Australia, Michael's Richardson's final speech to State Parliament

OFF THE WIRE
http://hills-shire-times.whereilive.com.au/news/story/michaels-richardsons-final-speech-to-state-parliamentMichael's Richardson's final speech to State Parliament
When more than 17 years ago I stood in this place to deliver my inaugural speech, it was a very different Parliament and a very different world.
Not only was it another century we - that is, the Liberals and The Nationals - were in government, so when I spoke it was from the other side of the Chamber.
It was also before September 11, the global financial crisis and the inexorable rise of China - the three key events that have changed the world since 1993.
While September 11 may end up being the biggest news story of this century the most important story over the next 90 years almost certainly will be the changing balance of power in the world.
While Australia currently is a beneficiary of China’s insatiable demand for raw materials, when those those materials run out what will we have left?
What is needed for NSW and indeed for Australia is a vision for the future.
What size population do we want? What industries should we encourage?
Where should people live?
My view is that we cannot afford to continue to shoehorn people into the Sydney Basin.
We must decentralise and that decentralisation has to be driven by government.
People will go where the jobs are. We can either create those jobs where they live or provide fast transport links to Sydney so they can commute long distance.
This happens in Britain, it happens in France, it happens on the east coast of the United States of America.
But it is no good expecting our people to drive to work. They need trains that are the equivalent of Britain’s 125-200-kilometre an hour trains on their own dedicated tracks.
It will be an expensive exercise that will be best developed as part of a strategic planning review of the State, but ultimately it will be less costly than allowing Sydney to grow to seven million people.
I guess the most momentous change in my 17 years in Parliament was losing government by one seat in 1995.
Throughout most of the ensuing term, people were predicting that the Carr Government would collapse.
The reverse was the case. We went over a cliff in 1999- a cliff so deep that only now, 11 years later, are we on the verge of clawing our way back to the top of it.
John Fahey resigned as the leader of the Liberal Party after that defeat, even though he had won a significant majority of the votes.
I phoned him after the result was known and urged him to continue as leader, but he declined.
We then went through a period of leadership instability, with first Peter Collins, then Kerry Chikarovski, then John Brogden, then Peter Debnam and finally Barry O’Farrell who, against the weight of history, has held onto his position for all of the current term of Parliament.
It has been our political opponents in the Labor Party who have suffered from instability in recent years, with no fewer than three leaders over the last four years.
Like the world around us, the electorate I now hold has changed dramatically from the one I was first elected to represent in August 1993. In those days it extended from Beecroft to Annangrove; it is now much more compact, taking in Carlingford as well as Castle Hill and West Pennant Hills Valley. Even the name has changed, from The Hills to Castle Hill.
When I first was elected to this place my electorate contained an 800-head dairy herd, an alpaca farm, market gardens, chook sheds and horse studs.
It is now purely suburban, all those farms having been subsumed by housing. It is because of that exponential population expansion in the North West Growth Centre that my constituents are so vociferous about the provision of infrastructure.
In my maiden speech I spoke about the money that had been allocated in that year’s budget ... I said, “There is no choice other than to build the M2.”
Yet, the Labor Party opposed the road, even trying in the dying stages of the 50th Parliament to instigate yet another inquiry into it. Questionably that would have killed it off and today it would be taking people two hours or more to get into the city from Castle Hill.
Earlier this year the current Premier claimed her Government was responsible for building the M2. In fact, it has been hard to persuade this Government to invest any money in The Hills infrastructure.
After the Coalition won a famous victory on Windsor Rd, Carl Scully went cold on spending any more money on roads in my electorate, believing we had had our quota for the next 50 years or so.
He forgot that The Hills was a growth electorate and that, up to the 2007 election, it had the biggest population of any State electorate in the history of the country.
He also forgot that those people have as much right as anyone else to basic services, such as roads and public transport.
That same Carl Scully famously announced in December 1998 that by 2010 the Government would build a railway line to Castle Hill. It is now the end of 2010 and we are still waiting for the first sleeper to be laid.
I predict that it will be a Coalition government that starts work on the North West Rail Link, just as it will be a Coalition government that widens Showground Rd and a Coalition government that converts the Carlingford line into a usable rail service.
