Anne McEwen, Senator for South Australia
First Speech - 9/08/2005
Senator McEWEN (South Australia)
(6.08 pm)—Thank you, Mr Deputy President.
I would like to congratulate you on
your election and I extend my congratulations
to the President and to all the new senators
on their elections, particularly my fellow
South Australians Dana Wortley and Annette
Hurley. I thank the Senate for the opportunity
to make my first speech in this place. I
acknowledge the fact that we stand upon the
traditional land of the Ngunnawal people and
I offer my profound apologies for the pain
and disadvantage that European intrusion has
visited upon our Indigenous Australians.
I am humbled to be a senator for South
Australia. It is not a responsibility that I ever
thought would come my way. I hope that
during my term of office I can reward the
faith that so many people have invested in
me, not least the people of South Australia
who voted for me. I cannot help but note
with more than a touch of pride that I am one
of five women Labor Party senators for
South Australia—a fact that is, I believe, a
testament to the willingness of the Australian
Labor Party to take positive action to ensure
women in the party can achieve political office.
As I said, I am from South Australia and I
am proudly South Australian, born and raised
in Adelaide. My personal history is probably
not very different, in my early years, to that
of other South Australians who, like me,
were born in the 1950s of parents who grew
up during the Depression. It is always interesting
to compare oneself with one’s contemporaries
and to attempt to fathom what it
is in our own histories that has shaped us
differently. And so, in preparing this speech,
I asked myself: why is it I sit on this side of
the chamber with my Labor Party comrades
and, on the other side, sit senators who may
have had similar backgrounds but have beliefs
and aspirations different to those that I
am going to articulate?
In Adelaide I grew up in a neighbourhood
which was also home to a large number of
what we then called ‘new Australians’, migrants
from Europe who had come to Australia
to build a new life for themselves but who
also came to help us build the industries and
infrastructure that became integral to South
Australia’s economy. I saw the struggles that
those courageous people faced: how they
came here with almost nothing and worked
so hard, how they were challenged by the
prejudice of many ‘old Australians’ and who,
despite it all, contributed so much to building
our postwar nation and whose children and
grandchildren still contribute.
I note in particular the many migrants who
worked in South Australia’s automotive industries.
I note also with great concern the
now fragile future of the Mitsubishi plant in
Adelaide’s southern suburbs. As I grew up, I
enjoyed a neighbourhood where different
languages were spoken, where our Italian
neighbours showed us how to really celebrate
a religious festival or a family milestone
and where local shops stocked seemingly
exotic foodstuffs. I well remember
looking enviously at the mysterious items in
the lunch boxes of my Italian school friends,
and I compared their riches with my rather
sad Vegemite sandwich. My mother was a
teacher and spent many years of her career
teaching English as a second language to
primary school children and, in her own
time, to adults.
Australia is an immeasurably richer and
better place for having had people from other
countries choose to come and live here. It
therefore disturbs me greatly that in more
recent times the government has failed to act
with fair play and compassion towards asylum
seekers and refugees. We rightfully observe
with much sorrow the tragedy of Australians
killed and injured in terrorist attacks
in Bali and elsewhere. But what regrettable
lack of compassion did we see when 353
lives were lost from the SIEVX in 2001.
What a woeful indictment it is when people
who desperately need our help are incarcerated
for years in detention centres under
heartless and indifferent policies.
I am fortunate indeed to have inherited the
electorate office and some of the staff of the
former Senator the Hon. Nick Bolkus. I take
this opportunity to thank my staff, Nina
Gerace and Mick Tumbers, for agreeing to
come and work for me and also for their
good humour, hard work and great expertise.
I would like to acknowledge the enormous
contribution to Australia that Nick Bolkus
made during his 24 years as a member of
parliament. I also thank him for his support.
He was, of course, a minister for eight years,
including Minister for Immigration and Minister
assisting the Prime Minister on Multicultural
Affairs. The son of migrants, Senator
Bolkus made sure his electorate office was a
welcoming and helpful place for people attempting
to navigate Australia’s immigration
system. It is a service to the community that
I hope my office continues to provide. We
will do what we can to ensure Australia’s
tradition of a fair go continues to be extended
to newcomers. I hope that the practical
consequences of measures that the nation
needs to adopt to prevent terrorism do not
become either inherently racist or used to
dispossess deserving people of the opportunity
for safe haven in our country.
