Bills

Criminal Law Consolidation (Foster Parents and Other Positions of Authority) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 28 November 2018.)

The SPEAKER: Before I hear from members on my left, I remind the house that this will be the members' first speech and therefore we ask that they be accorded the normal courtesies and respect afforded to new members on this very important occasion. The member for Cheltenham.

Mr SZAKACS (Cheltenham) (15:41): Mr Speaker, thank you. It is an honour and privilege to stand here today as the member for Cheltenham. I wish to acknowledge that this parliament convenes upon the traditional lands of the Kaurna people, and I pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging.

I am proud to be in this place as a member of the Labor Party, the party that delivered Indigenous land rights, the party that made the apology to the stolen generation and the party that believes that real reconciliation is not simply about words but also actions, and by endorsing the Uluru Statement from the Heart, treaty, Makarata and a constitutionally enshrined First Nation's voice to parliament our actions will speak louder than words.

I rise today as the member for Cheltenham thanks to the immense trust that my community has placed in me and the hard work of volunteers and activists. The 57-day campaign was short, but it was very, very busy. The Labor Party and I approached this campaign, as we do all campaigns, with the utmost respect for the community we seek to serve. In doing so, my volunteers and I braved some pretty extreme weather, including a number of weeks when the weather hovered either side of 40˚. Being the single resident redhead in this place, as far as I am aware, doorknocking in that sun and heat certainly posed some unique occupational hazards for me. At times I felt like a desert dog walking the hot streets, and I always appreciated the kind offers of shade and cold drinks from residents.

Although I was born and raised in the electorate of Cheltenham, my election as the local member of parliament has been like a homecoming in so many ways. I will tell you my story and what has led me to this place through the people of my electorate and the communities and organisations I have met and visited on this campaign trail—firstly, the migrants. The seat of Cheltenham comprises people from countless ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and it is this migrant story of so many residents in my electorate that my family also shares. I am a child of a Hungarian refugee, Joseph Szakacs, and a girl from dairy country New South Wales, Valerie Brislane.

The Brislane and Lewis clan arrived in Australia from Ireland in 1842 and immediately started working the land in mid-north New South Wales. To this day, dairy and cattle are still in the family, and I have very fond memories of holidays in the area when I was growing up. My Uncle David would always put me to work and ensure that my hands were pretty dirty by the end of the day. Conservation played a big part on the farm, and I became acquainted with dairy cattle in a way that only generations of a family who tended the land could teach.

My father fled Hungary, leaving behind his whole family and everything and everyone he knew in the final throes of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. He left his father, also named Joseph, and his mother, Margaret, and sister Sylvia. He would never see his parents again. He was an activist, and in that sense the apple has not fallen far from the tree. He was a target because he fought for freedom and he fought for justice.

My dad sacrificed everything for what he believed in. Dad's only way to safety, when the troops marched into Budapest, was to flee and cross the border into Austria in the dead of the night. He was caught, but he escaped again. Growing up, I would ask dad: why Australia? And he would often quip, 'Because of the beautiful beaches and the beautiful women.' But, as I grew older and met my dad's family, the truth was a little more sobering.

In one of the final conversations my father had with his own father, his dad told him clearly what to do: 'Escape, go, get as far away from here as you can and never come back.' On the campaign trail, when I was doorknocking I met some of those other Hungarians who also left Europe under such similar circumstances in those dark days. They were so grateful to have found a safe place to call home, a place to raise their children and to give them the opportunities they were denied.

I was lucky enough to have the support of many people on this campaign trail, and wharfies were one part of that group. My dad spent 40 years of his life doing exactly that: working on the waterfront in this state. My dad was a union member from the day he walked onto his first ship. Dad cared deeply about the safety of his workmates, but the waterside that he started work on was dramatically different from that of today. Dad tells of sweeping up and then manually packing asbestos into hessian bags. All that has changed only because of the collective power of unions to improve working conditions for ordinary working people. One stevedore still working, John, worked with my dad and still wears my dad's overalls as a mark of respect for him, which our whole family finds very touching.

When I was on the pre-poll booth talking to people who were about to cast their vote, I met an older couple who recognised me. They had been neighbours just two doors down from mum and dad in Royal Park before I was even born, and they knew mum when she was pregnant with me. They told me a story about how they would tease mum about her prospects of having a baby who had red hair. She did, as you can see, but they would never have imagined that their neighbours' son would one day represent them in parliament—someone from Royal Park. Who would have thought?

