Rowan Holzberger
Forde · Australian Labor Party · Australia
“… … … "Right at the beginning, it was thought that there was an intrusion in the relationship between the doctor and their patient," AMA president Tony Bartone said. … … … At the time Medicare was introduced in 1984, the AMA was heavily influenced by developments in the United Kingdom, particularly the National Health Service.”
“During my preparation for my contribution tonight I came across an article written in 2019, at the death of Bob Hawke, by ABC journalist Norman Hermant, and I'd like to read out a bit from it. The article was titled, 'Before Bob Hawke's Medicare, a visit to hospital forced many Australians into bankruptcy'.”
“My dad met my mum in Mount Isa, and I was born in Brisbane and grew up in Broken Hill, so I'm not sure where that quite places me. I've always actually believed regional Australia should have its own state. The cities could have one state, and regional Australia could have another state—anyway.”
“Mrs Buckingham's quote on thinking twice about going to see the doctor is something that all of us in our electorates have faced and heard about from people who told us that they would choose to put food on the table and feed their kids rather than see the doctor.”
“I think that will go some way to addressing some of those shortages; 17,000 doctors is a shot in the arm to the health system. Finally, the member for Riverina talked about the NDIS, kicking the proverbial out of us.”
“Even though they gave up, I think some time after the 1993 election, realising that they couldn't do what John Howard said and stab it in the stomach, they went around and tried to stab it in the back.”
The complete record
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“In Townsville, Mark Stevens, the owner of a successful scaffolding business, lost his equipment valued in excess of $1 million. He lost his house, his land and his work depot, valued at $1½ million. He endured a marriage breakdown and lived in his car for some time. He had his equipment impounded onsite for quite some time without payment, and his equipment was ultimately damaged by others. On the Sunshine Coast, the owner of a landscaping business subcontracted by Walton lost his house, his life savings, his car, his business and his wife and two kids. The majority of his subcontract took place in the months of July, August and September 2013, when Walton and NAB were well aware of their insolvency and their intentions to avoid their liabilities.”
“Walton set up two new companies and placed the company into liquidation, but NAB managed to preserve their debt in one of the companies that continued to operate. Les said: The report to creditors indicated 1350 subcontractors owed $70 million and over 100 of his staff owed approximately $1.5 million in wages and entitlements that were ultimately paid by design by the taxpayer There is evidence of NAB's overview of the phoenix companies until those entities entered administration. It was also evident that NAB acted with callous disregard for subcontractors and, along with Walton and his advisers, acted out of self-interest and to the detriment of subbies. In June 2013, prior to them entering administration, they moved money around. It is a sorry tale, with a human face. Les had three examples.”
“There was a lot going on there, and it was later identified that by about July 2012 they were trading insolvent. Les said: In July 2012, Walton restructured his companies. Walton's construction companies at this time inserted a "novation clause" in their subcontracts. This gave Walton the ability to transfer subcontracts without subcontractors consent when he chose to "phoenix" or "transfer assets". … NAB— who should be ashamed of themselves because of what they did in this case— concerned about their financial exposure, refused to issue Walton any more bank guarantees— and forced them into a corporate restructuring, which effectively took place in 2013. NAB essentially helped them exit the industry.”
“And, when a strategy of driving that subbie into the ground pays off and they go bust, they pocket that whole retention payment. So here it was that Deloitte did a report into Walton Construction. According to Les, it said: The Construction arm of the business is classified as Tier Two builder. In Construction terms this refers to a company with a turnover of between $150m and $500m and with the ability to operate multiple jobs with contract values exceeding $50m at any one time. The contracts are predominately associated with health care, government and large scale residential. This was not a small, two-bit player. Walton had an advisory board, so they got into trouble. The report indicated that they had about $337 million of work. They had about $240 million or so that was owed to subbies.”
“When you look at payment terms, I've worked for companies where there was something like 90-day payment terms, but 30-day payment terms are common. That means that you work for 30 days, you submit an invoice and then you wait another 30 days to be paid. Basically, you're carrying the debt. You're giving credit to your head contractor for 60 days or so, leaving you particularly vulnerable at the end of the contract, which is when most construction insolvencies happen. They happen at the end of the month, when payments to subbies fall due. Les said: Construction companies with hold a total of 5% of the subcontract value as security [retention] usually in cash— which they then use to fund jobs or use it as they will without any permission of the actual subcontractor that they're withholding it from.”
