Mr SIDEBOTTOM (3:15 PM) —Forty years ago the last Labor member for Braddon, Ron Davies, made his first speech in this House, where he remained until 1975. I am proud to share this occasion with him, and I certainly hope to share his longevity in the seat. Ron Davies congratulated the then Speaker on being elected unopposed to his position. I similarly congratulate the Speaker and ask you, Mr Deputy Speaker Nehl, to pass on my congratulations.

The seat of Braddon, which I represent, is named after Sir Edward Braddon, a founding member of this House from 1901 to 1903 and a Tasmanian founding father of Federation. Giving me a real sense of occasion today is the fact that Sir Edward is buried only a short distance from my home in the beautiful township of Forth. The people of Braddon have been extremely loyal to their House of Representatives' members back to the turn of the century and the famous King O'Malley, the great initiator of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

Remarkably, between 1917 and 1998 there have been only nine members of this House from my electorate. This loyalty is based on the principles of trust and honesty: trust that what you say is what you mean and do, and what you mean is what you say. What better way to convey this to you than through the eyes of Abby Gardam, a 13-year-old Wynyard High School student who wrote to me after the election. I would like to share with you part of that letter, which states:

Dear Mr Sidebottom,

I am currently attending Wynyard High School and I am in Grade 8. I am only 13 but I'm worried about my future. If you think you can do anything or be anyone maybe you'd like to raise the amount of employment on the North-West Coast. How could one man try to rule the whole of Australia without doing anything about further education, resources and employment. A lot of teenagers are likely to end up stuffed on drugs, alcohol and cigarette smoking. If you really care you'd help our area overcome these troubles. It's not too late. If only you could bring the light to our lives so we can be what we wish, but without your help Sid we will just end up as no-hopers in the future.

PS: You have what you want, how about giving us a go.

I am sure that letter could be directed at many members of this House.

After the federal election there was a lot of discussion about what constituted a mandate. In fact, nearly every editorial in every newspaper in Australia tried to define it. Well, my mandate is clear. It comes from the people of Braddon on the north-west coast of Tasmania. It is the same mandate that Labor members overwhelming received in other Tasmanian electorates of Denison, Lyons, Franklin and—joyously—Bass. It is the same mandate given to Labor members in this place by the majority of the Australian voting population. It is the same mandate that three Tasmanian Labor senators also gained from the election. The mandate that the majority of Australians gave to the parliament of Australia was that they did not want an unfair goods and services tax. Ask Tasmania's Liberal Senator John Watson if you want to know about that. They did not want the further sale of Telstra. They did not want more cuts to Commonwealth services, and they did not want any further breakdown of industrial relations in this country.

It is sad for me to say that, like a number of regions around Australia, my electorate is in many ways in economic and social crisis. There is an air of melancholy. The actual electorate size in terms of voting numbers has dropped since 1996, making my electorate the smallest based on enrolment. It may be small in these terms, but it is big in terms of the heart and spirit of its people. Braddon is a coastal, urban and rural electorate, with its population of around 80,000 dispersed between two cities—Devonport and Burnie—and a number of coastal towns including Smithton, Wynyard, Penguin and Ulverstone. In Trivial Pursuit if you are asked what the nickname of the potato is, it is the spud, and it comes from Smithton, Penguin, Ulverstone and Devonport!

My electorate also includes parts of the rugged West Coast and the beautiful King Island. I invite you all to visit. The main industries in this very rich and fertile soiled area are vegetable growing and processing, dairying production, forestry, paper production, textiles, carpet making, mining, engineering, fishing and tourism. The people of Braddon are a hardworking people and always have been. They are self-motivated, resourceful and enterprising. They have very strong links to their families and their communities. It was this great sense of community and belonging that attracted me to the North-West when I graduated from university to begin a teaching career at the Don College in Devonport in 1975.

The people of my electorate are no different from people in other rural and regional electorates around Australia. They ask that their representatives understand their community—to understand the things that are important to them; the things that make or break them as communities. They are not interested in hearing promises they know cannot be kept. They are realistic enough to know what is achievable.

There is a positive trend returning to politics today—a trend I feel was clearly demonstrated at the last federal election whereby people voted for candidates who have been part of their communities, who have strong grassroots affiliations with them, who are about face-to-face contact with their constituents and who are prepared to stand up for them. That was the traditional Labor way and it must continue to be in the future. I count myself as one of these. But, as we all know in regional Australia today, every battle is becoming harder and harder to win. One that we recently lost in my electorate was a campaign to save jobs when an industrial icon, the Burnie pulp mill, faced closure.

