Mr BROUGH (1:41 PM) —I echo the fine words there of the member for Hughes. Today is a very important day in our history as we do remember Remembrance Day, the 11th of the 11th. As an ex-military person, I have often reflected upon what it must have been like to actually be in the two-way rifle range. It is not something that I ever wished to participate in, although I was willing and trained, and trained others, to fulfil that role.

It has been since the Boer War in 1899 that Australians have heroically answered the call to war, conflict and, more recently, to the unrest all over the world, in the form of peacekeeping and peacemaking operations. It is the democracies of the freedom of speech, the freedom of thought and the choice of political and religious affiliations that we all take for granted as Australians, as being part of our great Australian quality of life—and they are due to nothing less than the enormous sacrifices of generations before us.

Like the member for Hughes, I have many members of my electorate who have given part of their life, and quite often have given their health, to ensure that I am able to stand here today, and that all of us are able to do so with the freedoms that we enjoy. They did that willingly; they did that well. It would be remiss of me not to congratulate them and thank them on this occasion for the efforts that they have put in, some of them many years ago.

I would like to congratulate two successive ministers for veterans' affairs, Con Sciacca and the current minister, Bruce Scott—Con for his work with the Australia Remembers campaign in 1995 and the current minister for the `Their Service—Our Heritage' initiative. Both of these initiatives, in years to come, will become symbols of what Australians think of and remember when they consider the sacrifices of so many men and women in the service of this great nation.

There is, however, one group of service personnel who really have not been recognised fully and yet have given so much to this nation, and that is the nurses. Very few people in this House are probably aware that, to this day, there is no permanent memorial here in Canberra to the nurses. Certainly they are remembered in many ways, but there is no specific, unique one for them. This government has contributed $100,000 towards a $2 million fund to ensure that that is rectified next year, which is the centenary year of nurses' service to this nation.

I would like to relay a couple of stories about the nurses, because you must think about what it must have been like—whether you were on the Somme or in the deserts of Africa or in jungles of New Guinea—to have been wounded somehow, to have woken up and to have looked up from clean sheets, perhaps for the first time in several months, to see the glowing face of an Australian nurse looking down upon you. Many of them must have wondered whether they had died and gone to heaven! At the weekend, at a fundraising activity for this particular charity, I was with a nursing colonel who had served as far back as the Korean War. She relayed the story of one soldier in the Vietnam War who, having been out to it for several days, came around and looked up at the nurse. They thought he might have lost his mind, but when he asked for a kiss they were reassured that he was quite normal. That was an interesting anecdote that she offered.

The fact is that Australian nurses first served overseas in the Boer War—and they were not paid. They in fact paid their own way to go and serve Australia. It must sound rather remarkable to many of us today to think that someone was so keen to serve their nation and to look after the menfolk that were going off to fight in that far-off land that they actually paid their own passage. In fact, one nurse from Queensland who served, and several from Tasmania, not only paid their own passage but the sum total of the nursing equipment they had was what they brought with them. So that is where the great nursing tradition commenced for Australian services. I am sure it will live on for many years to come.

On this occasion I would also like to sincerely thank the many people of the Longman electorate who re-elected me on 3 October and gave me their vote of confidence to come back here and speak on their behalf. I would like to acknowledge the efforts of all my supporters, my helpers and volunteers who put in an enormous effort during and prior to the election campaign. As you are all no doubt aware, without these hardworking people none of us would hold our seats in this House.

I would particularly like to mention my wife, Sue, and my four dedicated staff—Lisa, Kylie, Andrea and Helen. These five women together often go way beyond the call of duty to ensure that the Longman electors are served in the most professional and dedicated manner possible. For this, I thank them on my own behalf and also on behalf of those many people that they have helped over the last 2½ years.

This second term of the Howard government is going to see many and varied major issues come before the Australian public. Many of them we are already aware of: things like the constitutional referendum next year; the centenary of Federation; of course, the tax reform package; and our celebration of our Olympians in the Sydney 2000 Olympics. These are but a few of the major issues which will dominate the headlines in the next 2½ years. I am sure they will also dominate many a barbecue and family chat, as some of our new members have spoken about this morning, as families do at Sunday dinner in Australia—some families still do—discuss political issues. These will be some of those issues which will be uppermost in their mind.