“Les said: It is commonplace for large construction companies or construction companies employing subcontractors to divert income from one project to another to service the others debt, make short term investments or divert cash to family trusts, all aided and abetted by their corporate advisors. It is commonplace also for construction companies to "target" individual subcontractors. This is the insidious practice of not paying a specific vulnerable subcontractor— as a strategy— usually at subcontract's end, with the clear intent of forcing the subcontractor into liquidation. That's the truly evil, awful stuff that they do behind the scenes. The stuff that they do in the open is really just as bad.”
“That's a total of 4,000 companies, from sole traders to four employees, who according to this statistic provide something like 80 per cent or so of all of the construction work that happens in this country. Nationally—this is back in 2015, remember—small business subbies employed about 800,000 people. In Queensland then, that was about 85,000 subbies employing about 250,000 people statewide. Les said: Insolvency in the building and construction industry— back in 2015— is valued at $3.4 billion annually and the debt is borne predominately by subcontractors. … Not reported in any statistics is the value of wrongful withholding of money by main contractors due to last payment bargaining, conjured disputes and bogus defect deductions. Anybody who has been in the construction industry knows that that is a regular practice.”
“What that means is that you've got mums and dads and sole traders essentially providing the infrastructure, the machinery and the labour but also the credit to do the jobs that we need to build our country. He went on: It follows then, that subcontractors are extremely diverse small businesses ranging from Mum and Dad operators to quite sophisticated businesses. We construct, manufacture, pre-fabricate, transport, fabricate and retail— In Forde, if you look at sole traders in construction, you've got about 2½ thousand subbies working in the construction industry who are sole traders. You've got another 1,300 or so companies based in Forde who employ between one and four employees.”
“This is a notoriously famous case, where a reputable company collapsed and left plenty of people in the lurch, but many people may not know the story. I couldn't actually find media reporting. It was only when I had a chance to talk to Les this afternoon, to catch up and let him know that I intended to bring this up today, that he told me that this story actually has a bit of a happy ending, believe it or not. But back in 2015 it was not a happy story. Les gave some background here: In Australia subcontractors— this is back in 2015, so things would've changed a little bit— are responsible for between 80% and 85% of all construction work, the highest involvement of subcontracting in the world.”
“There's also somebody else who I met while working for Senator Watt and who I really would like to give a particular shout-out, because his story sits at the heart of this legislation and this approach to combatting illegal phoenixing. That is somebody called Les Williams, who the assistant minister may well remember. He formed the Subcontractors Alliance, and I will quote extensively from a Senate submission that he made in about 2015. I won't quote him verbatim, because I'm going to into intersperse it with some of my own commentary. But I think Les's story, and the way Les puts it, really sums up what this legislation is designed to defeat. He began: The Subcontractors' Alliance … was formed in Queensland following the "collapse" of the Walton Construction Companies in early October 2013.”
“The assistant minister will have missed the very kind things that I said about him, but I remember standing in a high-rise sometime in 2018, as he was announcing the then Labor opposition's policy to combat illegal phoenixing, at the heart of which director identification numbers sat. I'm glad that he's here, because the assistant minister has done a lot of work over a long period of time. One of the reasons that I do remind people that I had a real job is that I did also work for Senator Murray Watt, and it was during that employment, from about 2018, that I stood with the now assistant minister to announce the Labor government's policy.”
“It can be fast and quality but it won't be cheap, or it can be cheap and fast but it won't be quality. But construction, I think, is the one industry in which it has to be all three. It has to be on time, it has to be on budget and it has to work. There is really no industry like construction. As I say, it's hard to get the work, it's hard to do the work and it's hard to get paid, but that last feature should not be an inherent feature of the construction industry. The fact that it is hard to get paid is a failure of governments to regulate to give protection to those businesses, which are quite often sole traders or mum-and-dad businesses.”
“We are now starting to see or hear, at least anecdotally, in the construction industry that phoenixing, while it still exists, is nowhere near as bad as it was before these reforms were introduced. As anyone who has sat through one of my speeches before knows, I like to remind people that I did have experience in the real world. I did plenty of jobs, one of which was running a construction company. I joke every now and then when I tell people that because, really, I'm only 26. This is what construction will do to you. There is nothing like construction. It is hard to get the work, it is hard to do the work and it's hard to get paid. It reminds me of that maxim for products and services: there are three features—quality, cheap, fast—and you can't have all three at one time.”
