege with lots of responsibility. I’ve worked out that you need a lot of skills to be a good MP. You are not just a legislator. You’re a voice for your constituents. You’re an inquisitor in committees. You’re a policymaker. You’re a negotiator. You’re part parish priest. You’ve got to be an economist. You have to be an industrial advocate, a diplomat, a social media genius, a writer—and the list goes on. It has been a journey and a half, full of highs and lows.
As a rural member, I have found that there are far more geographic challenges, and all you rural members would know the long distances. There are multiple communities that have their own economic drivers and their own view on what’s important, and you’ve got to know them all, because you can be in one and upset the other. But with tens of thousands of kilometres between parliamentary sittings, it’s a big job. But it’s been worth it in the seat of Lyne because I’ve seen all these improvements that we have delivered in government for the people of the electorate.
Lyne getting its fair share of our nation’s infrastructure build has been fantastic. Before I announced my retirement I asked my wonderful office to collate all the infrastructure that we’ve delivered in Lyne. It’s quite sizeable. I seek leave to table this list.
The big favourites are the two major Pacific Highway upgrades that bookend the seat of Lyne: north of Port Macquarie to Kempsey delivered in the first term and now the Hunter River crossing. But there is still unfinished business. There are six highway overpass interchanges and several realignments that will need to be completed for it to turn into a full freeway. It’s not only for safety. There will be major economic differences if we get those because you get these huge bottlenecks forever. I’ll put Senator McKenzie on notice: it’s called the Pacific Highway upgrade 2.0. It’ll cost about half a billion dollars, but please take note. There have also been two major airport upgrades: within the old Lyne boundaries of Port Macquarie, where jets can now land, and we’ve got a new terminal, a new taxiway and an apron expansion thanks to the help of Warren Truss, Michael McCormack, Luke Hartsuyker and now Pat Conaghan.
At the southern end of the electorate, we have the big one: the Newcastle Airport, which is now going to truly be an international airport. We were able to secure two grants totalling $130 million. I’d like to give a big thankyou to our former Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, again to the member for Riverina and to the member for New England for listening and delivering the funds for that. It will be the best-value international airport in the country, not just for the 750,000 people in the Hunter but also for all the people in the Mid North Coast region, who will all of a sudden have their own international airport. All the inbound and outbound tourism that comes via Sydney can also come via us. It won’t go to Brisbane; it could come to Newcastle. We’ve got huge inbound and outbound tourism capability.
I have noticed that, as a country MP, you see a lot of community and sporting infrastructure and arts funding totally skewed and massive amounts going into capital cities. So I worked really hard to develop sporting facilities in my electorate of Lyne. Sport, in a country town or in a big town, levels all strata of society. If you’re in the same sporting team, it’s good. It’s great for children’s development and for teamwork and it unites all layers of society. We’ve got two major indoor stadium upgrades for basketball: one in Port Macquarie in the old distribution and now a three-court expansion in Taree. New surf club upgrades are scattered across the electorate, including the massive Forster Surf Life Saving Club. Again, I thank the member for New England for the wonderful grant that he organised for that. There were new grandstands, female change facilities and oval upgrades in Maitland, Gloucester and Karuah, and they’re just to name a few. We expanded, courtesy of federal money, the Manning Entertainment Centre, and, down the road in Forster, there was a massive project for the Forster Civic Centre precinct, which is an exemplar library and conference centre. It’s the envy of other councils.
I’m really proud of the work we did during COVID, particularly in the health portfolio but also with the member for Bradfield when we got together a fund to keep Australian picture theatres—the genuine ones—alive. Another equally transformative institution from critical coalition policies is the development of the Taree Universities Campus. In 2019 I put together a proposal with education and community leaders, and they took to it like ducks to water. We were able to secure two funding grants to make a new campus a reality. It is the Taree Universities Campus with multiple universities, ensuring access for local young people who couldn’t afford to go away, mature-age people or those who are looking to upgrade their skills, whether it’s their first chance or their second bite at advancing their education. So Manning Valley, Gloucester, Forster-Tuncurry and the region now have access to a multi-university, community owned facility in a permanent campus for the next 25 years. They have 500 students utilising it now. They’ve had 55 students graduate—huge numbers of nurses. On checking this morning, I see they have another 65 coming this year. Everyone said this would never work and that it would be a white elephant. I’m so proud of it.