As the local member for Longman I will continue to focus not only on these issues of national significance but also on those many smaller and less significant items—less significant, perhaps, in the wider community's eyes or in the eyes of the media, but very, very important to the local people: things like roads, education facilities, the life that we want our children to have, the needs of our veterans and our aged care facilities and, of course, local, job creating activities. I would like to spend a few minutes discussing some of these and the role that I hope to play in ensuring that Longman, in the next 2½ to three years, is a better place than it currently is.

The first of these is a project which actually combines the military and local tourism. Most of you will not aware that HMAS Flinders is one of the many pieces of military equipment currently up for world-wide tender. It has been an initiative of the Bribie Island Tourism Authority, which have put in a tender—and I might add they are not asking to pay any money for this; they would like to see the government gift it to them—so that they could use HMAS Flinders as a tourist attraction on beautiful Bribie Island.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am sure you would know that the first tourist to Bribie Island was Captain Flinders. He goes back some way, but he landed there and we will be commemorating that event next year. To have a ship which honours his name being able to be a permanent tourist attraction in the form of a museum and also an outlet for our many naval cadets and other organisations on the island would certainly be a boost directly to jobs—and they estimate seven or eight jobs directly—but also a boost to our economy, which is a closed economy on Bribie Island, as you can imagine. Certainly we are connected to the mainland via a bridge, but the fact is that anything we can do to attract more people onto the island and boost its economy is going to be a plus. I commend this project and I commend those people who have worked diligently towards ensuring that it becomes a reality. I thank the new Minister for Defence, Minister John Moore, who will be visiting Bribie Island in December to discuss this project with these people.

A second project in the north of my electorate is the multipurpose building at Maleny High School. Maleny is another beautiful part of my electorate and is located in the hinterland behind the Sunshine Coast. Here is an area with some 600 students that has no real facility for numerous groups to conduct their activities. We have a young population, a population that needs to have activities to keep them busy. It will be through the community working with the state, and I hope with the federal government, which will bring this project to fruition.

However, I was concerned at a meeting the other night to learn that the state Labor government in Queensland had added a caveat to giving any money to this project. It said, `Yes, we are willing to give you $200,000 but only if you get no money out of the federal government.' As the federal representative, that seemed to be a great way out for me. I could say, `We would love to give you money but all we would be doing would be undermining your position.' I hope that the Queensland state government would look again at this position and see the community, state, local and federal governments working together to achieve something useful for the people of Maleny.

I was also very pleased, during the election campaign, to welcome the Prime Minister's initiative of $25 million to upgrade the Bruce Highway. For those who do not know, the Bruce Highway leads out from Brisbane towards Cairns. It is the first 40 kilometres that I am most interested in because that is the area that takes to work in Brisbane each day the great work force of Caboolture, Bribie Island, Narangba and Burpengary.

We are very much dormitory suburbs. People live in this beautiful part of this world but they move into the city to work. However, in doing that the road becomes clogged, allowing for—quite often—nasty accidents, great delays and extra pressures in people's lives. I will work hard to ensure that the $25 million that the Prime Minister committed during the election campaign is utilised quickly and effectively to upgrade these roads.

A fourth project is one that I have been working on with the local community for some time: funding for Care Independent Living on Bribie Island. There are anomalies, unfortunately, in our system where we have a state and federal government agreement for disabilities which prevents the federal government from actually delivering disability services directly into any state without the say-so of the state government. Whilst that would seem a reasonable thing, it has meant that some people have fallen through the cracks.

This particular organisation, which is headed by some very dedicated individuals, is trying to provide a home and a quality of life for people with acquired brain injuries. These are not old people. They are young people who through illness or injury find themselves in a position that we would all hope not to find ourselves in at any time in life. They do not deserve to be put into an aged care facility surrounded by, perhaps, geriatrics. What they are more interested in, and what they need to have, is real care and a place in which they can be with people of their own age—young people. It is the carers of these people whose lives are also impacted upon dramatically. We need to take that into account when we look at what we can do to support places like the Care Independent Living establishment on Bribie Island.

