Wednesday, 21 September 2022

Member for Richmond

Valedictory statement

Mr WYNNE (Richmond) (15:32): I commence my contribution to this Parliament with some acknowledgements and thanks. Firstly, I want to acknowledge and thank my wife, Svetlana Karovich, who is with us here today. Svetlana embodies the best values of Labor and along with her late mother, Zivana, always ensured that I stayed the course. I also want to take this opportunity to call out her career in the service of the public good through the arts, starting of course in regional Victoria as a director of the Benalla Art Gallery—

Mr Andrews: A great gallery.

Mr WYNNE: A great gallery—then on to touring exhibitions of art both nationally and internationally and continuing with her long-term commitment to developing and curating an outstanding collection of contemporary Australian art at the magnificent Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. She is one of only a handful of people who do this work across Australia as part of the tax incentives to the arts scheme, and I am immensely proud of the work that she has done. Her work of course is a source of comfort to patients, staff and visitors at this world-leading facility. I also want to thank my two sons, Dushan and Sasha, who have lived most of their lives with me in Spring Street and have seen perhaps the best and the worst of political life. I am immensely proud of what they have achieved in their professional careers. They are simply fine young men.

I also want to thank the heroes of the Australian Labor Party, the men and women of the union movement and the past and present ALP branch members in the Richmond electorate. We had a wonderful night last night, Premier, where the Richmond electorate folk came together and we celebrated what was really a fantastic journey that we have been on together. I acknowledge Danae Bosler, who is here today. She put that together. I thank you, Danae, for doing that work. You have all been steadfast in your support.

I also want to acknowledge of course our friends in the trade union movement, particularly some of the folk who have been through a very long journey together. David Leydon from the ASU is a magnificent person, a magnificent unionist but also a magnificent community person through his wonderful work with the Fitzroy Reds. I note upstairs a friend from the fourth estate who may have had some association over the journey with that particular team. I am sure he would attest to the fantastic work that David has done for such an incredible length of time. Senator Jess Walsh, of course, was a marvellous support to me through United Voice, just a fantastic person, and what a wonderful achievement for her to have achieved this new role as a senator for Victoria. It has been a pleasure to work with Luke Hilakari and the team at Trades Hall. We have completely reimagined the fighting team of unionists at Trades Hall, who do such a magnificent job in representing the trade union—I am going to need a bottle of water, I think.

Mr Andrews interjected.

Mr WYNNE: Thanks, Premier. They are coming from everywhere.

Mr Andrews: Something stronger afterwards perhaps?

Mr WYNNE: Yes, perhaps. They represent the trade union movement. And of course the magnificent renovation of the—

Mr Andrews: Spectacular.

Mr WYNNE: spectacular renovation of the Victorian Trades Hall—the workers’ Parliament—was a marvellous project to work with you on, Premier.

I want to thank the ALP for giving me incredible opportunities to serve at the highest levels of all three tiers of government, firstly at the City of Melbourne where I served for six years and of course with a term as Lord Mayor. Just three observations from that time—

Mr Andrews interjected.

Mr WYNNE: Only three, Premier. The first was the amazing opportunity to provide the keys to the City of Melbourne to the extraordinary Nelson Mandela. If there has been one political highlight in my time, I remember Svetlana and I were there together, completely overwhelmed that this extraordinary world leader had come to Melbourne. He came to Melbourne almost as one of the first places that he came to after his imprisonment. Can you imagine that 27 years he was in prison for his beliefs? He came very soon after his release to thank people here in Melbourne and Sydney, particularly our friends in the trade union movement and particularly friends from my father’s union, the Maritime Union of Australia, who did such an incredible amount of work to stand up against that vicious apartheid regime in South Africa. That was an amazing day in my life.

The second of course—and everyone claims credit for this one, but I do have to claim credit for this; victory has got a thousand fathers, as they say—was the project for postcode 3000. This was this mad idea that we had. This was in the late 1980s and early 1990s. We thought, ‘Well, gee, maybe we could get a few people to actually come and live in the city. That’d be a good thing to try to revitalise the city a bit’. So we had this mad idea that perhaps we might be able to get 3000 people to come and live in the city, in the CBD. At the time a survey was undertaken, and they worked out that there were about 360 people who actually lived in the CBD. Most of them were hippies and squatters and so forth, living in warehouses around the place, save and except for this rather eccentric fellow called Captain Peter Janson—well known to some of us and still with us, I believe. Captain Janson lived across the road here in the turret of the Windsor Hotel. Allegedly he lived up there with a couple of dingoes that he would go for a walk around the gardens here with. I do not know about the dingoes, but anyway there was something up there. There was Captain Janson and about 364 others. We figured that if we got 3000 people to live in the city, that would be an extraordinary thing. Have a look at it now. It is absolutely amazing.

The third was that we were robbed. Let us be clear, we were robbed of the Olympic Games in 1996. I declare it: we were robbed, absolutely robbed by Atlanta. You have got to be kidding! To Atlanta? Are you serious? What did they call them? The Coca-Cola games. Righto, I will move on. Shocking.

