Hansard

Address-in-Reply

Address-in-Reply

Motion

Resumed from 8 April 2025 on the following motion, moved by Hon Dan Caddy (Parliamentary Secretary):

That the following address be presented to His Excellency:

To His Excellency, the Honourable Christopher John Dawson, Companion of the Order of Australia, Australian Police Medal, Governor in and over the State of Western Australia and its dependencies in the Commonwealth of Australia.

May it please Your Excellency:

We, the members of the Legislative Council of the Parliament of Western Australia in Parliament assembled, beg to express our loyalty to our most gracious sovereign and thank Your Excellency for the speech you have been pleased to deliver to Parliament.

The President: Members, before I give the call to Hon Martin Pritchard, we will note that this is the honourable member's valedictory speech and that the usual courtesies and practices of the house remain.

Hon Martin Pritchard (North Metropolitan Region) (1:05 pm): Thank you, President.

As I near retirement and the end of my working life, I have had cause to reflect on the life that I have led so far. Coincidentally, I have also chosen the next book that I wish to read in retirement. I say "coincidentally" because they could both be summed up in the title of that book—A Fortunate Life. Given the era that the book deals with, I am sure there is no real comparison, but I have had my own trials and tribulations, but many more beautiful moments and rewarding experiences. I do not propose to go through my life story again, as I spoke in some detail about that in my first speech in this place, but I may revisit some similar points as I acknowledge some sliding door moments and pass on my gratitude to some of the biggest influences that I have had in my fortunate life.

Probably the biggest impact on my life happened when I was nine years old. My parents chose to emigrate to Western Australia. It probably was not the best thing for their marriage. As with many families of that era, they had to endure the loneliness of being isolated from their own extended families while establishing a new home for their children. Those challenges drove them to divorce, but I am certain that they did present myself and my sisters a much better lifestyle and many more opportunities than we would have had in England. It was a pretty rough time for all. It is probably why I went off the rails a little bit during my teens. But really, no excuses, as everything is a choice and I could not ask more from my parents than what they did then and what they have tried to do for us ever since.

The next sliding door moment is a bit embarrassing and a bit random. I have not really spoken about it ever. In my late teens I was deliberately mean to a person who I cared about, with the sole purpose of getting out of a relationship. Even worse, I did it over the phone. Words cannot convey how embarrassed I still feel when I think of who I was at that moment. There were many reasons for doing it but no real justification for the way in which I did it. I think of it often, as it was a point in time after which I made a conscious decision to do better, to be better. Since that time, I have never assumed that my point of view is the most important or that I need to be mean to be firm. As the Premier has said on many occasions, it is good to be humble but not weak. I may not have always achieved my goal in doing better, but I am always trying. I can truly say that I have never regretted one charitable act or kind gesture in my life so far, yet I have many regrets when I have fallen short. I want to take this opportunity to apologise to that person from my youth, even with the knowledge that she will never hear it. I can only hope that the many people whom I have met since have felt more respect from me than I displayed on that occasion.

Probably the biggest influence in my life entered soon after that. Next Friday is the 43rd anniversary of my marriage to my wife, Gina. Words fail me in trying to describe the love and support that Gina has given me through all of that time. She has built a wonderful home and contributed in so many ways to the life that we have together, whilst all the time allowing me to follow my passion for social justice. Now comes the big test, as she tries to continue to do that with me underfoot.

I hope Gina remembers our pledge to be life partners, as she is the one person who, even after so many years together, I like to spend time with. Just as an aside, members know how many functions we get invited to. A small secret of mine that I can now share as I head towards retirement is that I always preferred the invitations that said “plus one”, as I always knew that I would have a good night and somebody very interesting to talk to. Gina has always carried the greater burden of making a home and raising our two beautiful children, Jessica and Danielle. I hope Gina will not mind, but I want to share with her the pride we both have on how they have turned out. Both are kind and resourceful with a strong social conscience. Jess has followed me into the union movement and Dani is an interpreter for the deaf. They both have found loving partners in Lucy and Callum and have families of their own. I am pleased to say that we are all close and they still like spending time together. From their unions, Gina and I now have four grandchildren: Sophie, Juniper, Ella and Darcy. Anyone who knows me will know how absolutely smitten I am with these four wonderful little people. They are the reason why I am so pleased and content to move into the next phase of our lives. I hope to spend as much time as possible with them before they inevitably gain their own friends and interests. If we are lucky, as we have been with our own kids and their partners, they may still want to spend time with us.