In my community, I was known as a doctor, but it was really cool for me to develop and deliver into my own electorate some really important health facilities. There is now a headspace in Taree, and the Manning Valley now has a public hospital MRI in Manning Base Hospital, when they are as rare as hen’s teeth, and there’s a new radiotherapy unit being built there. In Port Macquarie, in my first term, when I wasn’t in the ministry, with the help of Professor Lesley Forster of the University of New South Wales rural medical school, we developed a unique model that would allow a cohort of Port Macquarie students to train not just for three months or six months as a sampler course but to go from go to whoa in Port Macquarie. She went against the grain, so thank you, Professor Lesley Forster. She is now doing that with Charles Sturt University. It has been an outrageous success.
During this time in parliament, we’ve had some major challenges. We had the devastating, record-breaking 2019 fires after years of really extreme drought. Everyone thinks it’s always green on the coast and that the rivers are always full, but most of them are salty. They’re tidal. And we had a drought like no other. Some of the rivers on the coast stopped running. But for the tide, they wouldn’t have had water in them. Then a year later we went to the other extreme and had the most massive floods since the 1960s. It was really distressing to see houses, lives, memories and animals literally going up in smoke. Hundreds of buildings, including many houses, were destroyed. Then, in the flood, thousands of people were made homeless. Whole houses and huge numbers of livestock were literally washed away. We had literally thousands of people living temporarily in service clubs, like the local sporting clubs, the RSLs—all sorts of places.
I had a few hiccups and a challenge in 2016. We can all get a bad redistribution in the lottery, but I had to speed-date 48,000 new people. They took away Port Macquarie, my home base where I had practised and treated about half the electorate, so that, as a gastroenterologist, I knew them literally inside out. Those I hadn’t met at a fete, I had met in the day surgery. But, in spite of what I lost, I gained something even better. I now inherited all the territory down to the Hunter across to Hawks Nest. Just about every tourism and primary industry is now encapsulated in Lyne, plus I picked up the mighty Hunter River and Maitland and all that Hunter history and many service industries and even more people in the mining industry.
On the coast, there were two coalmines. I’ve got one left, but there are about 20,000 people who work because of the Hunter coal-fired power stations or the coalmines, and they all live in the beautiful part of Lyne. But there are opponents and obstacles everywhere, coming for all these primary industries. They are all at threat with the net zero agenda. Often it’s these harmless sounding names like ‘restoring our rivers’ or ‘nature repair’ or ‘a safeguard mechanism’—like a poison pen in a soft, cuddly name. They are all coming. We have a huge problem because these are all the industries that make us our money. We won’t have an energy system if we don’t have base load.
We’ve got a huge red-tape reform agenda that we really need to start again. There’s a heap of confusion in the federal-state fiscal relationship; it’s totally unbalanced now. Originally, state and federal responsibilities were very clear. We had a good constitution. States used to do a whole lot more without getting out of bed to get a grant from the feds; it’s a complex history. Their revenue and regulatory arrangements were matched by appropriate fiscal ability, but it all changed in World War II when a lot of the powers were temporarily ceded to the Commonwealth, and then they never wanted it back because of the war debt. But now it’s all confused. Half the money comes from here. It’s like the proverbial structure of a plate of spaghetti if you try and do all the connections between who runs what and where the money comes from.
In his first term, Prime Minister Tony Abbott instigated a federation reform agenda; I’d been whispering in his ear for a long time. In that context—without his knowledge, because there were other matters—I developed a tax reform paper and a parliamentary budget analysis to launch the push for the expansion and increase of a broad based consumption tax. It argued for major reductions in income tax, company tax and several other taxes and imposts as well as for increasing the welfare safety net. It would provide extra revenue streams that better aligned the work that the states and territories have traditionally done like running hospitals, police, and schools, and building main roads, dams, bridges, and railways. Of those things that I’ve just mentioned, it’s only the police that we don’t give money to the states for, so we’re on the hook for everything else.