The final local issue I would like to discuss briefly is the Caboolture War Planes Museum. The warbirds museum, as it is known, is another major tourist attraction gaining momentum in this region. Another dedicated group of individuals has put together aircraft which were flying during World War II. This is a flying monument; these are not static aircraft and displays. I have had the privilege—if you would like to call it that—of being flown in a Wirraway, an Australian produced aircraft from World War II. Unfortunately, when we got upstairs they decided it was not good enough to just do clear air; we had to do a bit of aerobatics. I got to see my electorate from a whole new perspective. It was very challenging!

These people are now looking at increasing their fleet with a Beaufort bomber. They have found an old fuselage at Gove which they would like to see brought down and rebuilt to flying status. If we can achieve that we will be doing two things: we will be looking towards Australia's history and our heritage, and we will be creating more jobs and greater opportunities for the people of this district through this wonderful local initiative, the warbirds museum.

These are but a few of the practical local issues which will improve the quality of life of the people of Longman, and they have kindly re-elected me to assist them.

Like so many families, my wife and I often discuss what sort of a future we as a nation are creating for our children. I cannot say that I am always happy with what I see before us. We see constant reminders of the damage of drugs. We see so many other issues impacting on our children. I wonder about the values that are espoused by many and where we will be in the years to come. I am sure that many other families in my district feel exactly the same way. There are some issues in society that we can have an impact on and I intend to do my best, as the elected representative, to do something about them over the next three years.

I have recently taken up the Internet, as I believe so many hundreds of thousands of Australians are doing, and in doing so I recognise that we have a very exciting educational tool which is great for sharing ideas right around the world and it opens up many opportunities. But having young children I realise that the Internet also opens up some other less savoury aspects of this medium.

My children are fans of the Australian Rugby League. My son has the poor taste to think Canberra, the Raiders, is a good side, but I and the rest of the family support the Brisbane Broncos. They were in Parliament House looking up the Internet sites of the various sides. My daughter, who likes to dance, decided she would like to look up `cheerleaders'. But something as innocent as `cheerleaders' brings up pornography. My daughter sang out to me in my Parliament House room, `Dad, come and have a look at this.'

Dad came and had a look at this but he was horrified by what was there. Without going into the gory details, the fact that a child of seven or eight years of age, who is being supervised but who does not have a parent looking over their shoulder, can stumble upon material such as that without the need for any verification of age or anything else is simply not good enough. I do not have a good enough grasp of information technology to know how we overcome it, but I do know that as a society we must do all we can to protect young people from such material.

In the next couple of moments, before we move into our first question time for this parliament, I would like to touch on another serious issue for our young people, and that is drugs. I recently saw a program on the ABC which was put together by a woman who had actually been a drug addict at 16. She came from my district at Nambour, a town about as far removed from Kings Cross as you can get. Somehow she found her way to Kings Cross and in doing so became addicted to heroin for many years.

Fortunately, she was taken out of that environment by a loving man who restored her to health and happiness, and she wanted to do this program for another individual. She returned to the Cross with her husband to try and rescue another young person. I guess for those do-gooders like me who feel that this is something that is easily achieved, it opened my eyes to just what a difficult task it is. They found that the person found their way back into this environment in a very short period of time.

Drugs are a menace to society, but they are not going to be overcome simply by draconian laws. Drugs are something that will be overcome when communities decide that enough is enough and when we, together, bury this menace through education. We have to inform our children of the facts of life at an early age and reinforce them constantly.

I was privileged to meet with the school captains throughout my district earlier in the year. The one point they wanted to make above all else was that drugs were something that they were very concerned about, and that they wanted to be better educated about them. I would hope that this place would have a bipartisan approach to ensuring that the information they desire and need so that they can make the right choices in their life is provided.

I would like to make one last point. I had the privilege last year of meeting the Hon. Elizabeth Wong from the Hong Kong Legislative Assembly. She gave me her business card and on the back of it was written, `My boss is the Hong Kong people, my job is to serve them.' If I can serve the people of Longman and remember that they are my boss I will have done a good job in the next three years, and I look forward to doing just that.