Mr ZAHRA (12:33 PM) —In rising for the first time to speak as the member for McMillan, I want to make it clear that I come to this parliament with strong views and deeply held convictions. I do not intend to be trapped by tact at the expense of truth. I intend to make my view plain and I do not intend to hide behind watered-down language and pathetic half-truths.

Nor do I intend to blindly seek out the political centre. The political centre is not where I want to be. The political centre does not work for our community in the electorate of McMillan. It represents the type of soft, flabby compromise which our community has suffered too much from already. It represents the political expedience which has cost us jobs and represents a culture which dismisses community pain resulting from government decision making as often necessary for the greater good. We have had the pain in my electorate, and we are wondering who got the greater good. I know it was not anyone in our community.

I did not come here to leave my anger and my radicalism at the door of this chamber and I do not intend to forget what it is to struggle. As the youngest member of this parliament, I also intend to make sure that issues affecting young people—issues such as youth unemployment, youth suicide and award protection for young workers—are given the serious consideration they deserve.

I grew up understanding hardship and I know what it is to work. I grew up around the hardness of the construction industry. My father was a building worker. I grew up shaking hands with men who had lost fingers, eyes and legs to unsafe work practices. I grew up helping my dad in his work: pouring concrete, clearing building sites, moving rubble and helping out the other tradesmen on site—I was referred to as my dad's apprentice. It was always a title I was proud to wear.

As I got older, I saw all those men grow old—horribly—around me. Many died of heart attack or stroke, prematurely. Many are now in nursing homes—again, prematurely. Many have been condemned to die a hacking and awful death because they have been exposed to asbestos. This was the price that men like my father have paid so that their children could have the opportunities which they had not had. This was the price that those men and their families were made to pay.

How different a life it is for the rich in our community, who live off their family name and inherited fortunes—inherited fortunes so often founded on the theft of land from traditional owners and on the provision of licences to family members by corruption-ridden colonial administrations. Their claim to empathise with workers is usually swiftly followed by their claim that they would be able to employ more people if only workers and unions would accept lower wages. We need to expose their hypocrisy and deceit and tear away their pretence.

These are the same people who are always talking about the need for wage constraint. What about some wage constraint on the part of management in this country? The CEO of the National Australia Bank will be paid $2.5 million this year, a 43 per cent increase in his salary from last year. Are these guys serious? We need to plainly articulate that these people and their objectives have no place at our table, and we need to let people know that we find the hypocrisy of these men and women repugnant and offensive.

Similarly, when employers say that they will sack young workers if they are forced to pay them competency based wages instead of discriminatory youth wages, we need to expose their hypocrisy. We need to stand against this unjust age discrimination and fight on behalf of young workers who are clearly being exploited.

We must fight in the same way that the labour movement fought when it heroically took up the fight for equal pay on behalf of women. We must fight in the same way that the labour movement fought when it heroically took up the fight for equal pay on behalf of indigenous Australians. There can be no room for backsliding or weakness on our part. Our Labor history proudly spells out what our position on this issue must be. We must again insist on equal pay for equal work.

No smooth-talking employer or coalition MP will ever convince me of the rightness of the entrenched form of discrimination that is youth wages. And no employer looking pleadingly into the TV camera and appealing to the community that competency based wages will mean that he will have to sack workers should be believed. What competency based wages means is that they will have to pay their workers a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. From the point of view of this young worker, the sooner young people get a fair day's pay for a fair day's work the better.

The coalition has an appalling record when it comes to providing opportunities for young people. All the coalition has to offer young people in this country is a pay cut or a Work for the Dole program with no training, and in my electorate this is especially true. In our community of McMillan, we have a youth unemployment rate of 47 per cent, and we have the second highest unemployment rate in Australia, at 14.1 per cent—up from 9.2 per cent when John Howard took office.

The choice that John Howard gives young people in my electorate is stark: stay in Gippsland and be unemployed or move to Melbourne and take your chances away from your family. Those who stay can also look forward to being forced into a Work for the Dole program with no training. Those who leave can look forward to a difficult time, without the support of friends and family and without government assistance, thanks to the Common Youth Allowance. They can also look forward to no help finding a job because of the privatisation of the CES. As short-term unemployed people, they are not worth much in terms of dollars to Job Network providers. Only when they are long-term unemployed will the Job Network take an interest in them, by which time they have probably decided to return home to their families in Gippsland. This is John Howard's solution to youth unemployment.