We did get lift-off with that debate, and several states got behind it. It was really encouraging considering I was a backbencher in my first term. I thought: ‘Wow. John Howard tried twice and I’m just on the backbench. We’re going to get the GST up.’ Unfortunately, it didn’t fly. As they say in those blogs and in lots of podcasts, the rest is history. But I think we need to readdress the red tape and green tape that is strangling both federal and state governments. I think both federal and state governments have left too much of the policy work to delegated authority in the public service.
There are a few ‘to do’ jobs and suggestions for you; you’re not bound by this, but I just thought I’d put them in there. The cost blowouts in infrastructure are scary. An extra guideline here, another environmental measure there or another community consultation—the next thing you know, building a new highway roundabout can take eight or nine years instead of 12 or 18 months and it costs three, four or five times more. We really have to stop and think, ‘Just keep it simple.’ Make it all rule by common sense. It would be really good if we did have a deregulation agenda in the next political cycle and require all departments and agencies to begin putting proposals to remove 25 per cent of the regulations that increase costs. Put in a new test, something like ‘one in, one off’ or ‘one in, three off’, similar to Paul Keating’s competition payments—he started that—or Tony Abbott’s asset recycling payments. There needs to be some incentive to get the states on board. It’s not the sole preserve of this side to do these things.
In my time as a minister in the health portfolio I worked up many long-term projects that I’m really proud of. As the member for Parkes mentioned last week, things in the health system have a long gestation. It takes about 12 years to become a fully-fledged doctor hanging a shingle. While I was there I established the position of rural health commissioner, which is a vital role and doing good work. Of the three commissioners, two have been appointed by me. They have all done a great job. We created more holistic long-term benefits for rural centres so that they could attract, train and retain doctors and nurses: end-to-end med schools; HECS fee relief for nurse practitioners and junior doctors working in rural and remote parts of our country; expansion of the Flying Doctor Service, securing its planning for over a decade; and, as I mentioned before, expansion of the rural medical clinical schools placements from sampler placements for three or six months to end to end, beginning to end. Everyone was clamouring for a Murray-Darling medical school, but it was proposed to be at the expense of the 17 established rural clinical schools that are a great legacy of Michael Wooldridge; they had the sampler variety of placements—maybe six months or a year. But I thought, ‘Hang on, the perfect solution is what we did in Port Macquarie.’ By wheeling and dealing and getting the heads of the universities around the table, I organised for Melbourne uni to set up a whole medical school in Shepparton in the seat of Nicholls. I got La Trobe a deal that meant the top 12 graduates from their biomedical degree would go straight into Melbourne uni. With that method, Monash did a deal with Albury and Bendigo.
That then started more of a chain reaction. I was able to convince UNSW to do what I did in Port Macquarie without any money but just by rejigging it, to establish one in the member for Riverina’s electorate, so now he has an end-to-end one. The members for Fisher and Fairfax will know the horse-dealing that went into starting the Sunshine Coast medical school. You were both there for the opening, with Greg Hunt. Also, for Charles Sturt University’s applicant process, I did the policy work and the deals to pair them up with Western Sydney uni. So now the Sunshine Coast has its own medical school, Charles Sturt has its own medical school, Wagga has its own medical school, Shepparton—you name it. When I came back the next time, following my call-back to the ministry, the member for New England and I were able to secure more Commonwealth supported places, so the member for Leichhardt could get an expansion up in Cairns and the member for Barker in the Riverland could get an extended training program for doctors.
During my time in child services, it was a bit distressing. I was there during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, where I heard many harrowing stories. I also had oversight of and insights into the state-run foster-care system. The children there are usually there as a result—it’s the same thing—of either drug or alcohol addiction, or both; domestic and family violence; appalling child neglect; or, sometimes, mental health. Back in the old days, they were there because there was shame in being unwed and having a child, so kids were adopted out. That doesn’t happen now. These children are coming from, in many cases, a bad space.
You want these children to have what every other child wants, and that is a permanent home. Fostering is meant to be a stopgap measure—and they’re glorious people that do it. But there’s an inertia in the system, not to change. Instead of foster care being temporary housing until children are placed in a permanent parental arrangement, depending on the state—it’s only New South Wales that allows adoption easily these days, but they have open adoption—there are now 46,000 children in permanent foster rotations. When I was in the ministry, it was only 42,000. And it seems to be growing, more and more.