Getting back to the general theme of a fortunate life, there have also been some losses along the way. The loss of my father-in-law, John, hit the whole family very hard and I only hope that my mother-in-law, Nina, who is in the chamber today, continues to get meaning out of being the matriarch of our family. John was a gentleman in all senses of the word. I think it is true to say that he probably would have enjoyed the last 10 years of me being in Parliament even more than I have. It was also a shock to lose my stepmother, Catherine—or Kit as she was always called—and my father, Ken, six weeks after her. In their latter years, it was a bit sad to see one fit of body but slowly losing the battle with dementia, and the other sharp as a tack but the body losing the battle also. Whatever the challenges, they always faced them together—even in death, it seems. I hope they are both at peace. But the most tragic loss was the passing of my brother-in-law, Raymond, at such a young age. Losing people at an old age is a sad fact of life, but when you lose somebody so young, it is heartbreaking. Unfortunately, we will never know what he would have done with his life. I am happy to say that we still have Nina and my mum, June, who turns 90 this year, as well as her partner, Hans, all of whom I love dearly. One of my sisters, Bev, and her partner, Craig, live close and we do love spending time with them, but unfortunately my eldest sister, Val, and her family, and Gina's sister, Fred, and her family, live a long way away so we do not often catch up with them. Thank you for all being part of the experiment that my parents started so many years ago and for your support of me and my family.

I would like to turn my mind now to some of the other important influences in my life. I spent the first 11 years of my working life in retail and I often use examples from that period of time when talking to young people about the importance of the labour movement. I wonder whether members can still recall when a woman working at Coles had achieved the highlight of her career when she became the front-end controller and wore a red zip-up smock rather than the old familiar light blue one, while I, as an inexperienced young man of 18, was employed as a training manager from day one. To rub salt into the wound, I was put in charge of many of those women who had far more experience than I. Along with that came the offer of a company-based superannuation scheme, which was not offered to over 85% of the workforce who just happened to be women. That scheme was a far cry from the industry schemes that we have today, as it was not transferable and it was designed to try to tie you to the company for life, with financial penalties if you ever left. This situation may not have been as bizarre as The Handmaid's Tale, but it was a long way from a fair treatment or equality. It was the first time that I can remember seeing blatant discrimination in the workplace. I mentioned Coles, but most retail workplaces were the same. It just so happened that working at Coles was my experience.

It was a different world in the 70s and 80s. I am pleased to say that even then I knew the difference between right and wrong. Unfortunately, I was not well equipped to tackle those sort of problems at that time. The truth was that even though I was a union member, I did not recognise the power of the union or the strength of unity that it provides. That side of me did not blossom until years later. The Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association of WA has always been a big part of my life and I would like to thank the SDA's Ben Harris and Jo Clossic, the current leadership team, and all of the truly dedicated employees and members over the years who worked with me to make a difference for workers in the retail and warehousing industry.

I would like to single out Hon Kate Doust, who recruited me many years ago and allowed me to give voice to the injustices around me. I originally joined the SDA in 1978 and have been a member almost all my working life. I was an SDA member, initially working at Coles and then at Aherns for nearly 11 years. I also took on the role of store delegate for the last four of those years. I then became an SDA organiser for six years and then assistant secretary for a further 20 years. Since 2015, I have represented workers and the broader community in this place. There is not one part of that working history that I am not immensely proud of. I, like Hon Sue Ellery, cannot fathom how anyone can suggest that working for a union is anything other than real life experience. Actually, it is the best type of experience for any political role, in my view. I have spent most of my life representing people and trying to improve their lives. Is that not what we are meant to be doing as members of Parliament?

Probably the only thing that is more important to me than service is my family. I have been a member of the Labor Party since 1988 and would like to thank the Labor Party, Ellie Whiteaker and Lauren Cayoun, the leadership team and their staff who took us to the March election. Even more importantly, I would like to thank the wonderful members and volunteers who keep this great labour movement going. There is nothing more irresistible than the labour movement when both the industrial and political wings work together. The introduction of industry superannuation, the defeat of workplace agreements in this state, and WorkChoices federally, are just some examples among many. If you have no idea why I am so proud of the role that my union and I played in these events, I urge you to look up these things and how they came along and why we should all take an active interest in what is going on around us, political or otherwise.

I would like to thank my own staff in my electoral office, who have been with me through this whole wild ride. You know how much I appreciate you. I wish you well for the future. I would like to thank the President and the Speaker, along with all their staff here in this illustrious place. Some of you, we do not get to see all of the time, and others I am far too familiar with—the dining room springs to mind. I want you to know that this humble backbencher is grateful for all of the work that you do to make this place work. I am glad that I have some time left to pass on my thanks more personally. The only criticism is that it has been such a lovely experience that the last 10 years have gone past with the blink of an eye.

I mentioned earlier that my point of view is not necessarily the most important, but I would like to offer some limited observations from my time here.

Under then Premier McGowan, Labor guided Western Australia and our constituents through probably one of the greatest physical and economic threats of our time. In many ways, we now think of COVID-19 as something in the rear-vision mirror that we have survived even though it is still circulating within our communities. I would personally like to thank Mark and the close team that was around him who worked hard to get us through. Under Premier Cook, we now have to manoeuvre through a minefield, not of our own making, as President Trump introduces unprecedented tariffs of the largest market in the world. I leave this place knowing that the right person and the right party—the Labor Party—will see us safely through these difficult times.

To my colleagues, you work hard and you are united. I have enjoyed my time working with you all. I am truly amazed at the quality of the people I am leaving behind as well as those who are coming in when I leave on 21 May. There is not much more to say but congratulations on a stunning victory in March.

