Federal Election

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (17:09): I would like to make a few comments, which are perhaps a reflection of comments made in this place this week. The starting point for my comments is next week's federal election, particularly comments made about minor parties and populist parties and candidates, etc. Comments were also made today about free trade.

I think there are some failings in our political system. I say 'political system' because some of the populism we see in our community today in Australia is no different from some of the things we hear about in the American presidential elections, and it is no different from what we are hearing about the Brexit campaign in England. The common thread that runs through those who support what is referred to as populist candidates is that they have been attacked in this place today and this week. I will not be doing that because I think those populist candidates are created by the major parties. I say that because I think the people we as major parties often expect to just move along in a changing society are the ones who then turn their backs on us.

When you look at the people who support Trump, the people who support Brexit and the people who support the Nick Xenophon group this time, the PUP group last time, or the Hanson group the previous time, there are some common themes. They are people who are lodging some sort of protest vote. If we say that all those people, as has been said to me in the past, are generally racist, etc., I think that is a complete nonsense. There may be some in the mix, but you do not get a million votes across the nation from people who are racist. They are people who believe they have been left behind in some way by the political and economic system. We need to understand that.

Some of the groups that are common throughout are, generally speaking, blue-collar workers. It is quite a surprise that the people who support Brexit, the people who support Trump and the people who support the populist candidates in this country over time are generally middle-aged men and women. We have modernised our economy, we have achieved all this deregulation, we have free trade agreements, and we have crucified manufacturing in this country, and we have left people behind. We have left them behind. They are the people who support these candidates because they are looking for some sort of hope.

I was a little concerned today when the member for Schubert decided to express unqualified support for free trade. I am not suggesting that we go back to setting up the walls, but there is a cost to that. There are people who win from free trade and there are people who lose from free trade. A number of people have lost their jobs. A lot of their jobs are being transferred to China or other parts of Asia. We need to be very careful when we start basking in the glory of these free trade agreements because there are many dark points in these free trade agreements.

There are people who are displaced economically, there are people who are displaced socially, and then there are people, for example, as the member for Mount Gambier talked about earlier, who go into a spiral and develop mental health issues. If you look at the pockets where there are mental health issues, they are in communities that are hit the hardest by the economic changes in society. I am not suggesting that those changes are not required. What I am suggesting, though, is that it is wrong for us not to fully understand what those things mean or why these people are voting for these minor and populist parties. Criticising them does nothing.

As I said yesterday, the worst thing to do to someone, if you want to get them to understand, is to lecture them. You do not lecture them. You need to walk alongside them and understand where they are coming from. I have to say that the major parties sometimes do not do that very well. We do not do that very well. We do look forward and sometimes forget the people we leave behind, and I think it is important we understand that.

That is why it is important to support a number of groups in our community who support people in society, mainly men and blue-collar workers, people in the trades. They are the ones who are now voting in droves for these populist causes such as Brexit and Trump. When you look at Trump's media, there are not a lot of young people or middle-class people in those groups. For example, there are not a lot of East Coast, middle-class young people because they are well educated, affluent, etc. It is really the have-nots. It is not the haves who support them: it is the have-nots. We need to understand that, because we can come in here and criticise those minor parties and we can criticise those populist parties, but it does nothing to sway those people from them.

What we need to do is make sure we understand them and we need to have policies in place to make sure that we do not leave people behind, including people in the regions. I support what we are doing in Whyalla because we do not want to leave people behind, but we should extend that to other parts of the country as well. The only comment I would like to make is that we need to make sure that, in this political process, we keep everybody on side.

Time expired.