Members

Weatherill, Hon. J.W., Retirement

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham) (11:02): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to announce to the house my intention to retire as member for the state district of Cheltenham. I thank the Speaker and the house for the indulgence to say a few words on this occasion.

I really want to speak principally about my gratitude to the people of Cheltenham, who chose me as their representative back in 2002, and the wonderful privilege it has been to represent such an interesting and diverse electorate that has some of the salt of the earth, one could say, living within it. On the very street I live, there are so many generous souls who bring to life our neighbourhood and make it such a joy not only to live there but also to represent that community.

I also want to thank the people within the local branch of the Labor Party. I was looking back on the first speech I made, back in 2002, and, with the sad exception of one woman who is no longer with us, they are all still a part of my team and play a fantastic role in supporting me and sustaining me, so I want to thank my sub-branch of the ALP.

I also want to thank the Labor Party for choosing me to be their representative. It is a big deal for a party to choose a representative to stand in their name because you are standing on the shoulders of giants. You are standing on the platform that has been created, in our case, by people who have been replicating Labor governments since the 1890s. As I often say, this is the first place in the world that elected a majority Labor government, in this very chamber. It is a proud tradition, so when you are asked to represent a party of that significance and of great contemporary success it is an extraordinary privilege. I thank each of the constituent elements of the party, the affiliates, the trade union movement and all those who chose to select me to represent them in this place.

I also want to thank my colleagues—all of the colleagues who are sitting around me, those present and also those past—who have sustained me in this role. You cannot do anything by yourself in this business; we are all a product of our capacity to work with other people. You only have one vote and you need more than that to get anything done, so that involves bringing other people with you to the extent that they decide to stand with you and support you, and create an environment where you feel confident enough to advance an idea. It is entirely your support and loyalty—loyalty that is tested when things are tough—that have allowed me to achieve everything that I have managed to achieve in this place, so thank you all so much.

As I think some of our federal colleagues are understanding, the idea of governing when you have to look over your shoulder all the time is really difficult. One of the things I have always valued is the strength and unity of purpose that exists; it is a pattern and a model. It should be acknowledged that the success of our party has in large measure been due to its unity, and it is something that others would be well advised to copy.

I also want to talk about the myriad staff who, in one form or another, have supported me to allow me to continue this work. Obviously, there is the electorate office. I have been blessed with extraordinary electorate office staff and much of the burden has fallen on them because I have not been as present a local member, having had the good fortune of going to the ministry back in 2002. I have been more of a local member in the past nine months than I have in the previous 16 years. That has been a very interesting and enjoyable experience, but so much of the burden over that period fell on them, and I want to thank each of them for their support.

With regard to my ministerial advisers and the advisers who worked in the Premier's office, the great thing about these roles is that they attract the best and brightest people who want to be at the centre of government making a difference. You become surrounded by extraordinary people who help you to do your job and make you look much better than if you were struggling along on your own.

I also want to single out drivers, as I have had a couple of drivers throughout the course of my career. Famously, Steve Tippins was my driver for a long time. I can remember the lead-up to the 2010 election, which I thought we would lose. I packed up my office, thinking that we were going to be kicked out in 2010. I had two very young daughters at the time and I realised Steve Tippins had spent more time with them than perhaps any other male, other than me, so he was like a grandad. I just could not imagine them being wrenched apart from him in that way; that was the worst part of it.

Avdo, who took over while Steve was on leave, was my acting driver at the time of that election. I remember him saying in broken English to Steve Tippins when he came back, 'You give me minister, I give you Premier.' They have always been very close and they are very much a part of the family.

I also want to thank the public servants. There are so many great public servants in this state. They are often reviled—almost as hated as politicians. It is easy to poke fun at public servants, but they have to manage all the difficult questions. As those opposite are beginning to discover, government is one massive risk management operation, and all the tough stuff—the complex public policy issues, the difficult implementation questions—falls into the public sector. You are often dealing with vulnerable people, people who are angry and people who are sad, and they can be demanding. We expect a lot from our public servants, but they all do extraordinary work.

I also want to thank the public servants in this place: those who make sense of our garbled remarks up there at Hansard, all of the Clerks who allow for the smooth running of this place, all of those people who feed us and look after us and who make this a successful, happy and well-run workplace.