To the opposition, I have to say: work harder and get united. Not everyone can be Premier or a minister. Being a backbencher is not always glamorous, but it is necessary and can often be rewarding. I remember when I first came into this place. We were in opposition and I can still feel the frustration of being on the wrong side of the numbers. I think there were nine of us, if my memory serves. Our sole focus was trying to get back on to the government bench. We did not just wait for the winds to change. Each of us prepared 45-minute speeches on almost every bit of legislation that came before us, whether or not we got the opportunity to give it. We often had to prepare a further speech if we were proposing amendments. All of us spent each sitting day in the chamber unless there was a good reason not to do so. We did all of that knowing that the coalition government had the numbers to get legislation through in its own right. I do not know how much it contributed to the win in 2017, but it was a physical demonstration of the Labor Party's desire for success through being an effective opposition. Of course I want the Labor Party to win in 2029, but I actually believe in our form of government, and for that reason, I hope that the new opposition does better.

To the crossbench, I am not a big supporter of the crossbench holding the balance of power. It is not because I worry about the diversity of opinion. I am happy to accept the will of the people, even if I do have some reservations. The issue for me is that often individuals and very small parties are elected on a small band of commitments, and sometimes on a single issue. The electorate often has no idea how those members are going to vote on the broad range of issues that may come before us in this place. I often get the impression that the members themselves struggle with the complexity and volume of the decisions they have to make. There is no malice intended in anything I have said. I genuinely believe that almost every person elected to this place wants to make a difference for good, and it is okay to have a different view on how we get there.

All in all, this is a wonderful and, at times, strange place to work. It boggles my mind to think that we might start a speech in February and not finish it until June. I find it interesting that we start every sitting day with a Christian prayer. It alarms me that this is one of the only workplaces that allows alcohol to be served, and I do not say that because I no longer drink. To me, it is distressing that we still have late-night sittings when the world is trying to move towards a work–life balance. But with all that said and with all the pomp and ceremony, this place does work, and it deserves my reverence.

We have had some good debates and passed some good legislation during my time here. The most bizarre for me was a disagreement that I had with Hon Helen Morton on the correct classification of mushrooms during the bill to sell the Canning Vale markets. I still believe that mushrooms do not constitute a vegetable, but the numbers in this place at that time disagreed with me. Maybe the fact that it was two o'clock in the morning swayed the argument.

I think the most iconic bill was the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill. I can truly say that I started off with a view to vote against its introduction, but I did as we are supposed to do. I listened to the debate and spoke to stakeholders and constituents. Finally, I was swayed and I supported its passage.

Of course, members here know that most legislation, although scrutinised by this house, passes without much contention, but that is not very newsworthy, so the last observation I wish to make concerns the media. I have spent the last 10 years trying to avoid reporters whenever possible. The reason being is the obvious bias in our local newspaper. What leads me to think this, you may ask. A good example comes from The West Australian of 4 April that dedicated the whole front page to an article and a picture of the Prime Minister slipping. Did he hurt himself? No. Are there any suggestions that he is too feeble to do the job? No. Did it stop him from doing the address? No. So why was the story front-page news? There was even a double-page spread and more photos inside the paper. It must have been a slow news day or perhaps it was designed to try to embarrass the Prime Minister and give a leg-up to the opposition. Given the insatiable and constant appetite for content, I think the media often makes news rather than reports it. Having said that, it is still more accurate than the misinformation and rubbish we get on social media. I now think that I may have been wrong all this time.

Someone somewhere said that we live in interesting times. That is as true now as it has ever been. The cost of living, domestic violence, the environment, equality, housing, war and pandemics—the list of issues is endless. There are many challenges out there for governments, families and individuals. If those challenges were easy to fix, they would have been. The truth is that many are hard and all we can do is our best. With all of my shortcomings, that is what I have always tried to do—my best.

Thank you, President.

(Applause.)

Hon Samantha Rowe (East Metropolitan Region—Parliamentary Secretary) (1:28 pm): It gives me great pleasure to rise this afternoon to make a contribution to the Address-in-Reply. I begin by acknowledging Hon Martin Pritchard and his very thoughtful valedictory. It has been a pleasure to work with Martin over the years and I am sure that he will be very missed not only on our side, but also probably right across the chamber. He is known as a very well-meaning, kind and dedicated member of this chamber. I would also like to welcome and acknowledge his family who are in the gallery. They have been able to come along to witness what is a really important speech by Hon Martin Pritchard.

I would also like to take the opportunity to acknowledge Hon Sue Ellery, who gave her valedictory yesterday. It is always an interesting time when we get to this point in the government when people rise to give valedictories and share their stories about the time they have had in this place. I want to thank both those members for the service they have given to not only the chamber and the Parliament, but also the Labor Party and the labour movement, both industrially and politically, and the communities they have represented over the many years of service they have given.

It has been some four and a half months since we were last in this place and a lot has obviously happened in that time. The state election on Saturday 8 March, which now seems like a lifetime ago to be honest, saw the WA Labor team returned to government for another four years. We had our second largest win ever, winning 46 of the 59 lower house seats. I have to say that it is actually incredibly humbling to form a government for a third term. For the people of Western Australia to place their trust in us to govern for another four years, with the steady leadership of our Premier, Hon Roger Cook, and our team, is a very humbling experience and a privilege. We on this side do not take that lightly or for granted at all.