Those same Liberal-National Party MPs who so piously appeal for wage cuts, youth wages and less union involvement in the name of jobs also describe John Howard's destruction of the higher education system in this country as a victory for freedom and choice. Those people are freedom maniacs. The loss of opportunities for working-class families to go to universities is seen as a policy triumph for the Howard government. There are a number of us on this side of the House who would not be here if it were not for the profound changes made to the higher education system by the Whitlam government in the 1970s. Gough Whitlam and Kim Beazley Sr made it possible for me and my two sisters to achieve based on our ability rather than on the social status and wealth of our parents.

I find it absolutely heartbreaking to see that these incredibly important reforms have been wound back by this government through the introduction of aggressive policies such as up-front fees, increases to HECS, cutbacks in higher education funding and the absurdity that is the Common Youth Allowance. If you have got money in John Howard's Australia then you can go places, but if your family does not have much money and if you live in the country then basically you are stuffed. And this government considers this a victory for freedom of choice.

Some of my mates and I were talking the other day about school—which, as you all know, was not that long ago in my case—and about how good it used to be that it did not matter how well off your mum and dad were: if you were smart and worked hard, you could pretty much get into whatever course you wanted to at university. I used to really enjoy the fact that the rich kids who did stuff-all work and bludged all day could not just buy their way into university. Ability and application were the two great levellers. But, thanks to John Howard, the `richy riches' of this country can now drive their new BMWs up to the university of their choice, and they can buy their way into any course they want. This is what John Howard calls freedom of choice.

I suppose it is unrealistic of me to expect any more from the Liberal and National parties. What can you expect from a hog—except that it will grunt? How could those who represent the Liberal and National parties in this place understand what it means to need government support in order to get a decent education? They could never understand. Overwhelmingly, they are the sons and daughters still of the moneyed elites of this country. And to the tiny minority of those opposite who are not from affluent families I say this: you are in the wrong party.

The coalition are not content to just tilt the education system in favour of the rich; they now want to tilt the taxation system so that it discriminates against low income earners. Through their support for a GST—a tax which is unquestionably the most regressive taxation measure ever proposed by a government in this nation's history—the Liberal and National parties forever condemn themselves to be remembered as partners in one of the most mean spirited political enterprises in Australia's history.

The GST is a tax which is bad for small business, bad for low income workers and bad for families. And 51.5 per cent of Australians have just voted against it in an election which the Prime Minister himself said was a referendum on the GST. Despite this, the Prime Minister says he is going to go ahead with it. He says he has a mandate. Is it any wonder that our community has so little faith in politicians when we have such a duplicitous Prime Minister?

One of the Prime Minister's many problems is that he lacks the political courage to change the taxation system so that it actually provides opportunities for middle and low income earning Australians. His version of political courage involves making it harder for workers and families. And for the act of cowardice that is a GST, the Prime Minister accepts the support of big business and the conservative economic press. I would suggest to the Prime Minister that he is not listening to the right people.

I am not much interested in John Howard's type of courage, because it is not courage but weakness: pathetic, fawning weakness. And apart from incompetence, it has been weakness which has characterised John Howard's McMahon-like attempts to govern our nation. The Prime Minister is pretty tough when it comes to taking money off the unemployed or increasing nursing home fees. But where is the courage in that? What about John Elliott, Ron Walker and all those other Liberal-National Party mates who continue to avoid tax in this country? Why doesn't the Prime Minister make sure they pay their fair share? I will tell you why: because the Prime Minister does not have the political steel to do it. He is a weak man without political conviction. He has failed our community and will be remembered by the great majority of Australians with a great deal of ill will and bad feeling.

Appropriately, I joined the ALP by sending off an ALP membership application which was on the back of one of my dad's union journals. I became active in the party and fought my way through Young Labor in the finest of Labor traditions, becoming State Secretary in 1995. As much as I enjoyed the combat of Young Labor, I was always most interested in what was happening in our community in my electorate of McMillan.

McMillan is a seat which is unique in Australia. It represents one of the great strengths we have as a nation—diversity. Whilst McMillan is often referred to as a Latrobe Valley based seat, it also includes the important dairying region of west Gippsland—including the towns of Warragul, Drouin, Trafalgar, Neerim South and Rokeby—as well as Pakenham in the west, which is rapidly becoming part of Melbourne's south-eastern growth corridor.