Not only did I meet people who lived in mum and dad's street but I also met people who I grew up with as a kid, who I did nippers with at Grange Surf Life Saving Club, who I played basketball with, first at Athol Park Stadium and then at St Clair Recreation Centre, and who I swam with at the Seaton pool. I also met parents who sent their children to Seaton pool, where I got my first job as a swimming instructor and taught them how to swim. I saw people who attended the same kindergarten as me—at a convent run by Polish nuns—and people who bought their European smallgoods at the original Standom in the backstreets of Hendon before it closed, when they were lucky enough as kids, like I was, to get a free Vienna sausage from the ladies behind the counter.

I met other people whose surnames were just as tricky as mine. For the record, Mr Speaker, it is pronounced 'sock-arch', and I commend you on your pronunciation. Growing up, I was happy to spell it and explain how it was pronounced because it gave me a very small opportunity to talk about my own migrant story, one that I am so immensely proud of.

One of the advantages of being a successful candidate in an election is being asked to nominate where you would like the declaration of the poll to be conducted. I chose my first school, Our Lady Queen of Peace, in Albert Park. It was immensely important for me to recognise and honour the important and immense opportunities that education gave me because my parents did exactly what working-class parents do: they worked hard to do their best to help me have more and better opportunities than they ever had. They believed in the power of education and learning, and so do I. Our Lady Queen of Peace School has changed a lot since I was there, but their values are just the same.

I spent a bit of time away from my electorate when I was swimming, and in my early 20s I was lucky enough to earn a scholarship to the University of Missouri in the United States. When I returned to South Australia, I completed my law studies at Flinders University while working part-time, which is where I was fortunate enough to meet my fellow student named Hannah, who went on to become my wife. Bringing things full circle is the fact that numerous generations of her own family grew up almost in the very shadow of Alberton Oval in the great electorate of Cheltenham, and that explains why she is a Port Power supporter.

Now we have a four-year-old son, Patrick, and we are raising him in the community that we know and love. We took him to Seaton pool, the very pool where I learnt to swim and where I first started working, for his baby swimming lessons and now he is doing nippers at that same Grange beach that I was at as a kid. He even gets his free smallgoods, but, for better or for worse, that has graduated to fritz.

All these things have shaped the person that I am today: my parents, my neighbourhood, sport and the trade union movement. I lived in a household where my parents talked about the struggles of workers because they lived them. My parents were not politically involved, but they were politically engaged. They knew who would stand up for them and what they believed in. They were, and continue to be, proud Labor supporters and they always instilled in me the view—and I never forgot this for one second—that we were a lucky family. Australia has given my family safety, freedom and opportunity and with this comes an obligation to help others who were not as lucky as us.

Some of the earliest political memories that I have are of my dad and my godfather, Andrew, another Hungarian refugee, having robust political discussions over family barbecues. Often, they were in furious agreement—and possibly a degree of exuberant animation—over a couple of glasses of good red wine, but I was always engaged and my views were always valued and always appreciated. It was natural for me to grow up believing in the dignity of work, the importance of decent pay and work, the importance of work health and safety and the right of every person to go home to their family at night safely.

At the knees of my mother and father, growing up and at every job I have done since, I learned that working people have never been benevolently gifted the basic rights and conditions workers now take for granted. They fought hard, they campaigned and they won in the same way that women had to fight for the right to vote in this country and to stand for parliament. I acknowledge that South Australia was the first place in the world to grant black and white women the right to do both.

Working people have had to struggle for every incremental improvement in their working lives: equal pay for equal work, wage increases, holiday pay, sick pay, carer's leave and maternity leave and we can go on to other labour movement gains, like Medicare and superannuation—the things that today we take for granted. We see that struggle continue to this very day with the battle for universal domestic and family violence leave. We must do everything in our power to ensure this right is won because all the evidence proves that this helps women and their children leave violent situations. It helps them keep their jobs and keeping their jobs is crucial to getting back on their feet, raising their children in a stable environment and moving on.

I am a union member and I am a proud trade unionist. Any time my political opponents seek to demonise or cast negativity on this, I stand taller and I stand prouder and more committed to the work that I have done my entire professional life for working families and their community. I am proud to have worked for both the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union and the United Firefighters Union before I was elected secretary of SA Unions.