Our Premier, Hon Roger Cook, has many leadership qualities, but there are just a few that I would like to acknowledge. The first is that he is an incredibly humble individual. He is also someone who acts with complete integrity and he has compassion. Most importantly for the people of Western Australia, he has a very clear vision and agenda for the state of Western Australia and for setting us up for the future. I want to congratulate him on the recent election win.

I would also like to take the time to acknowledge and congratulate all of our new members who were sworn in yesterday into the lower house. It is an exciting time for them as they start this term of Parliament and they bring new energy and new passion. I think we are all going to enjoy the opportunity to work together with new people. I would like to single out the new ministers who have been appointed in Meredith Hammat, Jessica Stojkovski and my good friend Hon Matthew Swinbourn. I think the state is in very good hands with this team. After the state election, I was sworn in as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Premier, Hon Rita Saffioti, who is also the state's Treasurer, Minister for Transport and Minister for Sport and Recreation. I am very much looking forward to the new challenges and opportunities that will come from working with the Deputy Premier. Sport and recreation is a portfolio that I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to be involved with during the last term of government, but there are new portfolios that I will get to work on and I know that it is going to be a really interesting time over the next four years for me personally.

It is no secret that elections are incredibly gruelling. There are thousands and thousands of doors that candidates will knock on during the heat of summer and thousands and thousands of phone calls that candidates will make to electors. There is the standing for hours on end at pre-poll for early voting and of course for election day. Across the board, our members put in 150% and gave it their absolute all. I was lucky enough to be the campaign director for Forrestfield and Belmont, and I also did phoning for the seats of Albany and Bateman. I want to make some reflections on the election result in Bateman and talk about my good friend Kim Giddens, whom I share an office with here in Parliament, for her incredible result on the night. I think she had the smallest swing against her on election night—only 3.4%—in a seat that traditionally, before Kim first won it back in 2021, was very much considered a blue ribbon conservative seat. The result at this state election was purely because of the incredibly hard work that Kim has done over the last four years in representing her community, getting involved in her community and advocating and delivering for her electorate. I think what we saw on the night was that her voters responded accordingly to that demonstrated hard work over the four years.

When I was making phone calls to people in the suburb of Applecross, one of the major issues and commitments that came up time and again was around the commitment to expand the Swan River ferry service. Of course, there is going to be a new ferry stop built at Applecross. Nearly all the people I spoke to were aware of this commitment, were incredibly supportive of it and were really looking forward to being able to use it as a form of public transport. This commitment will mean that we are able to locally manufacture five new electric ferries to expand the Swan River ferry service. Those ferries will be built locally in WA, supporting local manufacturing and helping our state become a shipbuilding hub. It is anticipated that those locally built ferries will create and support at least 40 highly skilled jobs, including for apprentices. That commitment should be supported, and it definitely is supported by the people and constituents of Bateman.

Another issue that came up when I called people on the phone was in relation to the verge trees along Canning Highway. The local member, Kim Giddens, along with a number of residents around the area that was going to be affected, advocated to the government to protect those verge trees. Kim was able to work closely with the then planning minister, Hon Rita Saffioti, and then later with Minister John Carey to have the government declare a new reduced planning control area in the City of Melville that would exclude private land and mature verge trees that were previously at risk of being removed due to some road widening along Canning Highway. I think it might have been last year that a petition was signed by about a thousand local residents and a formal letter was written by Bateman MLA Kim Giddens, which meant that we were able to see this great change. Minister Carey made the following statements about the new approved planning control in an article in PerthNow. He stated:

“It would have been idiotic not to protect the trees in Applecross,” … announcing a new planning control area that excludes private land and mature verge trees previously at risk of future widening works along Canning Highway.

“The new planning control area provides certainty for the local community and will ensure mature trees are retained along key transport corridors,” he said.

“This change balances the need to ensure long-term infrastructure planning can be achieved, while minimising impacts on existing trees along Kintail Road, Forbes Road and Sleat Road in Applecross.”

Ms Giddens said it was a win for protecting tree canopy and the unique character of Applecross.

“Our community treasures its green spaces and this decision strikes the right balance by prioritising local needs, supporting our region’s long-term growth and safeguarding the tree canopy we cherish, both for today and future generations,” she said.

That was a great success story for the local member, Kim Giddens, and also the local community, which got involved particularly with the petition and had that win. I think it was that sort of real local involvement and commitment from the member that produced the resounding and terrifically strong result that she saw. I think it was also down to another issue, which was that Kim Giddens was very involved in her local school community. She was the only candidate at the election to make a commitment to every local school in her electorate, and I think that maybe other candidates need to take note of that. School communities are very, very important. Members need to be involved with their local school communities to get a really good and strong understanding of what they and their schools need. Kim Giddens was able to do that and provide and deliver for her electorate.