I raise the issue of the Burnie pulp mill not because I wish to dwell on the past but because it is what has happened in the past that is now shaping the way the community is looking at its future. North-Western Tasmania is a region like so many regional areas across Australia: it is hurting badly. With an unemployment rate amongst the highest in the country, Burnie was dealt another devastating blow by the closure of the pulp mill. Over 200 direct jobs were lost. Some $10 million a year was lost in wages alone. Economic confidence was shattered, and the social fabric of our community took another beating. The former Liberal member for Braddon suggested publicly that the fate of the Burnie mill cost him victory at the last election. More to the point, I believe it was a case of paying for your mistakes. Failing to tune into a community is a mistake—one I will not make.

The broader community of regional centres throughout Australia has put all politicians on notice. No longer can our needs and aspirations be paid lip-service. The Burnie pulp mill saga is a classic example of a lack of leadership, and the Howard government must shoulder some of the blame. It must send out a different signal to corporate Australia. It cannot simply sing to the tune of company chiefs and bow to the boardroom mentality of companies like Amcor. I note with interest that the Roy Morgan Research Centre report released last Friday said that big business had replaced unions as the perceived major cause of Australia's unemployment woes. It reported Australian shareholders felt that they were powerless to influence company decisions and saw business as self-serving and more interested in profits than people.

The report also found Australians thought unemployment was the worst problem facing the country, that large corporations were the greatest contributors to the problem and shareholders would sacrifice dividends for jobs—I repeat, shareholders would sacrifice dividends for jobs. The North-West Coast of Tasmania knows this scenario only too well. How quick this government is to attack unions for the economic woes of this country. In this very chamber, the member for Wide Bay and, astonishingly, the former member for Braddon blamed the workers of the Burnie pulp mill for the dilemma which faced their industry. The Roy Morgan report clearly repudiates such a philosophy and so too did the people of Braddon on 3 October. There was more swing in Braddon than in the zoo.

The federal government must play a much more proactive role in industry development and help nurture strategies that will keep the heart of regional Australia beating. You only have to look at the mountains of woodchips on the Burnie wharf awaiting export. It is a cruel irony that just a stone's throw away is a terminal pulp mill where the hopes of value adding and downstream processing have died a slow and painful death. The alarm bells will not stop ringing until dedicated industry and regional policies are put in place.

The State of Our Regions report, recently presented to the Australian Local Government Association by the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research, clearly highlights a worrying future for Australia's regions, with growing inequality in employment, income and investment. Again, this report echoes the cry of regions like my own. It calls for the federal government to develop a new and coherent economic agenda for regional Australia. You do not get a plea for a regional development policy if one already exists, and if one did I would have expected it to have taken hold in my electorate by now.

The Tasmanian economy has a shrinking industrial base and, because of its geographic isolation and the low level of Commonwealth fiscal support, faces many unique challenges. Federal Labor's Tasmania package, announced prior to the October election, was a sincere attempt to address some of the major concerns. A key component of the package was to establish a regional infrastructure fund. It is critical and indeed reasonable to expect the Commonwealth to give regional centres a leg up in their efforts to attract industry to their areas.

The federal government has said all its pre-election promises to Tasmania will be met, including $5 million for infrastructure for proposed magnesite mines in North-West Tasmania—but we are still waiting. The people of Braddon were assured in the last days of the election campaign that the Prime Minister would personally monitor and assist with this venture—so, too, the government's major projects team. Let's hope they have not forgotten where we are. It is heartening, however, to note the Commonwealth's $20 million pledge for the restoration of the historic and exciting ABT Railway on Tasmania's west coast. This appears to have been honoured to date.

However, the federal government is still holding back on its commitment to a 1984 agreement which would see Tasmania receive some $170 million in dam compensation funds. And, in typical bully-boy fashion, John Howard refuses to forgive Tasmania's $150 million debt to the Commonwealth unless it agrees to privatise its energy assets. The people of Tasmania made it very clear what they thought of that proposal, and they will continue to make it clear. By comparison, federal Labor's Tasmania package pledged to release Tasmania of the debt, no strings attached.

Why should cash-strapped Tasmania be forced to continue to contribute to this so-called black hole, which is now apparently brimming over with surplus funds if we are to believe the Treasurer? The Prime Minister's recent promise of $14.8 million in additional health funding for Tasmania has failed to materialise. Meanwhile, the new Tasmanian government has inherited a deteriorating health system. It is interesting, isn't it, that the Commonwealth, while starving my region and my state of money, has lost none of its appetite for the hard-earned dollar of ordinary Australians? The introduction of an unfair goods and services tax will further penalise Tasmanians.