For those opposite who might never have been a member of a union, here is what unions do: they are a collective voice for working people. It is as simple as that. Unions represent millions of people across this country. Workers organise with them and fight on their behalf for better pay and working conditions, for fairer workplaces, to tackle sexual harassment and gender-based violence in workplaces, and for all the things that make working people's lives fairer, such as domestic and family violence leave, as I mentioned earlier, tougher work health and safety laws, cracking down on bosses who steal workers' wages and superannuation and the exploitative practices in the labour hire industry, which particularly hurt migrants and temporary visa holders.

One thing about working in the union movement is that you see the worst examples of the worst sorts of treatment that workers have had to endure: the sexual harassment, the bullying, young people desperate for jobs who take up positions that are unpaid or simply not paid at all, the sham contracting and the phoenixing, in which companies that have stolen wages and superannuation simply close down overnight and miraculously open under another name and begin trading like the whole thing never happened. It also includes women who are sacked for being pregnant—yes, this still happens. It is companies that believe they are doing young workers a favour by getting them to work for free, or the emerging extremist views out of the right-wing think tanks that advocate for the complete abolition of the minimum wage.

But it is perhaps the workplace deaths, always needless and often preventable, and the families who are left behind that stay with us the most. I have the utmost admiration for Pam Gurner-Hall—whose partner, Jorge Castillo-Riffo, died in a preventable workplace incident—for her tireless work and bravery on this issue. I commit to continue advocating in this place on industrial manslaughter so that our law seeks to properly deter and penalise workplace deaths that are both needless and preventable. Who will stand up for working people if unions do not?

For all these reasons, the union movement is campaigning to change the rules in this country because, to put it quite simply, the rules are broken. Workers' wages and super continue to be stolen. For too many businesses wage theft has become a business model. Union members who refuse to talk to the police investigators about stopping work due to safety risks can be sent to gaol, but the federal Minister for Small and Family Business, Michaelia Cash, keeps her seat in parliament when she does the same.

Who will stand up for unions and these people if not for the Labor Party, the party formed by and for working people? When I represented firefighters, we fought and won for laws to recognise the greater risk and occurrence of cancer in professional firefighters. These presumptive cancer laws were introduced by the then Labor government here in South Australia, and we became one of the first jurisdictions in Australia to do this.

I believe that government is important to people's lives. When government steps back, inequality rises, the power imbalance that leads to disadvantage goes unchecked and economic benefits do not trickle down. In fact, they never have and never will. I believe government should be progressive and strong, an instrument for change and opportunity for those people in our community who, through a variety of factors, often thanks just to where and to whom they were born, face immense disadvantage. Government has a huge part to play in balancing the scales of fairness in their favour. When government steps out and leaves it to the markets and individuals, the results are wage theft, intergenerational poverty and poorer schools and educational outcomes, and communities become weaker and less resilient.

I have been a member of the Labor Party for close to 20 years, since the former member for Cheltenham signed me up. We believe in working in and for our community. In my community of Cheltenham, residents have sent me a clear message: they want me to listen and they want me to act. They are concerned about parking and community services in a growing community. They are worried about local jobs. They want young people who grow up in our community to be able to find work and housing and, should they choose, to be able to raise a family in the same area they grew up in. They want a fair share of infrastructure and community-building resources. They are worried about cuts to public transport and how that will affect their families and others staying connected in the community.

The Labor Party believes in the value of the collective, the strength of community, the dignity of work and the need for the economy to serve people and not simply the other way around. We are a party that always has and always will have a working-class conscience. However, it saddens me to say that when it comes to some of these progressive policies and values, we are either losing the debate or failing to win. In an era when we are seeing the emergence of fringe and extreme groups sucking the oxygen out of public debate, our job has become all the more critical because low-paid workers are being left behind.

People who have found themselves out of work are demonised and those on Newstart are living in poverty. Women continue to retire with deeply inadequate retirement savings. We need to urgently tackle the superannuation gap for women if we have a hope of decency in retirement. We need to arrest the alarming number of older women in retirement finding themselves in poverty or facing homelessness.

We need a compassionate and humane approach to refugees, where we stop accepting that the starting point for refugee policy is to make the lives of those people fleeing persecution as miserable as possible—people just like my father and hundreds and thousands of other Australians. These are the big debates, and I have been arguing these big questions my entire working life. We have to work harder to convince people about what we believe and help them to understand that sometimes we have to compromise and be pragmatic. When politics becomes too far removed from people's lives, it becomes easier for them to fall into simplistic solutions to big problems.

