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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-05-03 Daily Xml
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Members

Member, New

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (15:24): By leave, I move:

That this council welcomes the Hon. Ben Hood, elected by an Assembly of Members of both houses on 7 March 2023, caused by the resignation of the Hon. S.G. Wade.

The PRESIDENT: Before I call the Hon. Mr Hood, I remind members of the courtesy that we extend in this place to a member making their maiden speech. I call the Hon. Mr Ben Hood.

The Hon. B.R. HOOD (15:24): In addressing this place for the first time, the honour to do so in front of my parliamentary colleagues, and, importantly, my friends and family, is not lost on this regional bloke from Mount Gambier. I would first like to acknowledge the Hon. Stephen Wade, whose position I now fill. Stephen, thank you for your 16 years of dedicated service to the people of South Australia.

I am honoured to be standing here in this place as a regional representative, along with fellow country members the Hon. Nicola Centofanti MLC, the Hon. Clare Scriven MLC and, of course, yourself, Mr President. No matter which side of the fence one is on, it can only be a positive thing that South Australia's regions can add another voice to their parliamentary representation.

Home for my family is in the state's South-East, the Limestone Coast, an area known for fossils, farming, forestry and wine. It is where my siblings and I were raised by my mum, Penny, my dad, Robin, and my stepdad, Patrick, and it is where my wife, Elle, and I now raise our family.

My mum worked in aged care at Longridge Retirement Village in Naracoorte. Before mum met Patrick, mum would work nights and me, at the age of 11, would look after my brother, Toby, and sister, Lucy—cook tea, run the baths and get them to bed. I had to grow up quickly, but these times strengthened my love for my family and, like mum, I would do anything for them.

Mum's passion for her residents led to her becoming a lifestyle coordinator at Longridge, a role she was born to do. Her dedication made many older people's lives so much brighter. Our older generation are a wealth of knowledge and wisdom and still offer so much to our communities, to our state and to our nation, and we would be a poorer nation should we ever forget that.

There was not a person in Naracoorte who did not love my stepdad, Patrick. Patrick also shared my love of music and would buy me the latest Nirvana or Pearl Jam CD and let me keep the original if I burnt him a copy. I am not going to incriminate myself in breaking copyright law in my maiden speech; still, Patrick and I enjoyed the greatest decade of music together.

My life has always included music, both listening and playing, a love that ultimately began with the most polarising of all instruments: the bagpipes. On Friday night, dad, a farmer but even more passionate car collector, would load us up into whatever vehicle he chose to drive that day and take us all to band practice. Much like parliament these days, the Hoods made up quite a contingent of the Naracoorte Highland Pipe Band. My grandfather, Lindsay, my dad and I all played the bagpipes. In addition, my brother, Toby, played the snare drum and my sister, Lucy, played the tenor drum.

The Hoods would play across the Limestone Coast on ANZAC Day, in Christmas pageants and country shows, and we wore our Wallace tartan with pride. Unfortunately, being a 15-year-old teenager wearing a kilt on weekends in front of the entirety of my peer group proved too much pressure. I stopped playing the bagpipes and turned my attention to the guitar and singing in rock bands. In those early years, my voice sounded distinctly like the bagpipes I had given up. But singing then, as it is now, is a passion of mine and at some point I got a little better at holding a tune.

I have performed for many years across the country, but no matter the size of the crowd or in front of no-one at all, I still close my eyes and enjoy singing for the sake of it. Without music, without art, our world would be a darker place. Nietzsche said, 'The essence of all beautiful art, of all great art, is gratitude.' As a musician, a designer, as an illustrator and as an artist, I am grateful for the opportunity I will have to be a champion of the arts in this place.

My weekends growing up were spent on the farm with dad, cleaning troughs, tearing around on our old ag bikes and spotlighting for rabbits and foxes. Dad would give you the clothes off his back or his very last dollar. He was always ready to help a neighbour, a mate or a stranger, and he taught me that, ultimately, we are all the same—none higher than any other—and if you can help, you should.

