Mr BARRESI (6:46 PM) —It is indeed a great honour to speak in the debate on the address-in-reply. It is an opportunity that I was not sure would ever arrive, but finally I do have the pleasure of being able to make a contribution. It is indeed an honour to be returned to this place by the Deakin electorate. The people of Deakin are perhaps iconic of the Australian dream and live in an electorate referred to by many as part of the Victorian metropolitan mortgage belt. Many of the residents in my electorate are balancing the demands of raising a family, meeting mortgage repayments and ensuring a comfortable life for their children. These people are undoubtedly the twine that binds the fabric of our nation, seeking economic and personal security in their lives. I have enjoyed working with them in the past and I will continue to do so. It is a partnership that has worked very well over the last six years and one which I will continue to pursue with vigour over the next three years.

The people of Deakin and indeed Australia have clearly not forgotten the tumultuous times that were forced upon us by the economic mismanagement of successive Labor governments. It took a strong and resilient leader to openly and honestly reform the taxation system, a reform which will go down in history as one of the greatest, most successful policy reforms in Australia's political history. The Howard government has secured Australia's economic future by driving down interest rates to their lowest level in a generation, has repaid more than $70 billion of Labor debt and has reformed Australia's taxation and industrial relations systems, as well as creating over 950,000 new jobs.

It is worth while to make a point about the economic success of this government, because in more recent weeks one would almost be forgiven for thinking that the economy is not a priority for our federal parliament. It has been given very little attention by the opposition or the media that reports the goings-on in this place. We have to acknowledge its great success. We have seen in the last six years a government which has presided over an economy that has survived the Asian economic crisis and also the United States crisis. I doubt whether any of us ever thought that we could say those words, that the Australian economy would be able to survive in spite of what is taking place in the United States. The fact is that it has happened. It is an achievement that all of us as Australians should be proud of, because it is not simply a government that has led the economy; it is also a lot of good, hardworking people and businesses out there. Sacrifices have been made by the general community to make sure that we continue to prosper while others around the world in this ever-shrinking global economy have seen worse times.

I consider my obligations to the constituents of Deakin to be first and foremost among my responsibilities in this place, and the notion of developing and sustaining partnerships has proven to be of paramount concern to me in my work as the member for Deakin. As I said earlier, over the past six years I have worked extremely hard in developing this partnership and ensuring that I continue to be their voice in Canberra. It is incumbent upon all of us sitting in this place to reflect upon our responsibilities to those who have entrusted their governance to us. In my work as a federal member, I am constantly reminded of the need to work collectively, regardless of political persuasion, for the greater good. Sometimes it is hard to be reminded of that when you are subjected to some of the emails, letters or phone calls that barrage us. The election being over, I do realise and accept that I am here as a voice for the entire electorate. I have built upon, and will continue to build upon, the many affiliations that I have developed in the community to work at delivering real solutions to real issues.

That is why the Howard government has been returned. It has been our ability to listen to the heart and soul of Australia, to put our ear to the ground and listen to that heartbeat that is pounding under the vast plains of this country. Of course, we must do more. Our future is predicated on our ability to harness the seemingly impossible, to provide our children with the confidence that it is okay to dream and to expect those dreams to be realised, that it is okay for them to have ambitions and goals in their lives and for a government to be able to provide an environment in which those objectives, those ambitions, can be realised. If we fail to instil that sense of confidence in our children, then we as legislators have failed. Our need to build strong community partnerships in our electorates creates a necessity to forge stronger relationships with those who, in the past, we may not have interacted with directly.

My belief—a belief shared by many in my electorate—is that through opportunities comes the fulfilment of these dreams. I would like to refer to a couple of the government programs instigated in the last term and continued in the program outlined in the Governor-General's speech. I am proud of the fact that in the last term I was able, through hard work and through the collective work of organisations in my electorate, to facilitate an allocation of $379,000 to establish the Checkpoint program in Deakin. This program is under the auspices of Maroondah Community Care, one of the Assembly of God churches in my electorate. With the support of the defence forces, Rotary, the Swinburne Institute of Technology, as well as local businesspeople, Maroondah Community Care has been able to forge a training opportunity for young job seekers, often those people who fall through the safety net in our society. It provides young job seekers with the opportunity to undergo an eight-week program to develop their skills and to help them attain skills that they would otherwise not achieve as unemployed people who may have been neglected and forgotten by our society.