I am also a big believer in the power of sport to bring people and communities together. I was lucky enough to participate in a number of sports all the way into my adult life. I swam, and I am thankful for the lessons it taught me—perhaps, most importantly, it is doing my best as a parent to channel my son's emerging talents in the pool into something that involves a far more sociable approach than 4.30am starts.

Whether it is the numerous clubs in the Cheltenham electorate that run Indigenous and multicultural programs that break down barriers and stereotypes through women's sport or that are keeping our older members of our community active and engaged, sport and activity are pillars of our community. But we do need to do better to help and assist those families facing economic pressure to participate. A nine year old living in poverty is three times less likely to participate in extracurricular activities. As we see tragedies each and every summer, we need to ensure that water safety is accessible for refugees, for migrants, for people on low incomes and their children.

A mentor of mine, the former member for Cheltenham, provided sage advice to me many years ago. He said, 'In politics, make friends around ideas and issues and not on ideology.' I respect and commend my colleagues in this place from across the political divide for their commitment to public service. We have a duty as elected representatives to earn trust and pay the greatest of respect to political office. I will work with all of you to do our utmost in this regard.

I also commit myself to being an advocate and working collaboratively with those across this house where we share common policy views. I will work with you to deliver much-needed reforms to South Australia's outdated and antiquated abortion laws, to carefully and responsibly decriminalise sex work and to deliver complete end of life care and dignity in dying laws for this state.

I could not be here were it not for the support of friends, colleagues, supporters and, of course, my family. You doorknocked, letterboxed, wobbleboarded, made phone calls and, of course, supported me on polling day. Without these individual contributions, I simply could not have done it by myself. Thankyous are always difficult. Unlike the Oscars, there is not an orchestra to call time, so I will be as quick as I can.

I have already been able to speak to so many people to express my sincere gratitude; if I have not yet had the opportunity, I will. Thank you to all my Labor Party parliamentary colleagues. It is so great to be here with you all. In particular, thank you to the opposition leader, the member for Croydon, and the deputy opposition leader, the member for Port Adelaide, for your friendship and leadership. Thank you to Reggie Martin for your stewardship of the South Australian branch of the Labor Party—the party is in good hands.

Thank you to PLUS and its executive, our members and Young Labor Left. Thank you to United Voice, the ASU and the CPSU. Thank you to David Gray for your leadership, your strategy and your friendship. Thank you to the members of the Cheltenham sub-branch of the Labor Party. I say an immense thankyou to the South Australian trade union movement, of which there are far too many individual leaders and unions to mention today. Thank you for your advocacy and your commitment to working people that is tireless in this state. I look forward to working with you all in my new role well into the future.

Thank you to my friend and leader of the ACTU, Sally McManus. Your leadership has never been at a more important time, and the movement has never had a more important leader. Thank you to my second family, the staff of SA Unions. I am so sad to be leaving you, but I am doing so leaving it in very capable hands. Thank you for making the last five years of my life so meaningful and so enjoyable.

Thank you to my campaign team, led by the incredibly hardworking, strategic and periodically grumpy Cheyne Rich, along with Samantha, Mahalah, Bia, Rhiannon and Karen. Thank you to my Cheltenham mentor, Julie Duncan. You have taught me so much. Thank you for always believing in me.

Thank you to the former member for Cheltenham, Jay Weatherill. Your contribution to the state is profound, and your personal support and contribution over many years, let alone in the last 57 days of this by-election campaign, mean a lot to me. Enjoy some quiet time with Mel and the girls before your next contribution to public life is made.

Thank you to my friends, some of whom have been my mates since school. I do not see enough of you and I am sorry for that. Thanks for always reminding me where I come from. Thank you to my parents, Valerie and Joe, whom I have already mentioned today. I could not have had a more supportive and loving upbringing. Thank you for everything. Thanks to my mother-in-law, Sue; father-in-law, Paul; mother-in-law, Irene; sister-in-law, Lauren; and brother-in-law, Nick. You are all part of our extended family unit. Thank you for your love and support.

Lastly, but never least, my wife, Hannah, and son, Patrick, thank you for always supporting me through many years that have seen me in jobs and roles that were demanding on us and on our family. You hardly saw me during the campaign—I am not sure whether that is a good or bad thing—but, as you always do, you cared for Patrick. You are an amazing mother and wife and I am so happy to be sharing this journey with you.

The Labor Party and the people of Cheltenham have placed their faith and trust in me. I am truly humbled. Thank you to them. With that faith and trust, I will continue on with what I have done my entire working life and what I have been elected to do: advocating and fighting for our community. Thank you.