I did have the temerity to suggest that adoption should be made easier and earlier with an open adoption model, where the biological parent or parents know where the child is, the child knows where the mum and dad are, and there are the adoptive parents. So it’s open, but the children get permanence and they’re not bounced around the system. I still hope there can be some positive arrangement made with the states.
There is sensitivity about the stolen generation. Let’s face it: that was a pretty scary and bad period. But permanence is what a child needs.
This experience in my own electorate gave me the resolve to get more children and family services into my electorate, because there is certainly a need. We got a big grant—again courtesy of the member for New England—to finish off the most amazing building—a wonderful, friendly, uniquely designed building and community organisation called First Steps Count Child and Community Centre. It has everything in it, all in a one-stop shop, from playgroups to hearing checks to eye checks to assessment for autism spectrum—any childhood problem—and it’s going really well. It’s fantastic, and it will deliver long-term benefit.
There is another really exciting thing, but I had to be a bit subtle about this, because I think I might appear on the list somewhere. There was a bit of legislation when I was in the ministry, the Autonomous Sanctions Amendment (Magnitsky-style and Other Thematic Sanctions) Bill 2021, that was looking for someone to introduce it. Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I thought: ‘Hey, I’ve read Red Notice. I know all about this. There are a lot of mad and bad people doing very evil things and moving money into Australia or around.’ So we had that legislation. I’m pleased to see it’s established. It gets reported on all the time. But I introduced it and shepherded it through this House after it came here from the Senate. So that was great.
Being a minister has its pros, but, gee, being a backbencher is a great honour, and you can get a lot done. Other people have mentioned the parliamentary committees. They are a critical part of parliament. They’re an invaluable informal channel for diplomacy and exchange of ideas and perspectives, and they can get ministers and members and senators up to speed on issues that are really technical and important. A lot of these experts will really give you fearless and frank knowledge rather than fearless and frank opinion or policy, which is totally different. The net outcome is that the parliamentary friendship groups, as well as the formal committees, are a really invaluable part of this.
Because of my medical background, I was on every one, or every second one, of the Parliamentary Friends of medicine. There is a long list, as the member the Macarthur would know. We’ve done a double date on so many things. I’d like to thank him for all his assistance.
I also thank the member for Makin. We’ve been on a tour through batteries, and I can tell you there are not enough minerals in the world or enough mines in the world to deliver the amount of batteries that will last 10 years. The idea that this world is going to run on electric vehicles is one of the biggest naivetes ever. We’ve looked at electric vehicles in Korea. We’ve looked at them in Japan. They are an amazing technology but so material rich it’s scary. We will have to mine more copper than has been mined since records began just to get enough copper to get this ‘transition’ up to about 2030. So the markets are responding. Not everyone wants an electric vehicle, so I think nature and people’s needs will sort it out. But that’s the importance of these committees, because you find this stuff out. This whole transition thing really should be described as an addition. Electric vehicles are just the latest and greatest new form of transport. If you really want to electrify transport, get our Inland Rail up and then electrify it. Get our high-speed rail up and electrify it. Get more mass transit in our big cities, rather than ‘mass transit’ meaning everyone buys a smaller car and there are three million cars instead of two million cars. So that was it.
My best thing ever, and probably my most substantial non-legislative role, is setting up the Parliamentary Friends of Nuclear Industries. I must say it’s been great fun. I was a nuclear sort of child in my medical career. You do physics at uni as well as high school, but my first job was injecting radioactive isotopes into people. Can you play the dark scary music over there—isotopes! ABC sign from the left, please! Anyhow, radiotherapy and isotopes have allowed medical practitioners like me to diagnose to treat, to cure and to do amazing scans. I have had more radioisotopes on me than I can poke a stick it, but I’m still here. It’s only too much radiation that’s dangerous.
The idea that any radiation is bad is a totally debunked theory. It’s called the linear no threshold theory. It’s not a straight line—zero being nothing and the other end being really bad with anywhere along that being less bad. No. To get bad, it has to go up, and then it straightens out. But that’s a bit of an aside.