“I rise in support of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Business Registries Stabilisation and Uplift) Bill 2026. In doing so, I'd like to congratulate the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury not only for the work that he has done in this bill but the work that he has done for many, many years in the lead-up to this bill. What really lies at the heart of this legislation is the insidious practice of phoenixing, which is spread across all industries, of course, but is particularly prevalent in the construction industry. I know that the now assistant minister really led the Labor Party's policies to combat that awful soul-destroying, business-destroying practice of phoenixing.”
“I know that, basically, what we have now is really akin to systems abuse—what we put people through to access those services. And so— Debate interrupted.”
“Unfortunately, they had an opportunity there from 2018 to deal with the problems. They could have actually solved the problems that we are now left to deal with. That's why this bill is so important. That's why the work the Labor Party has done to try and get the NDIS back on track is so important. There are so many people in the electorate of Forde that rely on the NDIS. There's probably somewhere around 8,000 people on the NDIS. That's double what it is in other electorates. That's 60 per cent more than what's in the electorate of Parkes. I know the NDIS really inside out and I know the communities that rely on it. I know the people that rely on it. I know the absolute torture that people go through to access the NDIS and the fight to get the services that their kids and their family members so desperately need.”
“I rise in support of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. In doing so, I commend the work of not only the Minister for the NDIS, Senator McAllister, but also the caucus and the Labor Party, which has worked for many years not only before the inception of the NDIS but also in the inception of the plan to try and get it back on track. What we have seen in the history of the NDIS is that the Labor Party introduced it but the Liberal Party maladministered it. I make a big point in this place of reminding people that I've worked for a living in farming and in construction, but I say that as a preface because, from about 2018, I was working for Senator Murray Watt. As the NDIS scheme grew, all of the problems that were evident there at the time grew with the scheme.”
“It just shows how dysfunctional the NDIS has become when people like Phoenix, who the scheme is truly designed for, are not able to get the supports they need. There's a lot of anxiety in the community. There's a lot of anxiety in my community, particularly on changes to the NDIS, but I genuinely believe these changes are going to be for the better. They're going to return the NDIS back to the scheme that it was intended to be in the first place. Kids like Phoenix are going to be able to get the support they need. Disabled kids like my adult child are going to be able to get the supports they need outside of the NDIS. I think that Rebecca and Phoenix are fantastic examples and a fantastic family.”
“I rise today to share the experience I had on the weekend when I met Rebecca and her little two-year-old son, Phoenix. Phoenix has spina bifida. He was born with spina bifida. He had a complication when he was a baby, which led to surgery. He can't walk, he can't talk and he can't even roll over. But you know what? This boy is perfect. You wouldn't change a thing. His smile just lights up the room. Everybody who meets him says what an amazing little boy he is. But he has had to fight along with his mother for the services through the NDIS that he deserves. He can't even get a wheelchair. It's the only way for him to wheel himself around. He's learnt how to wheel around, but the wheels are so big on the wheelchair he's got that he's got blisters on his little arms.”
“Undertaking the biggest public housing build in a generation, I think, underlies the fact that there is a role for government and that people feel disconnected because the government has been disconnected from them.”
“He said you can't just throw your hands up in the air and say, 'There's nothing I can do about it; I'm only the Prime Minister.' I think that those two statements really underlie the government's strategy, which is to place government back at the central point of the economy to make sure that we run an economy that is for the people and that works for the people. There are two things. Look at the government intervening directly to save our critical industries and our critical manufacturing industries, like our smelters in Port Pirie and in Gladstone and our steelworks in Whyalla. I think it really sums up the government's commitment to getting itself back in that central role of government. But also look at the approach to public housing.”
“In my first 90-second statement to this House, I want to address some of the pain that our communities feel at the moment. We all know it. Every single member of this House who goes out into the community sees people struggling. It's confronting. There are two things that the Prime Minister said recently that I think really define how this government is tackling that. One is that his philosophy is that nobody is left behind and nobody is held back. The second thing is about when you're confronted with an unfair system.”
“In the scheme of things, I think it is one part of a very significant change in direction for this country, where you've got a government actually intervening in the economy to make sure that we've got not only the levers to control things when things go badly but also the stockpile of minerals or fuels which are practically needed. So I commend this bill to the House.”
“Again, these things aren't done just because they're the just and right thing to do, which they are, but they're going to have a practical economic impact on the cost of living for people. They're going to have a practical economic impact when it comes to buying your bananas at Woolies. It's going to have a practical economic impact on workers who are going to feel safer to go looking for a new job without the worry of being penalised by an employer trying to keep them. I commend this bill to the House. I ask the opposition—I'm not exactly sure what their position is, but I'm not sure they know what their position is either—to support this bill, because this is really a very sensible measure.”