This is not a case of looking after Liberal voters. It is a matter of equity and a victory for common sense.
Every transport planner who has ever examined Sydney’s transport needs has identified the North West Rail Link as the number one priority.
I have a sneaking suspicion that when Carl Scully released his Action for Transport 2010 plan in 1998, he never thought the Government would survive for this long and that therefore he would not have to deliver on his promises.
Carl Jung’s pithy observation, “The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing ...”, could be the epitaph for this Government.
But a member of Parliament’s role is not exclusively to look after his electorate. While my electorate has always come first, I have also been mindful of the responsibility parliamentarians have to all of NSW.
It was that broader responsibility that led me in 2000-01 to write the planning paper Community Ties.
To research this 20,000-word document I travelled around the world ... visiting towns and suburbs planned using Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities of To-morrow principles such as Sunnyside Gardens in New York, Letchworth and Milton Keynes in England, and looking at the way one of the best planned cities in the world, Vancouver, is structured.
A number of the recommendations I made in that paper have since been adopted by the Government, including the infrastructure being provided before the houses are built although I urge members not to get too excited because the Government really has paid only lip-service to that one and setting limits to growth.
We can create a better living environment for the people of Sydney, even with a rapidly expanding population. It is not all about building new railway lines and widening roads; it is also about creating communities that people want to live in.
Governments across the world now recognise that whatever we can do to strengthen civic engagement also fortifies our society.
Community is not dependent on bricks and mortar or the layout of suburbs, but proper planning can sow the seeds of civic engagement.
Governments, by tending those seeds, can help them to germinate and grow, and by so doing increase people’s health and happiness.
In 1996 I introduced lock-up legislation for spray cans to reduce the amount of graffiti blighting our streets. The Government ridiculed it at the time ... but 10 years later, it adopted the legislation as its own.
That shows that in this place persistence is a virtue! I believe that measure has reduced significantly the incidence of graffiti and that the minor inconvenience to the public is a price worth paying.
Politics can be the most frustrating of occupations. My friend the former Federal member for Mitchell, Alan Cadman, once flatteringly described me as “results orientated”, and I think I probably am.
It is not like that when you are in Opposition. An Opposition’s duty is to oppose and that means being negative about almost everything the other side does.
But negativity is not a goal in itself and simply carping about anything and everything the other side is pretty unedifying.
An Opposition must also propose, which is why I am proud of Community Ties why I am proud of being the first frontbencher to start talking in 2003 about rehabilitating prisoners, and why I am proud of the comprehensive suite of policies I developed for the 2007 election over my four years as the shadow Minister for the Environment.
Those policies included a renewable energy target of 20 per cent generated here in NSW rather than interstate and largely funded by a revamped Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme, and building the country’s first base load solar power station in the solar triangle of Moree-Cobar-Dubbo, making use of the natural energy resource available in western NSW.
We were going to allow hybrid cars to travel in transit lanes regardless of the number of occupants, set up a $120 million stormwater trust to harvest stormwater and devote an extra $15 million to cleaning up dioxins from the harbour.
We would have tackled the scourge of caulerpa taxifalia before it got away. Today this noxious weed infests hundreds of hectares of Pittwater and Brisbane Water, as well as 12 other waterways.
It is one of my greatest regrets that I was unable to prevent its spread. Now it is too late and it will never be fully eradicated from NSW.
Also I put forward a policy of carrying out prescribed burns in national parks for ecological reasonsan issue I have raised in the Parliament previously as well as for hazard reduction purposes, something that would have fundamentally changed the way we care for our bushland.
The environment has long been a passion of mine. As many members would know, I wrote a book on self-sufficiency in 1978 and I have since written other books with an environmental flavour.
So in the spirit of goodwill that accompanies a valedictory speech I want to pay tribute to the Government for introducing the Contaminated Lands Management Act in 1996.
This Act has provided a better mechanism for cleaning up contaminated land than ever existed before, although orphan sites remain a problem for taxpayers.
Several members of Parliament offered criticisms of the media in their valedictory speeches. As a former journalist I recognise the important part a free press has to play in keeping governments and individual members of Parliament accountable.