Of course, during an election we have wins and we have losses. Some incredible members of Parliament will not be returning for the new Parliament, as well as two candidates who ran for us in two seats who were not successful. I acknowledge those members and thank them for their service. The two candidates I mention who ran for us are Mary Monkhouse in Nedlands and Karen Beale in Kalamunda. They were not successful in winning their seats, but I thank them for their incredibly hard work during the election period and the campaign. It is not easy to run as a candidate and then not get across the line. I pass on my thanks to them. I also acknowledge and thank the members from the lower house who will not be returning, including my good friend Rebecca Stephens in Albany, Paul Lilburne in Carine, Christine Tonkin in Churchlands, Lara Dalton in Geraldton, Robyn Clarke in Murray–Wellington and Jane Kelsbie in Warren–Blackwood. They are all outstanding individuals who gave their absolute all. They worked tirelessly for and in their communities during the last four years and Robyn Clarke for the last eight years. They should be really proud of everything that they achieved for their local communities and electorates and the contributions that they made to Parliament. I thank them for not only their service, but also their friendship, and I wish them all the very best for the next chapter in their lives.

As I look around the chamber, I see a number of members who will not be continuing and will not return on 22 May. I take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank them. I thank those members of the opposition and the crossbench whom I have had the pleasure of working with on different committees, including Hon Colin de Grussa, Hon Peter Collier and Hon Donna Faragher. We have done some really great work on committees and it was a great experience to work with you all. I hope that whatever you decide to do in the future, it is something that you find really rewarding. I thank you for your service here.

To members on our side who will be leaving, it has been such a pleasure and a privilege to work with you and to be in the trenches with you. I wish you all the best for whatever road you are going to head down. Whatever challenges you take on, I am sure that you will do incredible things. I thank you for your friendship and your service.

It is always dangerous to single out one person, but I have to single out one person who will be leaving, and that is my buddy Hon Darren West. We entered this place together back in 2013 and we have been seated together the entire time. I am not sure whether the Leader of the House at the time, Hon Sue Ellery, did that because she wanted me to keep an eye on Darren or Darren to keep an eye on me—I am not sure who was meant to be in charge of whom!—and I think it failed, but we have pretty much been able to make each other laugh every single day that we have been in this place. I want to thank my friend very much; it has been very enjoyable. You will be missed. I do not know whether Hon Matthew Swinbourn will be able to make me laugh as much as Hon Darren West did, but we will see. We have four years.

Hon Martin Aldridge: Not likely; he's a lawyer!

Hon Samantha Rowe: Not likely; yes!

President, we also said goodbye to a number of retiring members in the Assembly. I will not go through all those retiring members. I know that my friend Hon Dan Caddy mentioned some of those members in his contribution yesterday. However, this is an opportunity for me to put on the record my thanks to former minister David Templeman. I had the very good fortune of being his parliamentary secretary in the last Parliament with the portfolios of Culture and the Arts; Sport and Recreation; International Education; Heritage. Having the opportunity to work with David and his really talented ministerial team has been such a rewarding experience. I think that those diverse portfolio areas have a unique role to play in supporting our local communities—probably more than people sometimes give them credit for. Someone who is in government has the ability to make some really significant and major decisions and announcements that will have a real impact on the state, the people of the state and the state economy.

The new film and screen production facility is one of those announcements. It is a major announcement for the state. As a government, we are investing $233.5 million in that facility. It is a significant investment that will assist in diversifying our state economy and will help to grow a really productive and strong creative industry for this state. It will be Western Australia's first-ever dedicated screen production facility, and I think it will shine a light on our local creative industry and put us in a really strong position to be able to attract larger national and international film, television and gaming projects to our state. For those who are not aware, the film studio will have four sound stages with associated annex buildings, workshops with lock-ups and an entry office building. The sound stages will have 15-metre ceilings and large opening doors to enable drive-in access for large trucks. The four annex buildings will contain production offices, wardrobes, toilets, hair and make-up spaces, green rooms and meeting rooms. Each sound stage, workshop and annex will be able to function as a separate, secure and standalone screen production operation to enable multiple screen operators to use the site whilst protecting intellectual property and production confidentiality. Alternatively, a single large screen production could hire out the entire facility. There will also be a large back lot provided for external filming opportunities and a boneyard for multifunctional use as required by productions. It is a major investment for this state and I am really pleased that our government has made this investment.

I notice that Hon Donna Faragher is back in the chamber. I mentioned her before when I talked about retiring members who are leaving and the pleasure it has been working with her on committees. We did some great work on our committee. We also sampled some delicious Portuguese tarts, but we had a great time.

Hon Donna Faragher: What happens on committees stays on committees!

Hon Samantha Rowe: We did incredible work on that committee, and it was a real pleasure to work with you on that.