“It was something like five bucks or six bucks for a bunch of bananas. There was no unit price. You didn't know how much it weighed. When I actually took those bananas and placed them on the scales, they cost twice as much by weight as exactly the same type of bananas sitting next to them. I've heard Woolies excuse this before in the past in the media, saying that they're making it convenient for people. It is convenient for Woolworths that it also happens to cost twice as much. We're going to be cracking down on that. We've made it easier for people to unsubscribe from online services. We've made it easier for people to be more mobile in the marketplace by outlawing unfair non-compete clauses.”
“The gym said, 'No, you can't cancel over the phone; you need to come in, in person.' It was alright for her to sign up online but not to cancel online. So she was expected to make a three-hour round trip just to cancel. After her persistence and after she showed them the law, she was able to get the gym to cancel her membership. But what if she wasn't so savvy? What about all of those other people who might have just given up and let whatever it is, $20 a week, get wasted? Whether it's strengthening the unit pricing code—I actually saw it in Woolies myself. I'd heard that they were doing this, and, because I knew they were doing it, I looked out for it the last time I went shopping. There is a practice where they bunch up five bananas together, and they sell that as a unit.”
“One of the reasons for that is governments haven't taken control of those essential services, those critical industries, and they've let them wither on the vine to the point where, in the biggest oil shock since the 1970s, we had two oil refineries operating. This legislation fits well and truly within that general strategy. The changes to the penalties for the oil code also sit within the government's wider strategy for consumer protection. Again, there's a long list there. The government has, for instance, outlawed things like unfair contract terms. I know one case where a young woman moved away from the gym she was going to, and she had a 90-minute one-way trip to get to the gym in order to use it, so she rang up to cancel.”
“Through the batteries program, among many other programs that exist through the government, the amount of electricity being created is higher than at any other point in the past. There's one piece of evidence that I don't think gets the credit it deserves: over the last summer we had more energy use than ever, and there wasn't a blackout nor a single day lost due to a shortage of electricity in the market. I think that there is an interventionist edge to this government which the public yearn for. I think that there is a lot of dissatisfaction in the community. People absolutely feel like they've been left behind.”
“The philosophy around public housing that I've always held on to is that public housing isn't there because it's provided out of the goodness of our hearts; public housing is there because you want to provide affordable housing to workers, to help keep the cost of living down and to help keep rents down. When you can do that, you actually take the pressure off wages, which helps business as well. It was written into the charter of the South Australian Housing Trust that it would have a focus on the economic development of the state. I think there is no single bigger productivity measure that a government can do than to provide affordable housing for workers. And so it is the case with energy as well.”
“Of course, the investments are not just in critical minerals and critical industries, though the list of those investments is really long and extensive, whether it's the 20 per cent gas reservation or the investment in the Critical Minerals Strategy and in a stockpile. It is not just about those literally elemental industries that Australia relies on; the government's investment and intervention in the housing sector and in the energy sector also need to be highly commended. Over the 10 years of the former government, I think they built something like 370 public housing dwellings. In Forde alone, at a site in Logan Reserve, we're building over 200 social housing dwellings, and I've been there.”
“We have realised that you cannot just leave it to the market to secure those sorts of important industries and to secure those sorts of important pieces of infrastructure. You just can't leave it to the market. Otherwise, you end up with the car industry walking out the door because you're not prepared to support it. If it weren't for this government taking this approach, you would have seen the steelworks in Whyalla and the smelters in Port Pirie, Gladstone and Mount Isa close. You would have seen Tomago under a lot more pressure than it is now. If government were to turn its back, those industries would walk out the door. Not only would that have a massively negative impact on employment in those regions and across the country, but it would place at risk our sovereign capacity to defend ourselves and to produce for ourselves.”
“As a Broken Hill boy, I always felt that Whyalla and Port Pirie in South Australia were our sister towns. We were all in the same television network. And so I grew up with an affinity for people in Whyalla and Port Pirie. That's why the federal government and the South Australian government investing billions of dollars to secure our steel supply is something that they should be commended for—and also securing the smelter in Port Pirie. Up in Queensland, you've got hundreds of millions of dollars at this stage going to protecting the smelters in Mount Isa, and there are hundreds of millions of dollars going to the investment, in Western Australia, in urea, which is essential to farming but also to the transport industry. This government is doing what governments haven't done over the last few decades.”