It gives me a real buzz to see the sense of worth that is inculcated through such exposure, to see their eyes as they get up there on graduation night. I have attended graduation night a few times, and I know that there has been widespread support in the community for the program. Peter Brock has lent his support to the program, as have Jim Richards and a few other notable people from the area. It is great to see these young people up there getting their graduation certificates. Afterwards, their mums and dads come up to me and to the pastor, Mark Bateman, from Maroondah City Church and say, `Thank you very much. Thank you for giving my son, my daughter, an opportunity which they have not had in the past.' These young people are trained and educated, and they are not discouraged from setting high goals once they leave that program. Our nation has not been built on the back of women and men setting low benchmarks, low goals. We stand tall today as a nation because our forebears had the fire inside to set those marks, and that same fire and the same sorts of marks need to be perpetuated in 21st century Australia.

The allocation of some $600,000 in Deakin in the last term to the Regional Extended Family Services was similarly beneficial. A lot of people may not know this, but the Regional Extended Family Services, better know as REFS, was one of the founding organisations of the government's youth homelessness project, the Reconnect program, which is now widespread throughout Australia. Reconnect had its origins in a program which REFS put together and was successful in when it tendered for the Prime Minister's pilot projects into youth homelessness about six years ago. REFS continues to provide great services to expand youth opportunities in the electorate, and the project that it is running at the moment is a youth wilderness program targeted at young people in Deakin. This program is instrumental in assisting young people and their families by providing educational and therapeutic interventions to assist Deakin residents and Deakin young people to maximise their possibilities in all areas of life.

The election provided the outer east with one other great opportunity. I know that you, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, along with many others in the chamber, including those on the other side, have probably heard the word `Scoresby' mentioned once or twice in the chamber and also in the party room. It did provide the opportunity for the federal government to put into place its enthusiasm for the construction of the Scoresby Freeway. The construction's obvious financial commitment is one that is going to be shared by the Commonwealth and, I am pleased to say, by the state government in a partnership that was committed to expediting construction of this freeway.

I note that, to date, the Howard government is the only part of the partnership that has made any financial payment. The first down payment of $45 million, which is half payment of $90 million to kick-start the project, has been made by the Howard government, but at this stage the Bracks Labor government has failed the Victorian people, has failed the people in the eastern suburbs, has failed the people in Deakin, Chisholm, Aston, Bruce, La Trobe and Casey, in not coming up with the $45 million as its share. I will make sure that I continue, along with my other federal colleagues in the eastern suburbs, to pressure the Bracks government to come to the table, to stop signing stunts in the form of cardboard cheques and to match the Howard government's enthusiasm for this project.

The excuse is that it was not in their May budget last year, but we wait with interest for the state government's May budget this year to see whether or not the money is allocated for the Scoresby Freeway in that budget. Part of me fears that the only way the state government will come forward with money for the Scoresby Freeway will be by the imposition of some form of tax on motorists, whether it be a tax on commercial operators or some sort of shadow toll. I hope I am wrong, but I sense that that may very well be the case. They are already toying with the idea of an alternative form of finances, and as soon as I hear the phrase `alternative form of finances' the alarm bells go off. I know that the people in the east will resist any form of toll being introduced by the state government, even if it is introduced by stealth by the state government in the coming budget.

It is essential that, as we sit in this place, we are conscious of the global role that we all play. The Commonwealth parliament affords us, as representatives, the opportunity to witness global issues at a local level. Former President Bill Clinton of the United States, in a speech made in Melbourne recently, referred to the importance of striking partnerships with those we would ordinarily like to isolate ourselves from for whatever reason. That, in my eyes, is the spirit of true leadership: going beyond the otherwise unreachable. There has never been another time in history when nation states have been so readily called up to expand their horizons.

Clinton spoke of the dilemma of whether we accept that cultural boundaries prohibit our interaction or whether we work at breaking down the walls between cultures to benefit our generation and generations to come. I suspect that the latter is first and foremost among our opinions in relation to Australia's global positioning. It is therefore encouraging to see our nation working in collaboration with neighbours such as Indonesia and East Timor to establish a trinational consensus on the massive problem of people smuggling.

The principal issue, however, is that of the wider security of our nation and the security of our local communities. It is undoubtedly the case that, following the disastrous occurrences on September 11, the focus of all of us has changed. We were shocked out of our daily routine to consider and question our security. People around the world were forced to question their security and look to their governments to provide them with the assurance that they so desperately required. This government acted swiftly to assure the Australian people that acts such as those in the United States on that day would not be replicated in Australia or anywhere else. However, we are compelled to look beyond the tightened security and, indeed, the ruins of the World Trade Centre to how this event is impacting on us now and certainly how it will in the future.