One of my favourite memories from the farm was spending hours exploring the Mary Seymour Conservation Park at Bool Lagoon. Our nanna, Bobby, would lead us through the bush trails left by kangaroos, pointing out the natural flora and fauna. Nanna is now 100, and my love for our natural landscape and ensuring that we do our best to preserve our environment grew from those times with her.

My grandparents, Lindsay and Bobby Hood and Lavington and Lois Fisher, were all farmers. My pa, Lavington Fisher, lived to 103, and Lindsay, or Fafa as we affectionately called him, lived to 91. They were both constants in my life, sharing their wisdom, and I miss them dearly, along with my late grandmother, Lois, whose love for music, reading and exploring the wider world in person or by the pages of National Geographic was passed on to me.

My grandparents taught me the value of hard work, of getting the job done and, importantly, that if you are going to be a member of a community, you should always give back to that community. Whilst my grandparents shared those values, you would not have found a more distinct set of political or ideological views. The Hoods were Liberal conservatives, and agnostic at best. The Fishers were Labor voters with a strong Christian faith.

Political and ideological differences have always been a hallmark of my family, and not just between the Labor member for Adelaide (my little sister, Lucy) and I. My grandfather was a passionate duck hunter and I joined him on many hunts as a child around our home at Bool Lagoon—the road around the Bool is now named after him. I distinctly remember one night, as a family, gathering around the lounge room TV to watch Lindsay's wife, Bobby, my grandmother, be interviewed by The 7.30 Report. We were all very excited and proud to see nanna on national TV, but my grandfather maybe not, as the reason why nanna was being interviewed by The 7.30 Report was her passionate opposition to duck hunting. It was quite the talking point around the district that week.

The dinner table has always been a place for strong debate in our family, and I speak of my family to illustrate a point: that husbands and wives, that grandparents and parents, that brothers and sisters, that friends can share and can respect and love each other but still hold opposing views. They can fiercely debate the issues and maintain their respective ground and still break bread at the dinner table, sharing an understanding that our ideas, our views and beliefs are but one part of us as fearfully made human beings.

But what I see in the public square, both physical and digital, concerns me. Many are jettisoning respectful debate for arranging others into smaller and smaller tribes, shouting into their own echo chambers and doing the most vicious things a society that should champion free speech can do, and that is to cancel someone. We will not always agree. Indeed, we may never agree, but we should always attempt to hold another's views in tension with our own and, should it be necessary, agree to disagree and break some bread irrespective of it.

One of the ways our society is currently failing to do this is through respecting people's right to personal faith. Attacking people because they are Christian or Jewish, for example, seems to have become popular, especially with many on the left side of politics. For much my life, I was an evangelical atheist. I owned a Bible to ensure that I had the ammunition I needed to debate Christians and help them understand how silly their faith really was. But as is the case with God, He is more patient with me than I am with Him, and after a crisis of faith in my own atheism, and after six months of a wrestle with a God I did not believe in, I became a Christian and was baptised, along with Neave and Piper, in 2013.

My faith in Christ is what guides me, and although I am quite honestly a pretty ordinary Christian at the best of times, the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 2:8 tells us:

For it is by grace that you have been saved through faith—and this is not from yourselves, but a gift from God…

My ability to question and to think for myself, to find my faith, came from not just our robust family dinners but from my school education, and it may surprise you to know I was a good student—in primary school at least.

Everyone can remember their favourite teacher, those men and women who make learning fun and who are a trusted adult to guide and inspire. My favourite teacher was Mrs Yvonne Hogarth. Mrs Hogarth inspired not only my academic learning but saw in me a creative streak and fostered it. Mrs Hogarth gave me the opportunity to test my artistic skills and silly comedy skits in front of school assemblies. Yvonne is still a friend and, as a woman of incredible Christian faith, has in my later years been a source of inspiration in my own journey to faith in Jesus Christ.