Honourable members: Hear, hear!

Ms MICHAELS (Enfield) (16:09): Mr Speaker, I thank you and I thank my parliamentary colleagues on both sides of the house for welcoming me to this place. It is a place that I am still in awe of and will be for some time. As I begin, I would like to congratulate Joe Szakacs as the new member for Cheltenham and wish him well as we start this journey together.

The most important thing for me to do today is to express my absolute gratitude and appreciation that I am now the member for Enfield and part of this great place. So my first thankyou is to the people of Enfield for putting their trust and faith in me. I look forward to working with them to improve services to the communities that make up the electorate of Enfield. I thank those very diverse community members in Enfield for taking the time to discuss with me what is important to them, much of which aligns with the issues I will touch on today and which are also important to me.

There are many people who in many different ways contributed to my being here. Obviously, they are the people who assisted me in my campaign, but my journey started long before that fateful day of preselection on 14 December last year. I could not possibly mention everyone who has had an influence on me over my life, but there are key people and key experiences that have shaped me.

My parents and my brothers, Tony and Michael, and my sons, are at the core of that. My dad is no longer with us, and I am not entirely sure how he would have taken to my new occupation, but I hope he might have been a tiny bit proud that his daughter had the courage of her convictions and has been elected to this place in an attempt to make a difference. My family has taught me a lot, but perhaps the most important thing they have taught me is that no matter what gets thrown at you, you pick yourself up and dust yourself off and keep working hard for what you believe in.

I was not actually born when my family faced its toughest challenge. In 1974, like many others, they lost their home during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. They fled to become refugees. My brothers lost their toys; my parents lost their property and treasured possessions. Perhaps worst of all, by the time we made it to Adelaide we had left all our extended family behind which, for me, meant I did not know my grandparents and I did not have my cousins to play with.

But I did have parents who both worked incredibly hard seven days a week to rebuild by making a new beginning in a new country, my mother especially. Whenever I get tired and think I might need to cut back, I think of her and what she went through, working with my father in the factory all day and heading off to the Clipsal factory at night for a shift. All the while, there was a home-cooked meal and clean clothes for us for school. My mother is the reason I will never complain that I am too busy.

When we arrived in Adelaide in 1976, there was a new language to learn and a new city to become familiar with. I still wonder how scary that would have been for my parents when I was just a baby and for my brothers who were so young. What I find quite surreal is how I have gone from living in a shed in Enfield to being the member for Enfield.

Although we were warmly welcomed and supported by so many people in our new home, it was not universally the case, and I still feel it should have been. It is something that sits with me that I hope to be able to influence in some way; that is, how we as a society treat our new migrants, whether they be refugees or skilled migrants. We should cherish the richness of new cultures and give these families every opportunity to feel at home and succeed in this great state.

My schooling years were critical and, may I say, they were quite positive. For that, I will always be grateful. I was lucky enough to have teachers who encouraged me to do my best. Yes, I was a nerd, but perhaps in different circumstances I may not have been such a high academic achiever. I recall my year 7 teacher at Kilkenny Primary, Mrs Krashos, giving me a card at graduation which had red poppies on the front.

She wrote that she knew whatever I chose to do I would do well, but she also said something that stuck with me. She said to never let anyone cut a tall poppy down. We need teachers in our schools to do what Mrs Krashos did: to see the best in our children and to help them be the best they can be, no matter how much money their parents make or what suburb they live in. Again, that is something I hope to be able to influence, and I thank all my teachers from Kilkenny Primary School, St Aloysius College and St Peter's Girls.

I knew when I was five years old that I was going to be a lawyer. My career options were presented to me as medicine or law. I could not stand blood and guts, so I studied law and commerce at Flinders University, which gave me the best start I could have hoped for in my career progression. I must say that there was still a view then that being female, and being an ethnic female at that, would limit my career options. I believed that skill and ability would win out and, looking back now, I can say that it did, but I will come back to that issue.

Next month will mark 20 years since I was first admitted to the Supreme Court of South Australia. It has been an honour to be a member of a profession that does such good work protecting some of the most vulnerable members of our community, protecting the rule of law and promoting justice and equality. I thank my numerous colleagues and in particular those senior practitioners who mentored and guided me, and the newer practitioners who have allowed me the honour of mentoring them in the early stages of their careers. I also wish to acknowledge the privilege bestowed on me to hold leadership roles in the Law Society in recent years, and I know that the profession is in good hands.