The federal government still wants to sell the remaining two-thirds of Telstra, but we cannot afford to lose what is a guaranteed dividend for the people of Australia. We must continue to fight to keep it in public hands. Labor recognises the importance of telecommunications to all Tasmanians, especially small business. We want the state to be a single untimed call zone, and only last Wed nesday I was pleased to hear Kim Beazley commit the next Labor government to this policy. This can only happen if Telstra is kept in public hands.

In the Tasmania package Labor recognised the importance of the Burnie to Smithton Road, and I urge the Howard government to match Labor's $12 million commitment to this project. I promise shadow ministers on my side of the House I will continue to pursue this important policy initiative. The people of Circular Head expect nothing less from us.

Under this Liberal government, services and jobs continue to diminish. Take for example the shameful and massive job cuts from Centrelink—jobs and services the North-West Coast can ill afford to lose. It just does not make sense. But that said, I can assure you the communities of the North-West Coast have not lost the desire to get in and have a go—to help ourselves. Let me make it perfectly clear: the people of Braddon are not interested in government handouts. What we need, and I fear may never get from this government, is the framework for a better Australia.

So what of our future and the aspirations of our young people? For many young people in my electorate, it is not so much a future slipping away but one of them packing up and walking out. Youth unemployment is a disgrace. It is not a lack of willingness on their part; the simple fact is that jobs are not there nor is the incentive to continue their education. Greater emphasis should be placed on better resourcing our public schools, colleges and tertiary institutions, not cutting funds. The problems facing young people are exacerbated in my electorate by a very low participation rate in higher education. The obstacles for many are just too great. `Why bother?' many ask.

Let me give you an example. The small but dynamic Burnie campus of the University of Tasmania offers an excellent postgraduate program in primary industry sciences, working with local industry, the Department of Primary Industry and TAFE. It is an excellent example of regional partnership.

However, undergraduate students can study only one year of their courses on campus before they must leave the North-West Coast to complete their studies in Launceston, Hobart or interstate. This is an extra cost of some $10,000 per year on top of HECS, which in itself would be a millstone around the individuals' necks for years.

This is a real example of regional need. Young people in Braddon need encouragement to grow in our region, to contribute at all levels to its development and culture and to remain here to work and live. To be able to start and complete undergraduate courses on the North-West Coast would be an achievable, sustainable investment in social and intellectual capital—that is, our future.

My call for targeted regional policy is not the result of a handout mentality, contrary to what the former member for Braddon said after the election. It is in the name of a people used to doing things for themselves. It is a call for assistance at a time of crisis so that we can help ourselves. We have proved that we can do it in Braddon, for we have many success stories. We have the skills, the knowledge, the expertise and, most importantly, the people to compete with the best.

It is my goal to see a West/North-West Regional Authority established to assist and promote economic development. We must aggressively market our region both within and outside Australia. There is everything to gain by doing business cooperatively, differently, aggressively, but in partnership. It can happen in Braddon only if we share the desire to make it happen.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those people who assisted me on my long journey to this House—in particular, Senator Kay Denman, Colette Chinn, Brenton Best, Michael Tate and all those ALP colleagues who have supported me since 1991.

To achieve public office means scrutiny of character and personal qualities. Some of these in me, alas, are perhaps flawed, but others are for the better. I thank my mother and my father, who is with me today, for the core moral and social values that, along with their great love and affection, have shaped my life; my brothers and sister for their personal support; Margaret, Malcolm and Pauline and my long-time friends Kyron and Steve—who are also here with me today—Julie, Vanessa and Shane for showing me what friendship means; my first principal in my first and only college, Tom Bailey, for helping me to aspire; and my past students for keeping me in touch with the future.

My campaign team never faltered in its support and hard work. Thank you to Meryl, Gloria, the two Kerrys, Cris, Norm and Kim. John Dowling, George Robertson, my friend Senator Nick Sherry and Paul Bini drove the campaign and my special mate Matt Tidswell made sure that there was a journey in the first place.

My wife, Bronwyn, and my two beautiful sons, Julian and William, have supported me at every step along the way. I cannot begin to thank them enough for their love and understanding.

The people of Braddon have honoured me with their support, and I will do my best to represent them with energy and integrity. Thirteen-year-old Abby Gardam said in her letter, `Sid, you have what you want; how about giving us a go?' Abby, you are right: I do have what I want, and that is the chance to make a difference, a positive contribution to our community. After all, Mr Deputy Speaker and colleagues, isn't this the real reason why all of us are here in the first place?

Opposition members —Hear, hear!

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Nehl) —Before I call the honourable member for Kalgoorlie, I remind the House that this is the honourable member's first speech. I ask the House to extend to him the usual courtesies.