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

Thank you for the privilege of participating in the debate on the address-in-reply today, and I commend the member for Ryan on her speech. I acknowledge that I'm speaking today on the land of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, and I pay my respects to their elders and the elders of the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation, the traditional custodians of my home in Western Australia.

When I was five, I visited Parliament House. The only thing I remember is that, in the cafe, I saw a man eating a banana with a knife and fork. It was very intimidating and a little bit strange—a little bit like this week has been. I never thought that I would end up here. In January this year, I was asked to run as an Independent candidate in the seat of Curtin. For two weeks, the thought of it made me feel like vomiting. There were so many reasons not to do it: my three kids, the lifestyle of a Western Australian federal politician and the inevitable public scrutiny and attack. This was a safe Liberal seat, the election was only four months away and I had no political experience. But there was one main reason to do it, and that was

that it mattered.

Increasingly, our community did not feel represented in the decisions of the day. It seemed

that the serious work of policy development had been overshadowed by short-termism and

political point scoring. We were not addressing the big issues that would affect whether

Australia flourishes over the next generation. I spoke to my husband and my three children

about the decision, which obviously had serious implications for them. The next day, my 10-

year old daughter said, 'Mum, I think this would be bad for me in the short term because we'll

miss you, but I think it'll be good in the long term because it will be good for Australia.' That

was when I knew I had to do this.

I came to be here because of a community group. The Curtin Independent group started with

a cafe conversation between Tony Fairweather, who had a niggling sense of dissatisfaction

and a folder of papers, and Sarah Silbert, who helped Tony turn that feeling into action. They

connected with Louise Jones, Anthony Maslin, Justin Kennedy and Charlie Caruso, and the

community grew, looking for a candidate. When I agreed to run, this community group

formed the core of the campaign team, supplemented by some wise and trusted advisers like

Sarah Allchurch, John Atkins, Fred Chaney and Liz Constable. I'm very grateful for the

incredible support and energy of the whole team. We planned to launch the campaign in a

park, with a week's notice. We stood in the sunshine, and then we watched as hundreds of

people streamed in from all directions. We slowly realised that we were not alone in our

dissatisfaction and our desire for change.

Seventeen-year-old Ruby Paterson came with her little brother, her parents and her

grandmother. I'd never met Ruby before, but she became a symbol in my mind of why I was

here. She's in year 12, brimming with potential and hope. Ruby and her family wanted to see

politics done differently, so they turned up and they became the movement. They formed

bonds of trust with a pop-up community that shared the same thirst for long-term thinking,

compassion and integrity. They arrived expecting the best from themselves and each other,

and so they were not disappointed.

Change happens at the speed of trust. Trust grew rapidly, and, in four months, we achieved

the improbable. Nearly 900 volunteers and 500 donors brought their diverse skills and

enthusiasm to grassroots politics. Most of them had never been involved in politics before.

We had Ian, a surgeon, folding T-shirts; Wendy a retired teacher, riding her campaign bike

around the electorate until it faded; Jimmy, a physio, knocking on doors; and hundreds of

people delivering flyers. Our campaign was positive, it was hopeful and it was fun. I'm not

going to attempt to thank the campaign team and the volunteers by name as there are too

many. You know who you are and I thank you for the time you put in, seen and unseen. You

have done an extraordinary thing. Just thinking about this community, which didn't exist at

Christmas time and is now so rich with goodwill and optimism, brings me close to tears.

People are amazing. In the words of Margaret Wheatley, 'There is no power for change

greater than a community discovering what it cares about.'

Curtin stretches between the edge of Perth and the Indian Ocean, bordered by the beautiful

Derbarl Yerrigan— the Swan River—from Mosman Park up to Gwelup. Its lakes, rivers and

coastline are cared for by a network of volunteer environmental groups who form part of its

rich social fabric along with sporting clubs, numerous primary and secondary schools, and

nine local councils. With a university and a hospital, it's full of knowledge and experience. It

has almost entirely been represented by Liberal members since its establishment in 1949,

most recently by Celia Hammond and Julie Bishop before her, and I thank both of them for

their service to the community.