Secondly, I was a senior adviser to the great urbanist and intellectual Brian Howe, who of course was Deputy Prime Minister in the Hawke and Keating governments. Thirdly, during my time in this Parliament I have had to serve in a number of roles. I believe, Premier, I am now the longest serving planning minister in the state’s history. To be the Minister for Planning is a very, very onerous job because you have to do it without any reference to any other member of the cabinet or to any subcommittee of the cabinet. You have to make those decisions and balance out the competing priorities, as is always the case in planning, when it is often very contested. It was a very tough job, a very difficult job, and others will make their judgements on how well I performed in that job.

But I found a new friend. You will appreciate this. A call came in to me from a person; I did not know their number. They said, ‘Mate, mate, it’s Paul’. I said, ‘Yes?’ ‘Mate, it’s Paul Keating’. Is it the Jeffrey call?

Mr Andrews: On a point of order, there is no comparison.

Mr WYNNE: Paul Keating loves cities. He loves urban design, he absolutely loves cities and he loves Melbourne. I am probably revealing things I should not, but he owns a property here in East Melbourne. He would ring me fairly regularly because he would have picked up something that had been in the Australian Financial Review. It would have been about a decision I had made, that maybe it was good or maybe it was not so good, and he would give me some free and clear advice about what he thought about those matters and indeed what he also thought about perhaps some of the people who stood behind some of those developments. I very much always appreciated the conversations I had with him. Some of them at times were lengthy; some of them may have been a little fruity, perhaps sometimes at my expense. But he was certainly always very fulsome in his advice to me and continues to be. I very much appreciated that.

I want to thank the Premier. He and I have shared a long journey over the past 25 years, and it has been a pleasure to serve and work with him in the pursuit of so many of our great reforms. We go back 25 years to the early days of the Premier, a fellow called Alan Griffin and my colleague here the member for Altona. I was tasked with the job of allegedly trying to be the campaign manager for Alan Griffin at the time. Alan Griffin won a marginal seat, but one of the reasons why he was successful in his campaigns was that we never let him out of the office. I foolishly let him out of the office. I was the campaign manager, but he would simply disregard that. The Premier will recall this.

Mr Andrews: I do.

Mr WYNNE: We sent him down to the Cranbourne shopping centre to do a bit of street stalling and meeting people. I went down with him. He lasted an hour. He argued with every single person who was there, and I said, ‘You’re never coming out again! You just go and stay in the office’. The member for Altona will attest to this, and so will the Premier. We actually said, ‘You just stay in the office and we’ll just get on with the campaign’. Extraordinarily we won the seat of Corinella, which was a marginal seat, and then the seat of Bruce on a number of other occasions. In some shape or form, Premier, we all came out hopefully relatively unscarred from that experience. The Premier has championed progress and made our state a much fairer place, and that, I would put to you, is what leadership looks like. We of course also served two other outstanding leaders in Steve Bracks and John Brumby, and their legacies endure and continue to burn bright.

Reflecting on my time in the Parliament, the political contest has always been framed, for me, by the left and the pseudo-left. The national secretary of the ALP, in a recent Press Club address, summed up that contest with great clarity. He said the Greens political party will always seek to be ‘two steps to the left of Labor’ and claim all of our progressive policy achievements as their work, then criticise us of course for not doing more. What a sad way to practice politics—to be always in the grandstand, never on the field of play where the real work is done and the real progress won. As the member for Richmond, I beat off the Greens on six occasions, and my colleague Lauren O’Dwyer, who is with us today, will do it again in November—just wait and see.

I spoke earlier about our social reforms, and I wanted to single out the massive commitment of this government to two things: education and housing. Labor has always understood the power of education. That is why we employ, rather than sack, teachers. That is why we build, rather than close, schools. After all it was the Labor government that reopened Fitzroy High School, the only high school of the many closed by the Kennett government that ever reopened. And it was the member for Monbulk as Minister for Education who initiated and oversaw the biggest funding boost to public education in this state’s history. The massive investment in my electorate has been, frankly, stunning. Every one of our primary schools has received upgraded funding. We have built world-class teaching environments at Richmond High School and Wurun campus on the gasworks site, which of course we visited, Premier, only recently, and we have committed to upgrading the wonderful Collingwood College as well. The member for Monbulk—and I hope he is listening today, because he cannot be with us—has much to be proud of.

The record investment we are also making in public and social housing also speaks to the core values of this government and the need to back a party that delivers, rather than promises, progress. The commitment of $5.3 billion for public and social housing is the largest investment by any state or federal government ever. In just four years we will build not 12 000; it is likely we could potentially build, Minister, 15 000 new homes across the state. Those new homes of course are a great outcome for those in acute housing need.

In addition, those new homes are boosting the economy, creating jobs and training new tradespeople. Speaking as someone who started out as a social worker helping public housing residents and worked for two great advocates of public housing, Barry Pullen and Brian Howe, and who spent half his maiden speech in this chamber pushing for the expansion of public housing, I am immensely proud of the Big Housing Build. I am also proud of our response to rough sleeping and homelessness at the height of the pandemic. We took close to 2000 rough sleepers off the streets, putting them into hotels, and one by one found long-term housing for many of these individuals and indeed some families as well. That is real progress; that is the Labor way.