McMillan is a seat in which I have lived for nearly my whole life. I grew up in the Latrobe Valley, which is a region famous for its enormous brown coal reserves and forestry resources. It is also a region with a long and proud tradition of trade unionism and multiculturalism. Over the last five years, I have enjoyed getting closer to the community in Pakenham and west Gippsland and learning more about primary production and the important contribution made by people on the land. Similarly, I have learnt more about the many problems—especially transport problems—being experienced by those in rapidly growing regions like Pakenham. These are issues which I take very seriously, and I look forward to working constructively with local government representatives in particular towards ensuring proper access to transport and services for those in the growing communities in my electorate.

Similarly, I will not lose sight of the massive unemployment in our region, nor will I ever fail to acknowledge the enormous hardship being experienced in the Latrobe Valley due to electricity privatisation. More than 12,500 jobs have been lost in the Latrobe Valley, due to electricity privatisation—12,500 jobs destroyed in a community of just 70,000 people. We produce 85 per cent of Victoria's electricity in the Latrobe Valley and I intend to continue to pursue the use of this resource as a means to attract new electricity intensive industries to the region through the provision of discounted electricity. At present, companies in the Latrobe Valley actually pay more for their electricity than companies in Melbourne. This is obviously an absurd situation which I intend to change on behalf of our community.

In speaking about the Latrobe Valley and multiculturalism, it is with a great deal of pride that I can advise this House that I am the first Maltese born Australian to be elected to the federal parliament. The Maltese in Australia have made an enormous contribution to our nation. A significant contribution has been made especially in the areas of construction, shipbuilding and on the waterfront. Like my parents, most Maltese migrants came to Australia with very little and built a new life for themselves through sacrifice and hard work. I am very proud of my Maltese heritage and I have been moved by the many congratulatory letters and phone calls I have received from Maltese people right across Australia. Thank you all for your support. I hope that I make you proud.

Before being elected, I worked as the Chief Executive Officer of the Central Gippsland Aboriginal Health and Housing Cooperative in Morwell. In the course of my work and subsequently, I made a number of close friends in the Koori community and learnt a great deal about the needs and aspirations of Aboriginal people. For Aboriginal people, injustice and racism remain a part of every day of their lives. I want to see a profound change in the status of Aboriginal people in my lifetime. At present, a huge gap exists in living standards between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. For many Aboriginal people, it is a tragedy. It debilitates our nation. It debilitates our culture, our reputation and our self-esteem. It undermines our ambition to be a good society.

The best way—in fact the only way—to improve relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians is to provide a decent basis for reconciliation. We can only do this by closing the gap in living conditions. For my part, I am absolutely committed to closing this divide to the point where no-one can point to someone and say that the reason for that person's poverty or illness is that he or she is Aboriginal. It is a huge challenge and hugely significant to the determination of Australia's future. It is a challenge which the Labor Party has embraced positively and a challenge which I am pleased to support.

In closing, I want to acknowledge the hard work and determination of my family, my campaign team and the many rank and file ALP members in McMillan who all worked tirelessly to get me elected. We were the only Labor campaign in Victoria to defeat an incumbent Liberal and this is a credit to the skill and sheer hard work of all involved. In particular, I want to acknowledge the work of Tony Flynn, Noela Amos, Andrew McDonald, Bill Bolitho and Jo McMillan, who all worked tirelessly and brilliantly in coordinating our campaign efforts.

Some of my mates have made the trip up from the Latrobe Valley today and I want to acknowledge their role in keeping me at least reasonably normal for the last 12 months. They always made sure that I found the time to do some of the things I used to enjoy before being preselected, like having a beer every now and then and going to the footy.

The people of my electorate elected me for a reason. They wanted a fighter. They wanted a representative in this place who would say what they were thinking. They wanted someone who they could relate to. They wanted someone who was unafraid to speak up when need be. I will not forget where I have come from and I will not forget who put me here, nor will I forget the work of the great Labor men and women who have gone before me. If I can leave this place having conducted myself with the integrity with which my father conducted his working life, then I am sure this parliament will be all the better for my contribution. I hope that some day I will be remembered as a man who worthily carried the Labor banner and as someone who never strayed from the task of representing the interests of working men and women.

Honourable members —Hear, hear!

Mr SPEAKER —Before I call the honourable member for Curtin, I remind the House that this is the honourable member's first speech. I ask the House to extend to her the usual courtesies.