Education is a vital foundation for the prosperity of our society. We must ensure our education system reflects education and not indoctrination. We need more Yvonne Hogarths in our schools. We need more teachers like my little brother Liam, those who educate but, importantly, inspire our children. We must ensure the basics are taught in primary school and instil in our next generation the skills of critical thinking and resilience, teaching not what to think but how to think.

In high school I quickly realised I wanted to get out into the world and work, so in 1996, halfway through my year 11 studies, I left school to start an apprenticeship as a graphic artist with the local newspaper, TheNaracoorte Herald. I loved graphic design but was not particularly good at it for the first 3½ years of my four-year apprenticeship. But with the help and patience of my dear friend and mentor, Natalie Burgess, I eventually found my feet.

In 2000, I joined print house Hansen Print and continued to hone my skills in traditional design and branched out into web development, teaching myself through trial and error how to design and build websites, knowing that in the future this skill would be what I needed to start my own business.

In 2005, Elle and I married, and in 2006 we welcomed our eldest daughter, Neave, into the world. At 26 years old with a young family to support, I knew I needed to bring in a little bit more money, so on weekends I worked at the Bushman's Arms, pouring beers, and on weeknights after my day job I would work into the night designing and animating TV commercials for local businesses with my side hustle, Capture Creative.

My work ethic could be described as like a bull at a gate. For me it has always been a case of being afraid that if I stop I will not be able to start again, but the most important thing is to start. Perfect is always the enemy of the good. If you have a passion, if you want to succeed, just start and you will always be surprised where you end up.

In 2008, Elle, Neave and I moved to Mount Gambier for Elle to study to be a registered nurse and midwife. We did not think we would stay in Mount Gambier past Elle finishing her degree, but in six months we knew this beautiful city would be home for our family. Between Elle's study we welcomed Piper in 2011 and Arlo in 2016, and with him our little family was complete. I am so proud of Elle for her achievements in returning to study. With UniSA building a campus in our region, our family did not need to move to Adelaide for Elle to achieve her dreams.

While Elle was studying, in 2009 my friend Simone Kain and I took a leap of faith and merged our two businesses to launch the creative agency Hello Friday. In 2014, Simone, inspired by her young son's love of farming, suggested we create a children's farming character to teach the next generation about where their food and fibre comes from. Simone began to write the first story, and I got busy illustrating how our new farming hero and his world would look. I was lucky enough to be able to draw on the wonderful memories I had as a kid on the farm at Bool Lagoon.

George the Farmer was born and has grown into 14 picture books, toys, music and a TV show on the ABC. We have performed in every state and territory in the country and in front of tens of thousands of kids, both city and regional, and 50¢ from every book sold goes into producing free curriculum-aligned teachers' guides that have been used to educate tens of thousands of Aussie kids.

It is vitally important that our next generation know that the true origin of their food is from the farm and not the supermarket shelf and to understand the role our farmers play in the prosperity of our state and our nation. I am proud of what Simone and I have been able to do with George, and I know that this is only the beginning of the George the Farmer story.

It is also vitally important that the next generation are encouraged to do what I have done and start their own business or at the very least understand how important our small businesses are. Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy, especially in the regions, and I want to advocate for our small business community right here because I know what it means to risk everything, to go out on your own, to employ people and make ends meet. There is no greater risk but similarly no greater reward. Our state government should be finding ways to reduce red tape and limit oppressive cost-of-doing-business increases, and I will fight for this throughout my time in this place.

I have advocated for small business during my time serving the community over many years, notably in my service on the City of Mount Gambier as a councillor and deputy mayor. I see the privilege of serving in this place as a natural extension of my previous role serving my local community.

I am proud to have continued the tradition in my family of serving on local councils. My grandfather, Lavington, was councillor for Edenhope in the Victorian Kowree Shire and my grandfather, Lindsay, was a councillor for the Naracoorte council. To have been part of the achievements over the last five years in council with the City of Mount Gambier under the leadership of Mayor Lynette Martin is very special to me, particularly regarding the Wulanda Recreation and Convention Centre.