Knocking on 10,000 doors, the team and I had a glimpse of the diversity of life experience

and expertise within Curtin. No matter what their circumstances were, far from the confected

outrage of social media, in person, people were kind, compassionate, wise and concerned for

our future. My community expressed a deep desire to see better long-term thinking in our

leadership and a more collaborative, positive approach. People told me they cared about

climate action, returning integrity to politics, economic reform to meet the challenges of the

future and support for inclusive, compassionate communities.

Democracy is messy and imperfect, but it gives me hope that communities can successfully

put up their own candidate in the face of the historically dominant two-party system. I, and

the other community Independents who now surround me, have overcome an uneven playing

field. Many of us were supported by the thousands of donors to Climate 200, who could see

that action on climate was going to require some new voices in the parliament. I'm grateful to

Climate 200's thousands of donors and the vision of Climate 200's founders.

So why me? I was brought up in Curtin in a large family that values service to community,

whether in education, business, law or politics. From my mother, Rose Chaney, I got a sense

of optimism and community. My father, Michael Chaney, gave me his thinking style. My

siblings, Tom, Anna and Amelia, have an incredible generosity of spirit. If you ask for help,

the answer is always an immediate and genuine 'yes'. I have had the advantages of a stable,

supportive family, high expectations and many opportunities, which I took up with the

earnest, nerdy enthusiasm of a first child. I'm very aware that it's not fair that I had these

opportunities. It's difficult to know the best way to respond to the unfairness of your own

privilege. I know that good fortune is not merit. But I can use what I have to work for change.

My career in law, strategy, management and community services has prepared me for what I

hope to achieve in this House. As a lawyer, I advised companies on mergers and individuals

at Redfern Legal Centre on debt matters. As a strategy consultant, I grappled with problems

in Sydney boardrooms and remote communities in Cape York. In the private sector, I

developed reconciliation action plans and a sustainability strategy for one of Australia's

largest companies, and in the community services sector I worked in partnership with

government on innovative service design.

Through these jobs, I've learned different approaches to solving complex problems and how

to build consensus. I've learned about the deep disadvantages experienced by some and the

challenges in building support systems to reduce those disadvantages. My career so far has

taught me that there is rarely a black-and-white answer, there's always room to improve a

solution after consultation and there is no one right way of thinking. I believe these will be

useful lessons in this House.

I worked part-time while we had young kids, and my husband, Bill, who has a significant

career of his own, has shared the parenting and the domestic work. I'm very grateful for his

strong support and I will miss his cooking while I am in Canberra. I'm incredibly proud of my

three kids, George, Fred and Olive, and I thank them for their support in this unexpected life

change.

I have agonised about how much I should talk about my wider family. I am here because of

my community, but my family has contributed to who I am. I am in the extraordinary position

of having five relatives across the last four generations to serve in Australian parliaments.

There's a thread to my family political history of independent thought.

On my dad's side, I have two uncles who served in this parliament for the Liberal Party

between the seventies and the nineties. Fred Chaney was much loved by both side of politics

and was ahead of his time and his party on Aboriginal rights. Ross McLean, my other uncle,

referred in his first speech to the importance of marrying free enterprise with social justice.

My grandfather, also Fred Cheney, who was a rural school teacher after returning from the

war, came from a strong Labor family whom he shocked when he entered politics as a

Liberal. In his first speech he acknowledged that the acceptance of new migrants was proof of

Australia's coming of age.

On my mother's side my great-grandfather and his father, Hubert and Henry Parker, were

both in the Western Australian parliament. My great-great-grandfather was known as 'The

People's Harry' because he sided with the underdog. In fact, he ran, unsuccessfully, in 1905 as

the leader of the short-lived Independent Party.

It's hard to accurately see your own influences and dangerous to retrospectively fit them into

a neat narrative, but I am sure these men in my family tree have in some way contributed to

my strong sense of social justice and public service.