As I said before, in government, you are able to make some really major announcements for the state. There are also times when you make announcements or contributions that are less in value but no less important to the community when they receive it and still something that provides you with a lot of joy. I use the example of Ellis House Community Art Centre, which I know the President is familiar with. A couple of months ago, I attended an event at Ellis House to announce the provision of $800,000 to install a new arts studio. For those members who are not familiar with Ellis House, it is a heritage house situated in Bayswater that has been converted into an art studio and art gallery. It is run by some 80 active volunteers and has around 300 members. Ellis House runs art classes, and every three weeks or so it puts on an exhibition. Exhibitors include emerging young artists, as well as local community groups and schools. It makes a significant contribution to the local and wider art community, particularly given that it can be quite difficult for emerging young artists to be recognised. The work it does in giving back to the local community and different art and school groups is significant. It is really pleasing that we were able to announce that commitment for Ellis House so that it is able to do more. An increasing number of people would like to take art classes at Ellis House, but it does not have the space for them. Part of the reason for that is that every three weeks or so it has exhibitions on display. The government will deliver a state-of-the-art space that can be used for not only art classes, but also other community events, such as yoga classes.

I want to thank Dan Bull, the member for Maylands, for his advocacy in seeing this commitment happen. Dan is a huge supporter of the creative industries—not just because he is a rock star! He understands and values the arts and other creative industries and their value in making our local communities thrive. It is wonderful that he was able to be part of the announcement. Due to his great advocacy, Ellis House has been rewarded with those funds. Expanding the range of community uses on the site will enable the building to be utilised for a greater number of community events. It will also make Ellis House an even more vibrant and inclusive space for everyone, even though it is already heavily used. That is wonderful.

Another area I would like to touch on also relates to the creative industries. WA has such varied and diverse creative industries that are cutting edge and often world leading. I want to make some comments about a local business that is doing some incredible things in this space. Last November, I launched the world premiere of TheGreat Kimberley WildernessThe Great Kimberley WildernessThe Great Kimberley WildernessWestern Australian Screen Industry Strategy: 2024–2034 virtual reality documentary at the Western Australian Museum Boola Bardip. The launch also coincided with the opening at Jubilee Hall of a new 250-square metre immersive gallery that has a virtual reality cinema with 60 rotating seats and is inclusive of a 7.1 surround-sound system and nine projectors all projecting across a perimeter wall surface of around 141 square metres to create a shared visitor experience like no other. I do not know whether members had the opportunity to see experience, but it was spectacular. The virtual reality documentary was produced by Briege Whitehead, the founder and creative director at White Spark Pictures, an independent production company that is based here in WA. I am pleased to say that our government supported this production with $250,000 in Lotterywest funding. White Spark Pictures is world leading; it is at the forefront of virtual reality innovation. In bringing to life, it designed and deployed a world-first custom multi-camera rig to shoot in 360 degrees, which is effectively like having eight lenses in one. The effect is quite incredible for those watching it. The team is also the first in its field to deliver 8K resolution and was the first to mix and deliver VR in Dolby Atmos sound for theatrical release. White Spark Pictures epitomises the vision for the future of our screen industry in WA. We have so many talented and creative people in Western Australia, and White Spark Pictures is just one example. Those of us who have had the pleasure of visiting the Kimberley region know that it has an incredibly stunning landscape and is a picturesque area, but what White Spark was able to achieve through this virtual reality documentary is just mind-blowing. It is a 35-minute documentary that is narrated by Luke Hemsworth of the famous Hemsworth brothers. It transports people to that pristine landscape; they are guided by science and traditional owners as they journey across the magical coastline and venture into the heart of the ancient landscape, which is pretty much like nowhere else. All that was made right here in WA. I love that this state embraces the creative industries and supports them through the , which was launched last year by the former Minister for Culture and the Arts, Hon David Templeman. It is important to foster all the great talent we have here in WA.

I recommend that those members who have an interest in this space—like I do—who have not had a chance to look at the Western Australian Screen Industry Strategy do so because it is interesting reading and something that the former minister was proud to launch last year. It is quite interesting to understand why we need a strategy and the economic impact that the creative industries have on our Western Australian economy. The strategy states:

Western Australia has a reputation for producing and developing outstanding screen content. Global conditions are creating a platform for accelerated growth of the WA screen industry.

The Western Australian Government has recognised the opportunity to grow the WA screen industry in line with Diversify WA, the State's economic development framework.

The Western Australian Screen Industry Strategy: 2024–2034 brings together initiatives across government into a cohesive strategic framework. The purpose of the framework is to grow the capacity of the Western Australian screen industry to deliver improved economic, social and cultural outcomes for Western Australia more broadly. The strategy will guide the activities of the WA government over the next 10 years and will be delivered in partnership with Western Australia's not-for-profit screen funding and development organisation Screenwest and the screen industry in our state.

For the purpose of this strategy, the screen industry incorporates the functions and activities required to produce content that is viewed or consumed by others on a screen and includes film, broadcast, television, subscription, video on demand and other interactive platforms, digital games, post production, animation, visual effects, virtual reality, augmented reality, extended reality and screen culture. The strategy provides an opportunity for the coordination of WA government agencies, regional development commissions, local government authorities, tourism associations, chambers of commerce and other stakeholders and partners to take a holistic approach to screen industry development, creating a continuous pipeline of productions in the state to build the capacity and capability of the screen industry workforce that will support the delivery of the state-of-the-art film studio and screen production facility.

