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Helen Polley, Senator for Tasmania
First Speech - 11/08/2005
Senator POLLEY (Tasmania) (5.23
pm)—If my voice is a little shaky and my
hands tremble a little, I am sure many of you
will understand. No doubt you all are familiar
with the emotions I am experiencing right
now, delivering my first speech in this
chamber. It is a great honour to be here representing
the people of Tasmania but at the
same time a little daunting. I come here not
as an ambitious politician but with an ambition
to serve. I come here determined to justify
the faith others have in my ability to do
the job and to do it well.
There are, of course, a few people and organisations
that I would like to thank—
firstly, my parents, Michael and Eileen. I was
brought up in the beautiful country town of
Westbury, the third child in a Catholic family
of six. We were raised with good, oldfashioned
country values: honesty, hard work
and tolerance, values that really never have
gone out of fashion in country Australia.
My dad survived the nightmare that was
the Burma Railway. He was a prisoner of
war for 3½ years. He should have lost his leg
at Changi. Weary Dunlop would have amputated
had the risk of infection not been so
great in that hellhole. When people talk of
courage, I think of my father. When people
talk of patriotism, I think of my father, for
no-one could love Australia as my father did.
When people talk of compassion and tolerance,
I think of my father, because surely
few could have endured such deprivation and
emerged so tolerant and non-judgmental
about his fellow man. These are the values
he instilled in the Polley kids. When I was a
teenager, I confided that I would one day like
to represent others in parliament. Regrettably,
he did not live long enough to be here
today.
I was 14 when I joined the Australian Labor
Party, sharing my brother’s passion for
politics. I have always been able to count on
his counsel, whether or not I have needed or
even wanted it. I do not think I will ever be
able to match his length of public service as
he celebrates his 34th year as a member of
the Tasmanian House of Assembly. As all of
you would know, it is not easy being the
partner of a politician. There must have been
times when my husband, Albert, thought he
did not marry me; he married the Australian
Labor Party. I was only able to dedicate as
much as I have to the Australian Labor Party
because Albert was prepared to be the
homemaker. I suppose in one way he was a
trailblazer, because there were not too many
husbands at that time prepared to be Mr
Mum. But, more than that, he has always
been there for me, celebrating the victories,
commiserating on the losses, and providing
encouragement.
My two daughters, Monika and Jasmine,
have also made sacrifices to accommodate
my political interests. I am very proud of our
daughters and I am so happy they are here
tonight with their families. I thank them. I
would also like to acknowledge Monika and
Jasmine’s grandparents, Herman and Maria
Schweitzer, who have also been so supportive
of my political goals. They have been a
great help to Albert and I, and we share this
day with them.
To my extended family, the Tasmanian
Branch of the Australian Labor Party—like
all families, there may have been the occasional
squabble, but they have always been
there for me, and I thank them for this opportunity
to serve the people of Tasmania. I thank my former boss, the late Jim Bacon,
for allowing me as a staff member to play a
role in revitalising Tasmania. Finally, I thank
my Senate colleague, Joe Ludwig; the Australian
Workers Union, particularly Bill
Ludwig, Bill Shorten and Ian Wakefield; and
the Textile Clothing and Footwear Union for
their encouragement, guidance and support.
Without getting sidetracked, I note that the
Australian netballers are now covered by the
AWU. This union really does represent a
cross-section of Australian society—rabbit
trappers, hairdressers, miners, paper mill
workers, shearers and now, apparently, netballers.
You could do worse than consult this
union to gauge the mood of the country. I
owe a big debt of gratitude to these types of
workers—to those who have never aspired to
high office but have remained committed to
the ideals of the Australian labour movement
through the good times and the bad and to
those who were always willing to lend a
hand, especially from 1992 to 1995, when I
served as the first state president of the Tasmanian
Labor Party branch. We had just
come off our worst state election defeat ever
and yet, in that brief period, together we rebuilt
the party to come within striking distance
of winning the 1996 election.
In 1998, the late Jim Bacon swept to
power in a landslide, becoming the first Labor
leader to win majority government in
almost two decades. Labor might have been
in good shape, but the state of Tasmania was
in a mess. There was double-digit unemployment,
the population was declining for
the first time since the Second World War
and property prices were falling, with little
or no business investment. Tasmanians were
dispirited. They had been told the only way
out was to sell the prized Hydro Electric
Corporation and to use the proceeds to retire
debt. The other solution was to amalgamate
with Jeff Kennett’s Victoria.