As the minister for ARPANSA, the authority on radiation protection and nuclear safety, twice, I got to see what our amazing capability is in this country, and it is sizeable. It’s far greater than even I realised. In the news just the other day was the announcement that we’re not part of the gen IV group with the UK and the US, but we are actually the chair of it, and we’ve been the chair since 2017. It’s a research and safety standard setting organisation for six different types of advanced reactors. They’re the ones that you’re hearing a lot about in the SMR space. They don’t boil water and act like a kettle and a steam engine that spins an electric generator; they boil salt or lead or helium at really high temperatures. Our guys at ANSTO have been setting standards for molten salt reactors and high-temperature gas reactors, so there we go.
That same place, ANSTO, has developed this amazing industrial final waste repository system. It’s a big factory. It’s world-leading. It’s called SyMo, named after Synroc, which is a technology ANSTO developed. It will take permanent transuranic, all the really bad ‘iums’ with which you can’t do anything more, that are a side product of all the medical isotopes and stuff they do at ANSTO. That will deal with our own waste. It is world-leading. I’ve had American professors and big Canadian engineering firms saying: ‘Can we be your agent? We’ll sell 11 of these around the world.’ It is world-leading. The idea that we don’t know what to do with waste is absolute rubbish. But I digress.
I would like to thank the member the Hinkler. He started my electrical engineering tutorials back in the first term. He’s taught me a lot about grids. I joined the ANS, the American Nuclear Society, and have been to as many conferences as I can. Along the way I’ve met some amazing people, and I want to give a huge shoutout to my biggest tutor, Rob Parker, who’s up there in the gallery. He’s doing a great job with all the lectures and information around the country. I will also shoutout Robert Barr, who’s been a sidekick on our tours to North America; Tony Irwin, who has built and operated eight nuclear plants, and he went over when Chernobyl happened and taught the Russians how to really run it, and he lives in Australia. To Helen Cook, Stephen Smith, Dave Collins and all my turbocharged pro-nuclear Argonauts out there in big, wide Australia, being marshalled by Peter Sjoquist—a big shoutout to Peter. He has got to get the award for the most WhatsApp group messages ever.
I would like to thank Tim Stone, in Britain; professors Jacopo Buongiorno and Andrew Whittaker, in the USA; all the engineers at Hatch engineering; AtkinsRealis, which built the CANDU reactors; and Ontario Power Generation, which is the second-biggest power utility in North America, and guess what? It’s government owned. It’s like our Electricity Commission of New South Wales. The biggest one in America is Tennessee Valley Authority. Hey presto, guess what? It’s owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority, another government owned power utility. They’ve been very helpful too.
The friendship group had lift-off. The aim of educating and convincing members and senators on the nature of nuclear energy and its potential here in Australia has been reached. We in the Nationals have been ahead of the curve. We’ve seen the light, and our membership and federal council adopted this many years ago. I’m so pleased and proud that my liberal colleagues are now onboard. That is the way to go.
I know there are lots of members on the other side who are secretly pro-nuclear, but they chickened out once they got into government, and they’re strictly following orders. But they’re welcome back. You can always change your mind when the facts change. That is quite okay. We won’t criticise you at all. But it is bipartisan anywhere else in the world, and there are now 31 countries that have signed up to triple their nuclear energy.
One of the other great friendship things we run in this country is the nation parliamentary friendship groups. I reckon that’s one of the best gigs going, because you get to meet a lot of really interesting people in the embassy and that come out from whatever country. I’ve signed up for so many of them I just can’t get to them all. But the one that I’ve really tried to make a difference on is the Australia-Japan parliamentary friendship group, because Japan and Australia are really important to each other.
In 1862, at the start of the Meiji Restoration, when they decided to industrialise, Japan’s first load of coal came from somewhere down in the Illawarra. We’ve been sending energy ever since. They have built that industrial powerhouse with gas, oil, and coal from us. They don’t and can’t have solar panels, so that’s why they need us. In places like Korea, they’re exactly the same. We shouldn’t feel guilty at all. It is absolutely rubbish that our ecowarrior extremists are trying to make out that Australia is bad for the world. We power with food 100 million people besides ourselves, but we’re only 25 million. We supply energy for over a billion people, like those in India, yet we’re measured on our carbon footprint as though we’re using all the energy and food. It’s really not logical.