We are home to a vibrant and growing domestic screen industry as well as being positioned to grow the state's presence in the international market. The WA screen industry is a job-intensive, job-creating and export-focused industry. The screen industry reaches all corners of our state and encompasses a diverse array of screen practitioners producing content to enrich and strengthen our communities. First Nations peoples have been sharing stories of these diverse lands and cultures for more than 60,000 years. That continues through the medium of screen. The screen industry strategy recognises, respects and celebrates the importance of First Nations Australian and Western Australian screen stories and storytellers. Storytelling has a global reach. Our stories draw on our unique cultures. They also resonate with audiences around the world. WA-made screen content ranges from the long-running lifestyle series TheGarden GurusOur LawNingaloo NyingguluItch100% Wolf:Legend of the MoonstoneBluebackHow to Please a WomanRams to the documentary series and . It includes children's series such as and and feature films like , and .

Western Australia's diverse and talented screen practitioners have been recognised internationally, including at the Academy Awards and the Emmy Awards, and their work has been selected for the most prestigious international film festivals. The work of our games and interactive practitioners has been showcased at premier international games conventions. Accolades have been earned by WA screen industry practitioners, including international and national awards for feature films Sweet AsRed DogOutback TruckersAussie Gold HuntersAustralia's Health RevolutionwithDr Michael MosleyEvery Family Has a SecretIs Australia Racist?Family Rules and . We have a reputation for producing high-quality, internationally successful documentary productions. In 2020–21 alone, WA generated 12%—$27.5 million—of the total $226.9 million Australian expenditure on documentary production. Our state is home to large documentary production companies, including Prospero Productions, Electric Pictures and Artemis Media. Long-running series like and are produced alongside documentaries, including , , and .

WA's post-production, digital effects, games and interactive technology companies are internationally renowned. This includes Siamese for providing visual effects for Stranger ThingsElvisWarhammer 40,000: Battle SectorBattlestar Galactica Deadlock, Double Barrel Studios VFX completing visual effects on the feature film and Black Lab Games developing and .

WA screen companies are also cultivating innovation across other industries, including tourism, education, engineering, construction and health. They create interactive games, immersive technology and virtual, augmented and extended reality that solve real-world problems.

The other point I wanted to make relates to the economic impact of WA's screen industry. We know that we have award-winning talented creatives in this state, but this industry also has a really strong economic impact. In the past three years, the WA government has invested in production activity that has seen 93 film, television and interactive projects, along with $116.8 million in production expenditure spent in WA, $26.6 million in production expenditure spent in regional WA, 3,404 direct full-time equivalent jobs for Western Australians, 279 hours of screen content, 10.3% of key creative roles filled by Western Australians who identified as Indigenous, 17.52% of key creative roles filled by Western Australians who identified as diverse, and $3.55 million invested in Western Australian First Nations projects, talent and businesses. Western Australia's games and interactive sector has tripled in size. There was a 217% increase in games development full-time employees based in WA from 2020–21 to 2021–22. It is a really important sector for the WA economy and one that I am very passionate about and very thankful to the former minister for the role that he played in developing this strategy. I am sure that the new Minister for Creative Industries, Hon Simone McGurk, will take this sector to the next level. I am sure that she is just as excited as I am about the future of our creative industries in our state.

When I was putting together my contribution for this afternoon, I had some little helpers. My sister-in-law and her family, including my niece and nephews, from Melbourne are currently staying with me. Frankie Madden is 10 years old, Rosie Madden is nine years old and Leo Madden is five years old. They all had very strong opinions on what I should talk about today. When I went through with them what I was thinking of talking about, such as the state election and creative industries, there were lots of nods of agreement and then a bit of reflection. When I came home from work on Monday, Frankie had that day's newspaper before him. He had picked out articles that he thought I should speak about. Who am I to deny a 10-year-old who has done very thorough research on what his aunty should talk about in state Parliament? He thought I should talk about federal politics and the federal election that is coming up. I said, "Okay, that's interesting. I'd really like to keep it at a state level." He said that during my contribution today I should be talking about an article from Monday's paper titled "Alboing his way in front: PM sitting pretty as Labor extends its lead over Liberals in latest polls" by Dylan Caporn. So I will just reflect a little on that article to make Frankie and my niece and nephews happy.

Obviously, it is a great article. It shows that the polls are looking good for our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and Labor, but we all know that we cannot take polls for granted. None of us in this place really take them seriously until election day, which is on Saturday 3 May. If we were to be honest, I think the Prime Minister and his team have faced some pretty tough challenges. Over the last three years, they have worked to try to repair our economy, which of course takes time. We all know that.

We have seen inflation coming down. We know that wages are starting to move again. Labor has tax cuts and energy bill relief that will help with the cost of living for all Australians, not just Western Australians. Eighty-seven free Medicare urgent care clinics have opened across Australia, with more to come. There is $1 billion for more free mental health services, which I think is just brilliant. It is a fantastic announcement, and one that we should all be supporting. Labor is going to ban supermarket price gouging. These are all things that will help Australians with the cost-of-living pressures that they are facing. It has been really challenging for the federal government, but I think Prime Minister Albanese and his very competent team are best placed to take Australia forward in these challenging times, and I wish them the best of luck on Saturday 3 May.