“But that also fits within a wider government strategy of not letting the important industries to our country just walk out the door and walk overseas, like has happened under previous governments. That's why I think the government really does need to be commended, and the community needs to be assured that this government is responding to those sorts of sovereign risks that exist when our essential industries are under pressure. As a Queenslander, the investment that the government made, something like $1 billion co-investing with the Queensland government I would credit, to support the Boyne Island smelters is going to secure aluminium production in Gladstone for the future. It is going to secure billions of dollars' worth of investment and hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs.”
“For example, the response through COVID took approximately six months for the ACCC to authorise the sort of cooperation amongst companies that would have otherwise fallen foul of corporation laws in order for them to coordinate supply of food during the COVID crisis. Six months is just not acceptable. We now know that we need to be able to be more flexible when it comes to fuel, in this case, or to any other sort of any other sort of pressure which is otherwise unforeseen. The fact is that this also sits well and truly within the Albanese Labor government's commitment to intervening in the economy where the private sector fails. That's why the government, in the recent budget, has a $14-something billion strategy to guarantee fuel supplies coming in the future.”
“This is another part I think of the government's wider strategy to see the Australian economy be more resilient. It is also part of the government's wider strategy to attack cost-of-living pressures through increasing consumer protection. One of the mechanisms that the government is now able to employ, if this bill passes, is something which falls short of declaring a national emergency and falls short of using the emergency powers under the Fuel Act. It allows for a sensible and measured approach by government and business working together to coordinate a response which at any other time might fall foul of competition laws.”
“I can't remember who it was that said, and it isn't my original thought, but they described the 19th century essentially as being about coal and steam, the 20th century as being about oil and the internal combustion engine and in the 21st century as going to be about electricity and renewable energy. At each points of those new energy ideas coming into the economy, living standards have gone up exponentially. You can see how quickly something like the price of fuel can flow through to living standards and can flow to through to costs not just in the price that we pay at the bowser as consumers but also for businesses as well. The government having mechanisms in place to be able to deal with things like fuel shortages is critical.”
“But we didn't get here by accident, and the government, through extremely innovative measures, like the export finance corporation bill, I think achieved things that you wouldn't have thought possible if you were just gaming this strategy out in an office somewhere. It was really a lesson for us to be able to set processes in place to make it easier in the future, and that is what this legislation does. I think that the realisation, which is not always apparent in the community, is how important the role energy plays in our economy is. I'd like to quote somebody else.”
“I rise in support of the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Responding to Exceptional Circumstances) Bill 2026. In doing so, I commend the ministers who have led this legislation, the ministers who have led the government's response to the problems arising out of a conflict well and truly out of our control, the Treasurer leading the economic team, the minister for energy and the minister for productivity, as well as the work that goes on within the government through our caucus processes. I think history will show this was just an excellent response to something that really came out of nowhere. I think that the rest of the economy and the rest of the public now feel some security, because we're not talking about it anymore, and that's always a good sign that things are under control.”
“This government is fixing up the problems, and it is going to take a lot of time, but I would encourage the Liberal-National coalition, rather than trying to chase One Nation votes, to go back to their grassroots.”
“That's why I'm slightly surprised that the Liberal-National coalition keeps wanting to attack the government for the situation that people find themselves in at the moment. This government really is taking, I think, for the first time in decades, a much more interventionist role in the economy—trying to fill that gap that was left by previous governments absenting the space—whether that is in housing, in undertaking the biggest public housing building program in a generation; whether that is in energy, in supercharging the investment in renewable energy to the point where we now have more electricity in the grid than at any other time; whether that be intervening in Medicare, in the biggest single investment of recent times in Medicare, which has restored bulk-billing to, for example, double the number of bulk-billing clinics in Forde alone; whether that's intervening in our critical industries, such as the billion-dollar investment in the smelter in Gladstone, the billions of dollars being invested in Whyalla to maintain our steelworks and the hundreds of millions of dollars being invested in Mount Isa to maintain the smelters there; whether it's intervening again to make sure that TAFE is back up and running again by providing free TAFE to give our tradies and our economy the skills that are needed to build the housing that is so desperately needed.”
“We saw that, after 30 years or so of his being in government, of his making sure that within the actual charter of the South Australian Housing Trust was that it would aid in the economic development of the state, of his following an economic policy which essentially provided cheap, affordable housing to workers—you had car workers, railway workers, teachers living in public housing—it was able to keep the pressure off wages, and that was, in turn, able to help business. But what we saw, really, under the Howard governments and under the Morrison government—the Morrison government built something like 370 public houses in the whole 10 years it was in there. What we saw there was a complete abrogation of its responsibilities to intervene in that marketplace and step in where the private sector was clearly failing.”