Jim Bacon offered a third way: to convince
Tasmanians that they did indeed have a
future, debt could be managed and, with the
certainty of majority government, business
would invest. To lend weight to the claims,
his Treasurer, David Crean, brought down
the first balanced budget in over a century.
Suddenly, things were not as bad as they
seemed. Optimism replaced pessimism. The
unemployment rate stabilised and then began
to fall. AFL football was lured back to the
state. Two new ferries from Melbourne to
Devonport pushed visitor numbers to record
levels. With more jobs, Tasmanians stopped
leaving and people from Melbourne and
Sydney wanting a better lifestyle started
moving to Tasmania. Within a couple of
years, Tasmania will be net debt free.
This is a new Tasmania—a self-assured,
confident Tasmania. It is no longer the mendicant
state. It is dynamic and it is exciting.
In that same way, we rebuilt the Labor Party.
Jim Bacon and his lieutenants Paul Lennon
and David Crean rebuilt Tasmania. In the
early days of the Labor government, Hobart
insisted that Tasmania was not interested in
handouts from Canberra; it needed a hand
up. For members who still hold an oldfashioned
view of Tasmania, take another
look. There is a new Tasmania radically different
from the old. There is now a Tasmania
that does not look for protection; it looks for
a fair go.
For instance, our vegetable farmers, under
attack from cheap imports, are not looking
for a handout. They are looking for a fair go.
They know that they produce the finest vegetables
in the world. They do not want tariff
protection. They want a fair go, and a fair go
means fair labelling. Consumers will buy
Tasmanian—Australian, for that matter—if
the labelling clearly states the origin of the
produce, because consumers know that when
they buy Tasmanian they are buying the best.
Our farmers are not looking for an unfair advantage; they are looking for a level playing
ground. The least we can do as legislators
is review our labelling laws and decide
for ourselves if the current system is fair.
The world is a small place. We are part of
a global village. It would therefore be wrong
to resurrect trade barriers. But our farmers in
Tasmania are not asking for tariff protection;
they are asking for consumers to be given the
right to choose—to choose between produce
grown here and produce grown elsewhere. In
the same way, we need to make sure that the
textile, clothing and footwear industries are
competing on level terms with the rest of the
world. Our policies should always be underpinned
by the notion of a fair go.
I will now turn to the composition of the
Senate. There has been much talk about the
dangers of one party controlling both houses
of the Australian parliament. I would like to
bring a distinctly Tasmanian view to this debate.
In Tasmania, we have the most democratic
electoral system in the world—the
Hare-Clark system. It is similar to the Senate.
A candidate with 16 per cent of the vote
will win a seat in the state’s lower house. It is
a system that gives minorities a voice. They
are the positives.
The negative side of Hare-Clark is that it
regularly throws up minority governments
with the balance of power held by a group
with less than 16 percent of the vote. In the
past two decades, Tasmania has had two minority
governments—the Labor-Green accord,
which lasted just 2½ years, and the
Rundle Liberal government supported by the
Greens in 1996 and 1997. Neither lasted a
full four-year term. Both served only half a
term. During both periods, the economy
stalled; unemployment was high; and business,
wary of a political climate where it was
never certain from one day to the next if the
government would stand or fall, refused to
invest.
I have already spoken about the disastrous
state of affairs Jim Bacon inherited when he
came to office in 1998—a population falling
for the first time since the Second World
War, unemployment stuck in double digits
and the value of the family home falling—all
contributing to a pessimistic people with a
gloomy outlook for the future. It would
therefore be hypocritical for me to stand here
and bemoan the coalition’s dominance of the
Senate. Instead, I would like to point out the
enormous responsibility which now falls on
the coalition members of this place, particularly
those from Tasmania.
After nine long years, you no longer have
the luxury of toeing the party line knowing
that this side of the chamber will throw out
or amend legislation that hurts your constituents.
We no longer have the power to do that
for you. You will need to examine every detail
of government policy before it gets to
this place. You will need to fight tooth and
nail in your party room to protect Tasmania’s
interests. If you do not, then be prepared for
the public humiliation that will surely come
if you are forced to vote for a particular
measure that you know will harm your constituents.
If all else fails, please be prepared
to listen to our suggestions to make changes
for the better even if they are suggested by
this side of the chamber.