I cannot move on without mentioning another
group of Australians, whose terrible
plight seems to have stagnated in the last
decade. Indigenous Australians are still overrepresented
in unemployment statistics and
in our rates of incarceration. They still struggle
to find their place in our tertiary education
system and they still die at a younger
age than most other Australians. It is a sad
state of affairs. I am reminded of the words
of former Prime Minister Paul Keating when
he gave his memorable Redfern speech in
December 1992 prior to the commencement
of the International Year for the World’s Indigenous
People. He said:
This is perhaps the point of this Year of the
World’s Indigenous People: to bring the dispossessed
out of the shadows, to recognise that they
are part of us, and that we cannot give indigenous
Australians up without giving up many of our
own most deeply held values, much of our own
identity—and our own humanity.
Twelve years on, sadly the quote is still relevant.
I do not want Australia to compound
our already sad history by continuing to let
our Indigenous people suffer the disadvantage
we have inflicted on them. Perhaps, as
former Prime Minister Keating also said, we
still need to ‘open our hearts a bit’.
Indigenous Australians find it harder than
most to find employment in Australia. However,
when I left school, I could choose from
any number of jobs. Jobs were easy to come
by. I started work as a clerk in an accounting
firm when I was 16. My first task every day
was to make the tea for the partners. I did not
mind; it was a good job. I got paid, I got paid
holidays, I got paid sick leave, I learnt new
skills, I felt valued, I saved a bit of money
and soon I was able to move on to other jobs
with equally good if not better conditions. I
did not think about where those conditions
had come from. I had no clue about awards
or where the pay rises I received every year
came from or how it was that at some point
in time maternity leave was made available
to women workers.
I joined a union because it seemed like the
right thing to do. It was the best thing I ever
did. The light was turned on. I understood
where those working conditions I enjoyed
had come from and who had fought for them
so that I could benefit. I became part of the
most valuable tradition that Australia has—
the tradition of a fair go, of working collectively
for the common good, of looking after
those who need your help. I became part of
the continuum of the pursuit of justice, freedom
and equity that has been the soul of the
Australian union movement for more than
100 years. I have been a union official. It
was the best job I ever had. I met some wonderful
people and I saw some dreadful things
done to hardworking Australians who deserved
better. Who can forget the tragedy of
Ansett? Let us not forget that nearly four
years on many of those Ansett workers have
still not been paid all the moneys that they
are entitled to.
In my days as a union official, I saw ordinary
people doing extraordinary things because
they were outraged by an injustice to
fellow workers and they wanted to right the
wrong. They were helped in this to some
extent by the industrial system, which, while
far from perfect, at least afforded them some
protection and some certainty. Now, it seems,
one of the pieces of legislation soon to be
debated in this place will be the government’s
proposed industrial relations laws.
The government promotes the concept of
freedom as the cornerstone for more productive
and prosperous workplaces. In some
ideal world where individuals and employers
have equal bargaining power, in a climate of
openness and candour, there would not be an
issue with free association. But this is not an
ideal world and individual workers do not
come to the bargaining table as equals with
their employers. It already happens now that
workers are told to sign an individual agreement
or they will not get the job. To say that
an individual worker with a family, a mortgage
and a desperate need to earn a living
has any freedom to choose whether or not to
sign or has any real bargaining power is unfair,
unrealistic and farcical.
I acknowledge that we have not seen the
detail of the government’s proposed industrial
legislation but we have heard of the intention
to change unfair dismissal laws and
the system of setting minimum rates of pay.
If these things come to pass, more than 3½
million Australian workers will be denied the
ability to challenge their dismissal from employment,
and more than 1½ million workers
will be consigned to minimum award rates of
pay with little chance of their wages keeping
pace with their cost of living. We are told
that these changes are needed so that more
and better jobs will be created. I and many
others are not convinced—not convinced that
we need to destroy our industrial system and
usurp the authority of the states to have their
own systems, and not convinced that when
we have done that we will see any more or
better jobs.
What I am convinced of is that when the
government’s proposed industrial laws are
passed, as it seems they will be, we will have
an Australian economy that has as its basis a
predominance of casual, low-paid workers or
self-employed contractors with no paid leave
to look after their children and elderly parents
when they need care, no decent superannuation
for their retirement and no proper
jobs to hand on to their children. It is not an
Australia I am looking forward to seeing. We
should not be tearing down the few institutions
we have left that are the product of a
century of struggle and built on the principles
of a fair share and a fair go.
There is another fine institution that is
threatened by government policy. That is our
student unions. I know a bit about student
unions. I used to work for one. I met Senator Penny Wong there when she was a student.