“It is, I guess, a certain mind virus, which took over governments over the last 30 or 40 years, of economic rationalism, this idea that the government should completely absent itself from the field. The one thing that I would try and say to your colleagues in the Liberal-National coalition, Deputy Speaker Buchholz, is to have a look at what made the Liberal-National coalition and the Liberal Party successful in postwar Australia. In many ways, one of my economic role models was the Liberal premier of South Australia, who was the Premier from 1940 to 1970. He was probably the greatest proponent of building public housing in Australia.”
“Any local member that's out there in the community—which I'm sure is all 150 of us—knows that people are really doing it tough at the moment, that it is like being out in the trenches there, whether it is finding somewhere to live, whether it's paying an electricity bill. The question, though, is how did we get there? Remember that, federally, over the last 30 years or so, the Liberal-National coalition has been in government for 20 of them. So it's really incredible to think that, after barely four years, this government would have been able to fix the problems that we were left with. But it is not just the Liberal-National coalition that I'd criticise for this.”
“I rise to oppose this motion today, and, in doing so, I reflect on the situation that the mover of this motion, the member for Fadden, finds himself at the moment. I just wonder why he's spending so much energy attacking the government, when actually is the Labor Party really the threat in Fadden at the moment? I also reflect on whether there's much point in pointing out the inaccuracies of the Liberal-National coalition, because is anyone in the community really worried about what the Liberal-National coalition are doing at the moment? I think that where we are now is really a chance to look at how we've got here. We know it's tough.”
“My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister. How will the Albanese Labor government's record investment in the Australian Defence Force improve defence capability? How does this compare to other approaches?”
“I just realised I was remiss when I was talking about the Beenleigh Theatre Group to not give a shout-out to Chris Art, who always makes me feel extremely welcome when I go to the performances there, and to Ros Johnson, who is, I think, in many ways the silent backbone of the organisation. It is a pleasure to be a patron of that organisation, and it is a great honour to be in this place to support this policy, which sits within that wider government policy of supporting the arts in this country.”
“There's something like a $17 billion industry in Australia now which has grown up around the arts. It employs somewhere around 400,000 Australians. In Forde, there are many people working in the film industry which is burgeoning in the Gold Coast. There are not only people who are taking part in some of the technical things but also carpenters, painters and drivers, and it underlies more of our economy than many people might imagine. The fact is that, again, this sits well and truly within federal Labor's—by that, I mean the Labor Party's—commitment to Australia, their commitment to Australian culture. The idea that we can rely on other countries to give us our expression of what it means to be Australian—it just does not happen without government being involved. And so it is that I commend this bill. This is an important bill.”
“Indeed, Creative Nation was launched by prime minister Paul Keating and arts minister Michael Lee, followed by Creative Australia as the product of prime minister Gillard and arts minister Simon Crean. Here we are again, fixing, as Paul Keating called it, the 'Rip Van Winkle years' of coalition government, where nothing was done, where the forelock was tugged to the mother country. Here it is again: a reforming Labor government committed to the arts, committed to the expression of the Australian people, is taking steps to give people that space, that income, that ability to express themselves artistically. But it is not just, of course, about the beauty of that sort of spiritual fulfilment. It is a strong economic imperative that the government has a commitment to arts policy.”
“That's why I think artists and authors have an income of around whatever it is—$16,000 or $17,000 a year; it's somewhere around there—because the money is actually not the important thing. It's being able to express yourself. To bring it back to where we are and where this policy sits, it sits well and truly within the Labor Party's history of advancing Australia that the Whitlam government very much represented. It's a rejection of the cultural cringe, where we looked to the old country for our cultural leadership. The election of the Whitlam government very much marked that clear line. And so it was that the policy which we are effectively adapting today was first established as the Public Lending Right in 1974 by the Whitlam government. It's when the Whitlam government established the Australia Council.”
“While I said that in my first speech that in many ways I'm a huge believer that technology is going to create that material wealth to give us the time to really pursue our passions, I think that in many ways we're living in the Dark Ages and that people in the future will look back on us as we look back on the Romans and go, 'Jeez, they were really clever to get by with what they had, but I wouldn't like to live then.' I think that, when we've got that room to really follow our passions and follow our pursuits, that is really the highest form of being a human being. In many ways it is us living in this world today where none of us have time. We're all flat out—not just in this place, of course, but trying to raise a kid, trying to look after a sick parent. It really means that you just don't have the time to follow your passion.”