The Australian people need the confidence that in time there will be more friends on this earth than enemies. We need to be able to reassure our children that, through the development of stronger trade links and cultural understanding, they will be able to travel freely around the world, bearing the Australian flag on their backpacks and being welcomed with open arms, as is the case currently in so many countries. The only way our children will have that opportunity is if we, as a key player in regional approaches to this issue, continue to adopt a proactive stance in developing openness and broader allies. One cannot escape from the tragedy of September 11; however, we cannot allow the devastation to plague our efforts towards establishing a truly integrated region and world.

The advent of a widespread information-sharing capacity allows us the opportunity to capitalise on such developments and ensure that they work for the betterment of our global stance as much as to facilitate a vehicle for partnership enhancements. We can use information interchange to open up the region and strengthen trade links. The Australian tradition of `having a go' dictates our approach to dealing with issues of expanded horizons. Australians and Australia are proactive more than reactive, which is one of the key characteristics of the Howard government and a benefit that the Australian people have witnessed previously and will witness again over the next three years.

I have spoken about a number of global issues over the years. However, it is important to note that, regardless of our position in society, they all directly and indirectly affect us. We cannot run away and hide from the problems facing the world and their impact on us. There is no hiding from the fact that 10 million children around the world will die this year because of preventable causes. This government is committed to helping alleviate the burden of such problems through extremely generous aid provisions. We are fortunate to live in Australia; yet with our fortune comes a responsibility to maintain level-headedness.

I am pleased to see organisations such as World Vision, which is located in my electorate, continue their good work around the world, ensuring that those in Third World nations—and also those in Australia—who are in need receive that support. I, for one, am particularly grateful for the assistance that World Vision gave me during the last parliament to visit the refugee camps in Albania, to see first-hand the misery that took place in that part of world and to realise that those people did not have the money or the means to be able to engage smugglers. They just had to sit it out in those camps—and I am talking about camps that had the most rudimentary of facilities, such as tents that did not even have bases to them. On the night that we visited that camp, it rained. In darkness, down the side of the slope, rain came right through the tents, right through the mattresses and the possessions of those refugees in those tents, washing away whatever they had. That is a refugee camp that the United Nations Human Rights Commission could very well direct its attention to, rather than finger-pointing at the conditions in our detention centres here in Australia.

In the brief time I have available, I would like to say that my plan for Deakin over the next three years is one of continuing with the great work that the community has embarked upon in partnership with me. I will make sure that those commitments we made in the election campaign are worked towards, in partnership with not only the local community but also some of my state colleagues, because the Bracks government cannot be allowed to be let off the hook so easily. They are constantly finger-pointing towards Canberra. Mr Bracks is in government in Victoria, and I certainly look forward to ensuring that a lot of the programs that are needed there are brought into action—and I refer in particular to the integration of the Scoresby Freeway with the wider public transport system in the Ringwood area.

I refer also to the proposed establishment of the Knox hospital, which has been eliminated from the Bracks agenda. We have seen pressure building up and ambulance bypasses taking place with the Maroondah and Box Hill hospitals. When we had ambulance bypasses in Victoria under the Kennett government, I recall that every single day it would be on talkback radio and there would be outrage in the newspapers about the plight of our public health system in Victoria. Nothing has changed—in fact, the situation has deteriorated in Victoria—and yet we hear nothing but silence out there. I, for one, certainly believe that the Victorian press has allowed the Bracks government to get off scot-free, considering what that government has not been able to achieve there and with it not having fulfilled its promises.

In the time I have, it would be remiss of me not to thank a number of people, for without their efforts I would not be here. I would not have the opportunity to stand before this parliament if it was not for the good work of my electorate chairman, Jim Madden, and his family. Charles Hogarth, Margaret Lee, Bev Bailey, Andrew Munro and my staff—Midge Coll and Tim Neve—were tireless, along with the other 500 or 600 who worked in my electorate. They were not bussed in from other electorates and they did not get paid on election day, contrary to what the then Leader of the Opposition claimed on election night. He claimed that we had to pay booth workers, but these were volunteers, party supporters, who helped work in the area. I would also like to express my profound thanks for the strength from my three children, Paul, Carla and David, in what was a very difficult year last year.It was a tough year, but one which we came through in the end. (Time expired)