For the past four years I have had the opportunity to run my own business. I often refer to NDA Law as my third baby. It has provided me with opportunities I never would have imagined and with challenges that many other small business owners face. I thank my staff for their loyalty, commitment and patience, especially Lisa Christo, Cara Grigg and Thea Birss, and of course our clients, but I thank three people who helped me to believe I could achieve success in this new business venture: Nick Bolkus, Iain Evans and Donny Walford, who volunteered on my advisory board when NDA commenced.

Watching any baby grow, one is filled with amazement and nervous anticipation. To all those incredible small businesses and family businesses who are the backbone of the South Australian economy, I want to acknowledge your hard work and bravery in doing what you do, just as my father did in starting his own business and I did in taking the opportunity to follow suit. It is critical to this state that all sides of politics do all that we can to support our strong economy for our businesses to thrive, for employment opportunities to grow and for the ability of government to make the best of that strong economy, to help those members of our society who need our support.

It was pointed out to me by a journalist on the day after the by-election that I am the first female member for Enfield and its predecessor, the seat of Ross Smith. I am grateful for that privilege but, in all honesty, it was not something that had occurred to me during the campaign. I am, however, grateful to be making this speech during the 125^th anniversary year of the right to vote being given to women in this state.

South Australia was at the forefront of the suffragette movement and has led the way in many respects in gender equality. I myself have been inspired by some of the most influential women in this state, whether by a simple handshake with Dame Roma Mitchell when I was young, the leadership shown in two of my educational institutions by Sister Deidre Jordan, or a friendship formed with the Hon. Robyn Layton. These amongst many other brave and inspiring women have helped forge the path that I continue on proudly today.

To be inspiring and guiding, and providing opportunities to actively promote diversity in all its forms, is something that I believe we have a responsibility to do. For my part in the legal profession, it has involved demonstrating that systems and structures, and an accepted way of doing things, can and should be challenged to enable a more valued and valuable contribution for female participation. Do not be surprised if I throw up ideas to do the same here. My core beliefs come down to something very simple: fairness, opportunity and giving back—values at the core of the Australian Labor Party.

To the Hon. Paul Keating, who inspired me with his brilliant tax policies and who has the title of being the first person to make me cry on an election night; the South Australian branch of the ALP, Reggie Martin, Aemon Bourke and the team; Sonia Romeo, Josh Peak and other leaders of our great union movement; David Gray, Bob Harris and the Enfield sub-branch; Young Labor and the Labor Women's Network; every single person who gave up an hour of their precious time to volunteer in my campaign; each and every Labor parliamentarian, state and federal, who supported me through the campaign; and those who were friends well before that, in particular the Hon. Tom Koutsantonis: thank you.

To the person I could not possibly thank enough, James Agness, and to the incredible leadership team of Peter Malinauskas and Susan Close: thank you. I am truly excited to be joining the team, and I hope I can make a valuable contribution on behalf of the people of Enfield and the South Australian Labor Party. Peter, in particular, I thank you and your team for taking me under your wing. I also wish to thank two former members and our former leadership team, Jay Weatherill and John Rau, for their significant contributions to the state and to the party during their terms. In particular, I thank John Rau for his mentorship and guidance, and I thank him on behalf of the people of Enfield for his dedication to the electorate that I now have the privilege of serving.

Lastly, but always most importantly, my children, Sebastian and Charlie: I want you to know that you are and always will be the most important people in the world to me and that every decision I have ever made since the day I became a mother has been with the filter for doing what is best for you, including this decision to enter parliament. Although this decision may bring us some short-term challenges, I hope that it has longer term benefits in my being able to make a contribution to South Australia for a more tolerant society and a more giving society with better government services, a better health and education system and a stronger economy with job prospects for you, your cousins and your friends. Perhaps this is an extreme effort to keep you home in Adelaide when you grow up.

Sebastian and Charlie, if I can drill one thing into you it is to be grateful in life. Although you have already faced some difficult life experiences, you have also been incredibly privileged. Gratitude will help you both to live your lives with optimism, to grab on to every opportunity and take on every challenge head-on. It will make sure you never forget that there are people less privileged than you we have a duty to help. If I can teach you that, I have done something useful.

I end with a final expression of gratitude for being a mother and a daughter; a sister, an aunty and a friend; a student and a teacher; a worker and a boss; and now a parliamentarian in this great place. I hope I do not let anybody down.

Honourable members: Hear, hear!

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.A.W. Gardner.