Others have spoken eloquently about our broader reform agenda. With that in mind, I will not detail the many, many things—I should have learned from the member for Lara, I should have tabled some of this. I will only talk about two things. I just want to touch upon a few memorable moments from what has been a long list of reforms. The first memorable moment is the profound impact of the voluntary assisted dying legislation. That humanitarian reform, driven by my colleague the member for Altona, has given great comfort to individuals and families in duress—and believe me, Jill was a tireless advocate for this work. She tracked me down—and my wife—when we were on holiday in Croatia. It did not matter that I was in another time zone on the other side of the world. Jill was relentless; she kept calling me night after night to insist that I lobby my colleagues in support of the legislation. What choice did I have? And so we did.

Another highlight of course is the establishment of the medically supervised injecting facility. I championed the need for the facility during my maiden speech in 1999. Why did I campaign so long and hard? Because I knew it would save lives. Prior to the centre opening 34 people died lonely deaths in the precinct of North Richmond—34 people, deaths that could have been avoided. But the centre has not just saved lives, it has also helped people beat the scourge of heroin addiction. That is what happens when instead of judging people you give them the support, counselling and treatment that they need.

Another highlight is our response to the challenge of combustible cladding on residential buildings. Victoria led the way on this issue, and I am so pleased with the progress of that work. We also led the push to amend the Building Code of Australia, requiring accessibility features in all newly built residential housing. And I am delighted that the new Minister for Planning had the opportunity recently to bring that important work to fruition. That building code reform will be increasingly important as our population ages, because it will help Australians with disability and mobility challenges to live with dignity in their own homes.

In conclusion, I have some people to thank. I have been privileged to work with many dedicated staff over 23 years, too many of them to individually name, but there are a few people I particularly need to mention. Maureen Corrigan—Maureen is here today. She has served the Labor cause for 30 years. She probably should not stand up—Speaker, I know that is unparliamentary—but she is there. Wave your hand. There she is. She has served our cause for 30 years with dedication and fidelity. There are my electorate staff, Hamish, Lloyd, Lucy and Harry, who are here today or who are listening in to this. There are my ministerial staff, led with professionalism and charm by Peter Keogh. I think he is here somewhere. There he is, my chief of staff, and there is his deputy, Glen Brandum, who served me in a variety of roles over most of my political career.

One of the first lessons I learned from Barry Pullen and Brian Howe was that as a minister you should surround yourself with people who are expert in their field and smarter than you are. As a staffer for Brian and Barry I was clearly the exception to that rule. But the successes I have achieved in politics are due to the team of brilliant experts I had around me, and I sincerely want to thank them all for sharing the journey with me. Many of them are in the upstairs gallery today. So many have gone on to stellar careers in the diplomatic service, the United Nations, senior public service roles, the Melbourne Bar, community sector leadership and of course national leadership of our party.

Also my thanks to you, Bridget, the parliamentary staff, the catering staff, the gardening staff and the security people. To all of you who act with extraordinary professionalism: I thank you sincerely for everything you do for us. Anne Sargent and Greg in the upper house, great people who I have gone on a journey with together, I acknowledge as well. Perhaps there will be a better time for the Kangas—I am not sure; let us hope.

I am a boy from the working class, an inner-city kid of humble means, a son of a wharf labourer and one of nine children. We survived on the single wage of my father and the bedrock of my magnificent mother, who raised us all and who of course I lost when I was barely a teenager. I am grateful for everything my parents gave me, and I hope that they would be proud of what I have achieved.

As this chapter closes, I still have plenty of gas in the tank and, according to my specialist, I have been replumbed for another 20 years. Can I just say to the magnificent surgeons at the Royal Melbourne Hospital—I was a punter who came in off the street, and I was in big trouble—the work that they did to, frankly, save my life I will never forget. If you are going to be seriously ill in this state, make sure you are near a public teaching hospital. They were absolutely superb for me, and I will thank them every single day for what they did for me. So, Premier, who knows where I might pop up in the next stage of my working life. I am not going anywhere because my wife has made it explicitly clear: ‘You’re not going to be hanging around at home’.

When I made my maiden speech on 9 November 1999 I said I came with a sense of optimism and hope for the future of Victoria. Ever since then I have done my best to make that better future a reality for the people of Richmond and Victoria. For 23 years I have never left the field of play, never stopped fighting for social and economic justice and never stopped wanting to do more. I have given it everything that I could give, and now it is time for others to take my place. I have no regrets. And thanks to all those I have worked with, I am leaving this place as I arrived: with a real sense of optimism and hope for the future. Premier, to you, to the Speaker—who we have had a lot of fun with over the journey, particularly in our adjournments—and to all of my colleagues I say thank you. Thank you sincerely for the honour of serving the people of this great state of Victoria.

Members applauded.

The SPEAKER: Members, before I call the member for Yan Yean, under the resolution of the house I am required to interrupt business at 4.00 pm for our grievance debate. Is leave granted to allow the member for Yan Yean to complete her valedictory statement before the house proceeds to the grievance debate?

Leave granted.