The people of Australia have given you
great power. Exercise it with caution and
humility. Tasmania has 12 senators—the
same number as all the other states despite
having a much smaller population. The reason
for that is simple. When the founders of
this great nation sat down to consider the
composition of the Australian parliament,
they agreed that the rights of all the states,
regardless of how big or how small, must be
protected, and the responsibility for that protection
falls squarely on the members of this
chamber. If they had decided the Senate
would simply be a house of review, then our founders would not have used a state based
electoral system.
I have heard it said that the government
now regards the Senate as a rubber stamp.
That remains to be seen. Liberal members of
this chamber may well act as lap-dogs to
their masters in the House of Representatives.
They may well ignore their primary
responsibility to look after the interests of
their state. I hope they will not. I hope they
will treat each piece of legislation on its merits
and I hope they will find ways to protect
Tasmania’s interests.
A test of the allegiance of the coalition’s
Tasmanian senators may well arrive when
the industrial relations changes are debated.
Despite the great advances we have made in
the past seven years, Tasmania still has the
lowest paid workers of any state. It is true
that that gap is closing, but it has not yet
closed. Unless the IR changes proposed by
the government contain a specific requirement
that no worker will be worse off under
these changes, especially those on low incomes,
I would expect all Tasmanian senators,
particularly those in the coalition ministry,
to vote it down. Perhaps most galling is
the proposed replacement of state based industrial
commissions with a national commission
for fair pay. This one-size-fits-all
approach to national policy-making is seriously
flawed. Whether it is IR, education or
health, there has to be flexibility within the
system to take regional differences into account.
The reason Canberra does not run
hospitals is because—and I think the Prime
Minister has acknowledged this—local
communities know best their own needs.
I place on public record my determination
to keep my fellow senators accountable, especially
during this period when one party
has the capacity to exercise absolute control.
I will be noisy when there is evidence that
particular senators are placing their personal
ambitions above the interests of the people of
Tasmania. Equally, I will not be afraid to
praise where praise is due. The Tasmanian
Community Forest Agreement is an example
of cooperative federalism—the coming together
of two governments of different political
persuasions for the common good.
This agreement takes the area of Tasmanian
old growth protected to more than one million
hectares. It provides job security and it
provides capital for the industry to invest in
value adding. It protects the deep red myrtle
in the Tarkine and the giant trees of the Styx
Valley.
The Premier of Tasmania, Paul Lennon,
deserves great credit for this agreement. He
knew that simply locking up more land
would not resolve the forest debate. He knew
that any long-term solution had to address
clear-felling. By 2010 less than 20 per cent
of the very small area of old growth logged
will be clear-felled, replaced by new harvesting
methods that protect biodiversity. What a
shame that we cannot approach all of the big
issues in the same way. What a shame that
we have had to witness the buck-passing
between governments over health services.
What a shame that some politicians in Canberra
think belting state governments is good
politics. Wouldn’t it be something if there
could be real sense of partnership between
the states and the Commonwealth? In Tasmania,
the state government has signed partnership
agreements with every local council
committing both sides to working together
on the major issues confronting each municipality.
Imagine if that sense of partnership
could be replicated nationally. Imagine
the progress on some of the intractable problems
facing this country. Imagine the sense
of relief in the Australian community that
governments at both levels were working
together to make things better. I know it is a
dream, but it is a dream worth having. For
example, wouldn’t it be reassuring for the Australian community if we had a coherent
child-care policy?
With the country experiencing a skills
shortage, the government encourages
mums—and, for that matter, dads—to go
back to work. We encourage them to return
to work, but there are no places for their
children in child care. Those that are lucky
enough to find a child-care place find that a
significant percentage of their salary goes
straight into child-care costs. At the other
end of the spectrum, the child-care workers,
the ones charged with raising the next generation
of Australians, are paid a pittance. I
wonder how they will fare under the government’s
proposed changes to industrial
relations. I wonder how many of them will
be paid what they are worth. I wonder how
many of them will enjoy job security. I am
not saying for a moment that these problems
are easy to solve, but they are problems we
have to solve. These are the problems that
people want governments, both state and
federal, to tackle.
Over the years, I have noticed a tendency
for some senators to change once they have
been in Canberra for a few years. I am not
sure why, but I guess that will become clear.
I am sure they have made great speeches in
this place, but when they return to Tasmania,
it is almost as if they are speaking a different
language. They lose touch. I am told that if
you are not careful you can be drawn into the
Canberra club—a club whose members take
themselves a little too seriously, a club that
lives in a world divorced from reality. They
say forewarned is forearmed. I therefore resolve
to spend as much time in Tasmania as I
possibly can lest I become a member of the
Canberra club.
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