The women in my family have served their communities in quieter ways, as was expected in

their time. My grandmother Delphine Anderson, who is currently recovering from COVID at

96, told me the other day about going with her father to the meeting where Sir Robert

Menzies made the case for the establishment of the modern Liberal Party in the 1940s.

I have never felt a pull towards either political party, feeling stranded in the middle, but I feel

a pull when I read the words of Menzies, who said he looked forward 'to a better distribution

of wealth, to a keener sense of social justice and social responsibility'. I wonder if that

might've been a party I would've been willing to join.

In reflecting on the first speeches of my relatives I noticed that some things in politics don't

change. They all speak about the distribution of limited resources, where the government is

spending too much or too little and the balance between state and federal roles. These issues

will continue to occupy the minds of the people in this House.

But I am struck by the huge challenges we faced and overcame in each generation. How we

chose to address these challenges informs the assumptions of the next generation. In the 19th

century it was the concept of federation and the need to develop fundamental infrastructure

for an economy. A generation later it was the Depression, then nuclear war and waves of

migration, and the economic headwinds of the 1970s.

The promising thing is that we managed these challenges. We built railways, ports and

telegraph lines. We became a federation. We emerged from the Great Depression and various

recessions. We saw off the immediate threat of nuclear war. We welcomed new migrants. It's

important to remember this as we face the long-term issues of our day.

The challenges we face today require an even longer-term view than the seven generations of

my family in Australia. We need to learn from the perspectives of our First Nations people,

such as my friends Carol Innes and Colleen Hayward, Noongar elders who carry the local

histories of not a mere seven generations but thousands. They have a collective memory of

the time when Wadjemup, Rottnest Island, was joined to the mainland of my electorate more

than 6,000 years ago.

Their sense of the long term brings a deeply sophisticated knowledge of a society in delicate

balance with its natural resources, in tune with the cycle of time. This was dramatically

interrupted by the painful arrival of a people with a linear view of time. Even in Western

cultures the concept of time as linear is only 500 years old, but it's deeply embedded. We

believe in the inevitability and inherent rightness of 'progress'.

We measure progress in GDP and assume that more is always better. This concept of progress

has provided incredible leaps in life expectancy, population growth and interconnectedness.

But we are now at an extraordinary uncomfortable juncture where even this assumption must

be questioned in the policy decisions of the day. The trajectory of 'progress' that we're on as a

species may cast us as the engineers of our own extinction. We're facing the reality that

endless material growth is a myth built into all of our systems and decisions. We must find

different ways to define and measure progress and wealth.

Questioning fundamental assumptions like this is painful. We can learn from the deep

wisdom of First Nations ways of thinking and being. In Paul House's words at the opening of

this parliament on Tuesday: 'Please look after the land and the rivers, and the land and the

rivers will look after you.'

Our ability to address climate change depends on a uniquely human attribute. As a species

we've thrived on this planet because of our ability to cooperate and work to a common

purpose as communities. It's this spirit of cooperation that will be needed. The climate bill

that was introduced into this House yesterday is a symbolic step in the right direction. We

need to go further, but we need to start somewhere. The opportunity is huge—Western

Australia should be leading the world in renewable energy. As decision-makers in this House

we must balance this long-term imperative with shorter-term, more human-scale issues, to

ensure stability and a smooth and fair transition.

My community recognises that we must rebuild trust and confidence in our institutions. We'll

only be able to make these long-term decisions if the people of Australia believe that we are

acting in their best interests. Politicians are frequently seen as the least trusted of all

professions.

Rebuilding trust in our democracy will require structural change and cultural change.

Australians need to know that corruption will be uncovered and systems reformed to prevent

it happening again. I'm optimistic that the proposed anticorruption commission is a step

towards rebuilding trust in our public leaders. My community also wants to see transparency

in political campaigns—they want to know who is funding their candidates in real time.

Cultural change will be harder. People in my electorate are sick of politics being about petty

point scoring and the poor treatment of women. They want robust but constructive debate on

the issues. We need to take the best ideas from wherever they come, and to treat parliament as

a policy workshop not a gladiatorial battleground. I'm optimistic that this is possible, even

though battles entice more clicks than respectful collaboration.