Wulanda is a generational asset for our state's second largest city and would not have been realised without the thousands of hours of grassroots community involvement, from the initial town hall meeting through to the official opening only a short month ago. Of course, without the $15 million from the former Liberal federal government, secured by the member for Barker, Tony Pasin, and the $10 million from the former Liberal state government, Wulanda would have remained a dream. My great-grandkids will learn to swim in Wulanda and I am proud to have played a small part in delivering the project.

Ultimately, I am here because I want to ensure that we leave our state a better place for our children. As a Liberal, I believe in the inalienable rights and freedoms of all peoples, of personal responsibility, enterprise and aspiration. In his speech to the electors of Bristol, the father of conservatism, Edmund Burke, famously said:

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays you instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

In this place, as elected representatives, we have a duty to use our own judgement and expertise to make decisions in the best interests of our constituents, even if those decisions may not align with the popular opinion. By prioritising our constituents' interests over our own popularity, we will demonstrate integrity and serve as true representatives of the people. Burke, in his wisdom, also said:

A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

I want the people of South Australia to have the opportunity to own their own home, to start a business, the opportunity to create and to give back, the opportunity to have a crack without the government getting in the way. But are our current systems working?

When I hear of people not being able to access the housing market, when stamp duty may account for up to 20 per cent of their deposit, is the system working? When bureaucrats make decisions that materially affect people's lives, close their businesses and restrict their ability to earn a living or even see their own families, while those same bureaucrats do not suffer the same consequences for their decisions, is the system working?

When regional people in the fight of their lives with cancer must strive 10-hour round trips to Adelaide for radiation treatment when funding was available for the service in their home region, is the system working? When everyday South Australians are suffering through a cost-of-living crisis and energy prices skyrocket, yet ideology trumps practicality in our energy mix, is the system working? When we as a state can build and as a nation operate nuclear submarines but cannot even have a conversation about utilising nuclear energy for our base load generation, is the system working?

We must begin the hard conversations as a state and as a nation to ensure the system works for everyday South Australians, that the levers we pull in this place make the road straight for those seeking an opportunity to prosper. Government is at its best when it works in tandem to provide equal access to opportunities and nurtures the aspirations of the citizens they are elected to represent. We must reward those who want to put in the effort, and encourage and support those who because of circumstance cannot.

These values, values the Liberal Party holds dearly, can unlock the potential of individuals and communities alike, unleash creativity and innovation, and build a brighter and more prosperous state. History shows that big, unwieldy and centralised governments are hampered in achieving these ideals. Decentralising government services away from the capital city and into the regions must be considered.

Post pandemic, this moment is a prime opportunity for us to reconsider how we deliver essential government services and to investigate moving departments into our regions or establishing satellite offices in our regional population centres. The benefits that could be derived from our regional cities and towns are immense.

This country's longest serving Prime Minister and founder of our great Liberal Party of Australia, Sir Robert Menzies, made home ownership a national policy objective. As a result, home ownership rates skyrocketed from 50 per cent of the population in the forties to over 70 per cent in the sixties while Menzies was at the helm of this ship called the great Australian dream. Menzies defined a home as:

…the foundation of sanity and sobriety; it is the indispensable condition of continuity; its health determines the health of society as a whole.

Menzies understood the importance of the family unit and that they must have a home for the family unit to be strong.

An increasing number of Australians believe home ownership is an unattainable aspiration. Without the bank of mum and dad, this great Australian dream is vanishing for today's youth. While adhering to Menzies' values of self-sacrifice, frugality and saving is still essential in achieving this dream, reforms are needed to reduce the heavy impost of taxation on the family home, which governments have become all too reliant on. Every policy area touching the housing market is crushed by regulation and red tape in finance, planning and construction.

There is no greater example in Australian history of the proportional relationship between bureaucratic regulation and poor outcomes, except perhaps in education. Stamp duty is lazy, archaic and an inefficient tax. Alternative taxation methods that are more efficient and fairer ought to be investigated, as jurisdictions to our east are pursuing.