I have defended the media on countless occasions at Liberal Party branch meetings as someone who understands not only the pressures of deadlines but also the impossibility of remaining objective and pro-Liberal at the same time. Liberals love Alan Jones but I know he would agree that Australia is better off for having a range of views presented by the media.
Politicians have a love-hate relationship with the media. We love it when the journalists are on our side who does not like to be praised? But hate it when we are on the receiving end of criticism. Often that criticism by the media is justified. Sometimes it is not.
In search of a headline, in 2008 Nathan Rees scrapped members’ so-called gold passes for free travel on government buses and trains. The cost of this pass to taxpayers was $2000 a year in fringe benefits tax. Now members claim their work-related bus and train journeys and the cost of processing those claims, I understand, is $50,000 a year.
That does not seem very cost-effective to me. I might add that as I have very few government buses in my electorate and no North West Rail Link, the gold pass was of very little value to me personally.
Technology has significantly changed the way we operate as members of Parliament.
Seventeen years ago mobile phones resembled bricks, the Internet was in its infancy and, while laptops existed, very few people owned them.
Compare that to today, where all members have laptops and BlackBerries given to them, some have iPads and use them for their speaking notes in the House, many members have their own websites and email gives us the opportunity to communicate with hundreds of people simultaneously.
Communication techniques may have changed but the role of a member of Parliament has not. We are still the intermediaries between the ordinary man or woman and the bureaucracy.
When the public servants get it wrong, members are often the only ones who can sort things out. It is when you help a little old lady who has been battling with council for months over a blocked drain or you find accommodation for someone who would otherwise be on the street that you get real job satisfaction.
The last 17 years have been a roller-coaster ride, and I would be lying if I said that I have enjoyed every moment of it.
But the good moments have significantly outweighed the bad and I will look back at my time in Parliament more with pride than with regret.
The defining moment of my last term, indeed one of the defining moments of my life, occurred on March 28 last year when I was involved in a motorcycle accident that almost claimed my life.
I do not know what it is about March 28, but my son, Andrew, was born on March 28, he was 11 weeks premature and had a 10 per cent chance of living.
So March 28 is a pretty significant date in the Richardson annals.
In this, my final speech, I again want to pay tribute to the ambulance officers and to the doctors and nurses at Nepean Hospital who treated me after that accident.
Many people were surprised when I returned to the Parliament after six weeks, well before the expiry of the period of leave the House had granted. I was determined, not only to get back to work, but also to exceed the level of fitness I had enjoyed previously.
Regrettably, that has not happened, and I think I now have to accept some limitations on what I can do for the rest of my life.
That accident led to Staysafe conducting an inquiry into motorcycle safety. The committee approved the report today.
While I was disappointed to note that the committee did not recommend a side intrusion test for motorcycle helmets, as I had suggested, it was encouraging to read in the report that: “The Committee has received overwhelming evidence supporting the benefits of protective clothing and headwear for motorcycle riders,” and that the RTA is considering new rules for appropriate clothing for riders. I understand both the NRMA and the Motor Accidents Authority support developing an independent star rating program for protective clothing, which would be a step in the right direction.
As I told the inquiry, riders should dress for the crash, not for the ride. Shorts and thongs should be banned forthwith.
Governments come and go but the spirit of a people lives on. My constituents are overwhelmingly family orientated, kind-hearted, community minded, hard working and generous and it has been a great privilege to have represented them over such a long period of time. I thank them for supporting me over five elections.
I also thank local Liberal Party members for their continuing efforts over so many years and my staff, Luke Scott, and before him, Andrew Collins, and particularly Joy Saly, who will have been with me for nine years and has a marvellous way with constituents.
I also thank my family, my son, Andrew, my daughter, Jane, who is here tonight, and particularly my wife, Cherry, who has not only supported me through the vicissitudes of political life but has also accompanied me to and represented me at countless functions, very ably and without pay, something that never gets any recognition by the media, I might add as well as relieving in the office and running my campaign office at election time. I could not have done it without her.
I wish my colleagues on this side of the House and the Liberal candidate for Castle Hill, Dominic Perrottet, every success in the upcoming election, and I wish all members the very best for the future. My father died in 1984. After I was first elected I learned that he had told a number of local Liberal Party members that I would be the member for The Hills one day. He was right. I only hope I have lived up to his expectations of me in my time in this place.