She was then, as she is now, a thoughtful and
inspiring woman with a passion for justice. I
know other people were there who are now
members in this parliament but are not sitting
on the Labor side of their House. They were
all beneficiaries of the student organisations
that nurtured, supported and enabled them to
make their way through university and into
the world. It is disappointing to see they have
turned their back on the student unions.
We hear the noble words ‘freedom of association’
turned against the student organisations,
which operate on the basis that a
small contribution by all is a fair way to provide
support and services for all who need it.
It is the same principle that applies when we
pay council rates or income taxes. But when
it applies to student unions this government
says it denies us freedom. It is an unjust argument
by those who want to destroy student
organisations because collectivism is inimical
to their own ideology. I do not understand
why the government is so concerned about
our tertiary students having to pay fees for
student services. I would have thought the
concern would be better directed at the problem
of our young people leaving tertiary
education having accumulated large debts.
We are a rich nation; we do not need to burden
our young people with debt.
As a nation we should make our decisions
on the basis of what kind of future we want
for our children. I am not sure the decisions
this Senate is likely to make in the next
months are going to create the kind of Australia
those of us in the Labor Party want for
the next generations.
It is not an Australia that my 86-year-old
father wants to see either. My father is a veteran
of World War II. He is the son of a
working-class family who had little in the
way of material assets. He grew up during
the Depression. For him military service was
a golden opportunity: an opportunity for adventure,
for travel, to earn a good income
and to set himself up for life with a war service
home—the very home I grew up in in
Adelaide. That opportunity came at a significant
cost, of course. The scars of war are
sadly too real for the veterans of all wars,
most of whom were also working-class
young people.
In 2004, I was privileged to be able to
walk where my father had been 62 years before
with South Australia’s 2/27 Battalion. I
joined other South Australians to walk the
Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea. We did
it to raise funds for a respite facility for children
with disabilities. The fundraising was a
success, I am pleased to say, and it was
shortly after walking the track that I found I
was preselected for the Senate. Some would
say I left one jungle and found myself in another.
There is a monument at a battle site called
Isurava along the Kokoda Track. It is, thankfully,
maintained by local villagers with Australian
government funding, and it comprises
four granite pillars upon which are etched the
words ‘Courage’, ‘Endurance’, ‘Mateship’
and ‘Sacrifice’. It is a moving place. Many
Australian and Japanese soldiers died there. I
looked at those pillars—hewn, I believe,
from granite mined at Mannum in my own
state—and wondered if as a nation we still
honour those quintessential Australian qualities
that young people died defending more
than 60 years ago. The current government
policies of individualism and unfettered
freedom of choice and competition at all
costs do not reflect the spirit of Kokoda.
When we say ‘Lest we forget’, as we will
soon do again when we remember the war in
the Pacific, let us remember not just the soldiers
who died but also the values they were
fighting for.
I should acknowledge that today, 9 August
2005, is the 60th anniversary of the bombing
of Nagasaki. It is an occasion to recall—and
to be saddened by—the horrible effects of
war on civilian populations, to reflect on
why Australia is engaged in a war in Iraq and
to contemplate the wisdom of a resurgent
interest in the mining of uranium in this
country.
In closing I wish to thank the many people
who have supported me, in particular former
and current union leaders Harry Kranz, the
Hon. John Gazzola MLC, Andy Dennard,
Katrine Hildyard, Georgina Matches and all
the past and present workplace delegates,
staff and members of the Australian Services
Union who gave me the chance to be secretary
of a great union. To all my comrades in
the trade union movement in South Australia,
especially Mark Butler and the LHMU, Janet
Giles at SA Unions, the United Fire Fighters
Union, the CFMEU and the AWU, I will not
forget where I came from and I will not forget
what needs to be done. That is a commitment
I also make to the 50,000 union
delegates in Australia. You are in for a tough
time and I am right there with you.
I also thank the members and staff of the
ALP in South Australia and my fellow Labor
Party politicians in both the South Australian
and federal parliaments. I am very honoured
not only to be a Labor senator but also to be
the president of the South Australian Branch
of the ALP. To my family and friends who
have travelled from interstate to be with me
today, my heartfelt thanks, and to all the
Centacare Kokoda trekkers, thank you for
your friendship. I acknowledge two of you
who are here today, Judith Botha and Bernie
Victory.
I could not, of course, have taken on this
new responsibility without the relentless
support and love of my family, especially
Brenton and Holly and my father, Doug. In
conclusion, I would like to thank the staff of
the Senate and the parliament who have
given me such gracious and patient assistance
over the last few weeks. Their respect
for our parliament reminds me daily how
precious our democracy is. Thank you.
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