Of course, no-one comes into this place without the assistance and support of many. To my wonderful friends here today—Bec Wight and Shane Hagan, Ben Uppill, Adam Creek, Mayor Lynette Martin OAM and Colin Martin—thank you for being friends I can count on through thick and thin. To my friends of the Mount Gambier Liberal branch and more broadly around the state: thank you for your prayers, your friendship and your support. I would like to acknowledge those here today—Mark and Julie Peucker, Neil and Krys Howard, John and Lyn Nitschke, John and Di Harvey, and Marg and Colin Westmore—and those who are watching back home. I hope I can make you all proud.

I would like to especially acknowledge federal member for Barker Tony Pasin MP and Senator Alex Antic for all their support over many years. To my friends whom I have served with on state executive: Party President Rowan Mumford, Lachie Haynes and his wife Sarah, Mayor Ella Winnall, Leah Blyth, Nicolle Flint, Aric Pierce, and Jake Hall-Evans, thank you for your continued friendship.

I would also like to acknowledge my friends and colleagues here today: the President, the Hon. Terry Stephens MLC; the Hon. Nicola Centofanti MLC; the Hon. Laura Curran MLC; the Hon. Heidi Girolamo MLC; the Hon. Dennis Hood MLC; Senator Andrew McLachlan CSC; opposition leader David Speirs MP; Sam Telfer MP; Adrian Pederick MP; Josh Teague MP; State Director Alex May; Alexander Hyde; Sam Duluk; David Blyth; Lee Girolamo; Cam Henderson; and many other of my colleagues in the lower house. Thank you for your friendship and support and for welcoming me into this place. To my Liberal colleagues in this place, the Hon. Jing Lee MLC and the Hon. Michelle Lensink MLC, I look forward to fighting the good fight with you.

To my brothers, Toby and Liam: you will not find two more different blokes who are exactly the same when it comes to their kindness, their humour and their love for family. I am so proud to call you my brothers. To my little sister, Lucy, the best looking Hood in parliament—sorry, Dennis—I am proud that we have been able to make a little bit of history in this place, but I am infinitely more proud of you and your passion and commitment to our state and to your community. Thank you for being my little sister. I love you. To Audrey and Ned, Uncle Ben loves you too.

To Mum, thank you for everything that you have sacrificed for me. To Alan, thank you for being a loving influence in our lives, especially to our kids. To Dad, to Bruce and to nanna, thank you for your love, your support and your wisdom throughout my life.

To my beautiful wife, Elle, thank you for all your love and for keeping me grounded. You are an inspiration to many for your dedication to your calling as a midwife, and I am so proud of you. I love you. To my wonderful children, Neave, Piper and Arlo, I could not ask for a more beautiful bunch of misfits to be a dad to. You are so much like me, but I know you will forge your own paths. Thank you for allowing dad to do this job. I know it is hard for me to be away, but I am here because of you, because I want to play a small part in ensuring that our state is a place where you can prosper, where you can grow and live your lives to the fullest. I love you more than you could know.

In closing, I would like to read a few lines from poet Adam Lindsay Gordon. Adam Lindsay Gordon was many things, including a horseman, a police officer and a politician, and he lived no more than 20 minutes from my home in Mount Gambier on a property called Dingley Dell. It is not Gordon's political career or daring horsemanship I wish to dwell on today, but his words.

Stand Like Stone is South Australia's largest community foundation, and it is a foundation I have been privileged to be a director of, along with many of my friends, including my late next door neighbour, Brian Page, who was a founding donor and patron of Stand Like Stone until his passing in 2022. Stand Like Stone is named after the final stanza of Gordon's poem, Ye Wearie Wayfarer. I hope that these words will guide me as I serve the people of South Australia in this place:

Life is mostly froth and bubble,

Two things stand like stone.

Kindness in another's trouble,

Courage in your own.

Motion carried.

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