Then there are myriad informal advisers, people who come into your life from the private sector, friends you collect along the way and former members of parliament who become part of your mentoring, a network of people who sustain you and help you get through difficult questions, who give you the perspective of experience that allows you to understand how you might respond to a question by giving you some advice about what may have happened before. These are very important people. I know we all have them. I do not want to embarrass them by naming them all. They know who they are. They have been an important part of sustaining me.

Of course, most important is my family: my beautiful wife and my two beautiful girls. Much of the burden of public office falls on family members. They do not get to see as much of you as they might like and when they do get to see you, you can be distracted. One of the great advantages of being a state politician is that at least you get to sleep in your own bed. Sometimes you can be around, but not really be around because you have other things on your mind. That is one of the sacrifices that families make.

Frankly, I do not know how you can be sustained in a leadership role in politics without the love and affection of a family. It is tough; it is really tough. You need family, friends or some other support system to allow you to get through things. When the world looks like it is crashing down around you, it is important that, when you go home, you are able to talk to somebody who is always on your side and who says to you that it is actually not as bad as you think it is. If you do not have that, it can be overwhelming.

Being able to dust yourself off and pick yourself up each day has a lot to do with your family. In a very real sense, anything you achieve is really only achieved with the support of your family. Of course, anything you achieve and the good times you celebrate are made so much more important because you share them with your family. That is something I have always had and always enjoyed.

I do not want to detain you all for too long, but I do want to say two serious things. One is about what we have managed to achieve. It is hard to select out things that we are proud of. There are so many things that I would like to talk about but, in a more contemporary sense, when I became premier we were really hit with three very sudden, sharp shocks, one right after the other, which really were challenges.

The first, of course, was Olympic Dam not going ahead when it was expected to go ahead. The fact of that being there and then the fact of it not being there were two very big differences. Then shortly after that, the aftermath of the GFC, where our finances were just absolutely wrecked and the state's economy was plunged into a difficult position; then, of course, the news of Holden closing. In quick succession we faced some very significant issues. People were predicting double-digit unemployment. We really fought back from that and we decided, very assertively, to tackle these challenges.

I think we should be proud as a state. It was not all me and it was not all us: it was the state that responded to each of those challenges. It is said about South Australia that there is a sense of precariousness here because we are perched on the edge of a desert. At various stages of our history it seemed like our very survival was up for grabs. The truth is that it is not that precarious. It is actually much more secure and sustainable than perhaps is commonly understood. The fact that we are now sitting here with the third lowest unemployment rate in per capita terms, the third fastest growing economy in the nation, which has been an improvement over this period when we faced these challenges, really represents the strength and resilience of this state. I am very proud of it.

I am also proud of the fact that at points of time when big questions were asked of us we made the right choices. When our revenues collapsed and we could have walked away from our infrastructure program, we continued to keep building, so all you see around you, the infrastructure projects, are because of that critically important decision. When we were told to settle for frigates and that we should wave goodbye to the subs we said no. As a state, we stood up and campaigned for that and we won a great victory. When Pirie and Whyalla were threatened, we stood up for those communities. They were not simple decisions. They were big commitments we had to make to ensure those towns survived.

There is one that is very gratifying, especially on a day like today. When we had the statewide blackout and people were describing our policies as reckless, as idiocy in ideology, we held the line on renewable energy, and today we see that there is an acknowledgement that not only are we making a massive contribution to the nation's stability through things like the big battery but we are also saving money. There is an acknowledgement that we are not just a national leader but a world leader in this critical transition to a low carbon future. I am proud of those things.

On a slightly philosophical basis, one of the reasons I wanted to come in here and announce to this parliament that I was retiring is that I believe in this institution and I believe in democracy. There is nothing that was inevitable about democracy. Historically, it did not have to be this way, and there is nothing permanent about it. In the face of challenges, and with the rise of the populist, authoritarian leader, we need to be alert to the fact that we have something very precious here that we should protect. It is something I spoke about when I first came in here.

I have tried to talk about the importance of people being involved in the decisions that shape their lives, I have tried to do something about improving the quality of discourse. I honestly believe that our role as leaders is to talk into existence a public that can act in its own interests through a process of dialogue, asking the big questions and trying to introduce a degree of civility into public discourse. I have failed at that from time to time, we all have, but this should always be our guiding star.

I want to leave you with a quote. It is in a book written by a South Australian, as it happens, who is now a professor in this area of democracy. He was speaking to a South African novelist, who described democracy in this way:

[it] breeds possibility: people's horizons of what is thinkable and doable are stretched, and it is for that reason exciting, infuriating, punctuated by difficult, quarrelsome, ugly and beautiful moments.