Politicians must be able to change their minds when new evidence arises, without being

accused of flip-flopping, to give credit where it's due without being considered weak, to try

new approaches that sometimes fail. We can't be paralysed into inaction by fear of

unpopularity or criticism.

We're likely to have some tough economic times ahead, with a global downturn, rising

interest rates and inflation confirmed by yesterday's announcements. We have wage

stagnation, flatlining productivity, labour shortages and almost a trillion dollars in debt.

Economic reform has ground to a halt over the last decade. Addressing many of our economic

challenges will require bold, long-term thinking.

We need a tax system that's fair, equipped for the demographic challenges of the coming

decades, and that can fund dignified support for our elders, people with disabilities and

people experiencing hard times. We need a long-term plan to ensure that the purpose of

housing is to provide people with homes, and that a home is within reach.

The people of Curtin want to be able to work hard and reap the rewards, but protecting

individual rights need not erode our sense of community. Humans need each other, and

individual rights come with community responsibilities. We are lonelier, more depressed and

more stressed than we used to be. Government support systems need to be designed to

empower people to support and connect with each other not to punish and isolate them.

The people of my community have told me they want to look our history in the eye and

rewrite the future of our relationship with our First Nations peoples. The First Nations voice

to parliament will not address the urgent issues facing remote communities, but it will give us

a chance to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma. It's an important piece of long-term

thinking that will need to be accompanied by policies to address the immediate needs of First

Nations people. My community no longer wants to wince when it sings the second verse of

our national anthem: …

For those who've come across the seas We've boundless plains to share; …

We want to treat asylum seekers with dignity and compassion and feel proud that Australia is

fulfilling its international obligations in a way consistent with our great privilege. We want to

live in inclusive communities, where people can be their whole selves no matter their gender,

sexuality, race or religion. It's these values and priorities that I bring from my past and my

community into this House.

Our challenge as leaders is to listen deeply—beyond the daily rhythm of the Twitter feed, the

weekly rhythm of the lead media story, the yearly rhythm of the pandemic and the electoral

cycle rhythm of the rise and fall of political parties—to the deep, slow heartbeat of the

decades. Our decisions need to balance all these rhythms and turn them into the music of our

generation. As a mum I am driven by the heartbeats and the future of my children. I balance

the short term and the long term every day, making decisions for their long-term welfare even

if they'd much rather stay glued to their screens.

At the end of this century, I hope that my great-great-grandchildren will look back with

gratitude and wonder on the decisions I was part of; I hope they will see the assumptions we

challenged and overcame and the way we used cooperation and ingenuity to turn our planet

around.

Of course, it will all be history by then and so immutable, just as we take for granted the

outcomes of wars, the ending of recessions and the granting of rights to marginalised people.

I hope that, by then, we will have the luxury of taking for granted our decarbonised economy,

the care of our most vulnerable, our focus on wellbeing, and the integrity of our political

system. I hope that, by then, we can move on to more subtle and less existential challenges,

and talk with amusement about the time when we extracted our energy from the earth, not the

sky.

These are big words and concepts. They raise the inevitable question of what I, as one voice

in 151, can possibly achieve. No matter your role, it's easy to feel powerless, but the only way

anything changes is if people believe it's possible. My very wise uncle Fred, who's an

inspiration to me, advised me to listen to Hal Wootten, an Australian judge, who said:

I believe it is not just judges, but every man and woman who, in everything they do, can give

the world little nudges that, in conjunction with all its other little nudges, can affect where the

world goes.

As I join the 1,240 people who have served in this House since Federation, I will apply little

nudges in the direction that's consistent with my values and the values of my community in

Curtin. I will always vote with my conscience. I will be constructive, collaborative and

optimistic. I will speak truth to power when needed, driven by the desire for better

outcomes—not the desire for the appearance of influence. I will act in good faith, with

integrity and in the interests of our children and our grandchildren. I'm excited about the

challenges ahead, and I thank the community of Curtin for the faith they've put in me to

represent them.