I would like to acknowledge His Excellency Suzuki and Ken up there. Thank you so much for what Japan has done for us. After the war, thanks your investment in Australia, started by John ‘Black Jack’ McEwan, we made peace and have moved forward ever since. Your technology is the bread-and-butter technology that we all use in Australia, and your investment has developed our mines, our energy systems and everything. It would be so cool if we could get a high-speed rail gunning up the north coast once we finish the Inland Rail. We will go from strength to strength.
I would like to keep going, but I’m going to run out of time. I just want to say thank you, Peter, for your leadership, particularly for your commonsense approach to policy development, including on nuclear energy. I think you’ll make an excellent Prime Minister. It is lucky that, as I found out from Bill Shorten’s speech the other day, I am probably the 220th MP to get to make a valedictory, which sounds a lot more exclusive than the 1,244 that came in and made maiden speeches. It has been a pleasure, Mr Speaker, to work with you on the trade and investment growth committee. It was also a pleasure to serve on the speaker’s panel in the last parliament. I would have loved to have done more. One recommendation I can give to first-termers: do some time on the speaker’s panel, because then you know all the procedure, and you’re not walking around like a dazed person in your first term. You know what all the terms mean and what the procedure is.
I’d like to thank the presiding officers and all the assistant clerks and parliamentary support staff who have assisted me in my duties here in this place. I would just like to leave you a couple of to-do items for when, hopefully, we do get into government. We’ve got nuclear and electricity covered. It will take time. But the urgent necessity for this nation now is that we’ve still got an electricity system that works—just. It might tip over the edge. But where we are really thin is on liquid fuel security. We have got to, as President Trump said, ‘drill, baby, drill’, because we need to get liquid fuel security in this country. Again, the 10 biggest oil and gas businesses aren’t BP or Shell; they’re state-owned enterprises. So if Australia is really going to develop our oil security, take a leaf out of INPEX, which is publicly owned but the golden shares are owned by the nation of Japan. Maybe that is something we should look at.
I would also like to thank all the coalition leadership team for all the work you’re doing. It is really important that we all have our ducks in a row for the next election. I’ll be helping whoever wins the preselection on the weekend get to be the next member for Lyne. Timing is everything. As Kenny Rogers said, ‘You’ve got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them …’
I’ve been incredibly fortunate to serve the communities and people of the Lyne electorate for the past 12 years. I would like to thank them again. They put their trust in me for over a decade or more to travel down here and fight for the issues that they thought were important. I have thoroughly enjoyed being your MP, meeting all of you and everything else in this wonderful building. For those of you who have had my three-times-a-year newsletters, you would have seen this little catch line: ‘he listens, he cares, he delivers’. But I can quite happily stand here, cross my heart and hope to die and say I listened, I cared and I did deliver.
Nationals’ Leader David Littleproud – “We thank you for your service. We thank you for your legacy”
It gives me pleasure to rise and acknowledge the member for Lyne, who we affectionately know as ‘the Doc’, for what was a great speech that highlighted the legacy he has left for the people of Lyne. His legacy extends well beyond just the infrastructure he has been able to deliver for the people of Lyne; it goes to the heart of his beliefs and his experience in the medical profession. In fact, he missed one. When I first became the member for Maranoa, I fought hard for the Heart of Australia bus. He was the assistant health minister and he delivered funding to that bus. That now has gone from one to six buses that go throughout rural and remote areas, checking out people for heart conditions and it has literally saved lives. It is a great legacy the Doc has left. His indelible legacy will be that of nuclear energy. He has been passionate from the outset and has driven the debate, not only internally within our party but also in the coalition party room.
To Doc, Charlotte, and his family, we wish you all the best. We are losing two of our greatest, with the member for Parkes, who is leaving us as well. The great experience and the calmness you have brought to our party rooms, the pair of you, are something we will miss. But we respect the legacy that you have left us. We will be custodians of it and we will ensure that the next parliament respects what you have both achieved. On behalf of the National Party family, we wish you all the best in your retirement. We thank you for your service. We thank you for your legacy.