I want to finish by thanking my little helpers Frankie, Rosie and Leo for their feedback, as frank as it was, for their suggestions, and for their interest in my contribution today. I really hope that their interest in politics continues into their adult years. We will wait and see. I wish the federal government all the best on Saturday 3 May.

Hon Kate Doust (South Metropolitan Region) (2:11 pm): Thank you, Deputy President. I am very pleased today to be able to deliver a contribution to the Address-in-Reply to the speech from His Excellency the Honourable Christopher John Dawson AC APM, Governor of Western Australia, which was delivered at the opening of the 42nd Parliament yesterday. Before I launch into the things I want to talk about today, I first of all want to congratulate Premier Roger Cook and the Labor team for their very decisive win, again. They have the faith of the Western Australian community to go forward and implement the vast range of changes that were outlined in a very articulate manner yesterday by our Governor. Whilst there were some very broad concepts outlined, I am sure that as we move through the next four years the Labor government will be able to finesse and deliver on each of the significant areas that it has committed to and that were canvassed in the speech by our Governor yesterday in relation to health, housing, education, Made in WA and a range of other issues.

I know that campaigning is tough. It is hard. My commiserations to the opposition and the crossbenchers. I hope that at some point they are indeed able to get themselves organised and get their act together, if you like, because every government needs a good opposition. I think I have said that before, so I feel a bit of deja vu. This is probably the third time I have had to say that in this place, and I do not know what it is going to take for the Liberal Party in particular to get its house in order. I am going to watch with interest over the next few years to see if it is able to sort itself out, perhaps not by 2029 but perhaps before the election after that, so that it can convince the Western Australian voting public that it is ready, able and capable of running this great state and delivering the outcomes that our constituents expect of us so that people in Western Australia can continue to have a high standard of living and the best opportunities, which is what they should have here. It is obviously what Labor continues to deliver and that is why we continue to get elected to the Treasury bench.

I just wanted to say that. I want to thank His Excellency for his very, very thoughtful address yesterday, which set out the government's agenda for this new parliamentary term. As I said, there were many, many matters canvassed in that speech. I am not going to touch on all of them, but as well as thanking His Excellency for the speech I also want to acknowledge the very wonderful Welcome to Country that was provided for us yesterday by Dr Elizabeth Hayden, who is an esteemed elder of the Balladong people in Western Australia. I was really pleased to see that, at the opening of Parliament, the practice—that new tradition—of having a formal welcome on the floor of the Parliament will continue. That is a very significant change and it sends a very important message to our Indigenous community in Western Australia that we value them and take them seriously. It is not something that is exceptional or different; having a Welcome to Country in this chamber is just a normal activity and it is of significant importance to all of us.

If members have had a chance to pause, reflect and review the speech that was provided yesterday, and perhaps also had an opportunity to have a look at the speech in the other place delivered by the Chief Justice, the Honourable Peter Quinlan, they might have found that some common themes came up. A lot was said about the changing political environment around the world and the arrangements for our democratic processes, and there was a reflection upon the fragility of democracy in our current world. The Governor in his speech said that there is "a compact of trust between people and their chosen representatives". He said that we:

… must cherish that trust and protect it fiercely, because, as we can all observe in some parts of the world, that trust and faith in the democratic process is being undermined.

I do not know whether he was talking about what is happening in the US or about what is happening in other parts of the world, but we only have to open up a newspaper, turn on the TV, read magazines or observe social media to constantly see that things we take for granted in our democratic and our political arrangements are changing, and sometimes it is overwhelming change. We have seen that happen particularly with decisions taken by President Trump in relation to tariffs over the last week or so and the enormous negative financial impact globally as a result of those decisions. One thing we have to be very careful about—we have seen this happen historically—is that when good people stay silent, bad things can happen. I think that might be what is happening in some of those other places now. As we work through the Governor's speech, we pick up that it is something that we have to be very careful about in our roles as members of Parliament; that is, sometimes we do have to speak up. We are elected to be a voice for the people in our electorates, or our constituencies. As tough as it can be, sometimes we have to step over the threshold and be prepared to stand up. I reiterate that sometimes when we do not do that, we let things slip through, and then we can be on a downward slide. I took that from his comments.

He went on to talk about—again, this was reiterated in the other place as well—how we live in interesting and concerning times that are seeing tectonic geopolitical changes in the global rules–based order that was developed following the Second World War, which delivered an unprecedented era of global peace and prosperity. He continued:

There are fundamental shifts in the economic, trade and energy markets; the upending of formally stable strategic alliances and treaties; and cultural, climatic and technological change is happening faster and reaching further than ever before.

We know that for ourselves. We have seen that happen. Even reflecting on the period of time I have been in here, the manner in which we do our own work, we have seen significant change. I look at my colleagues here with piles of paper on their desks, but we have now moved into the digital arena in every aspect of our work, and there is less paper. It is a quicker, faster, much more mobile type of work, with decisions expected to be made almost instantaneously, sometimes without the value, or the benefit, of us being fully informed or advised, or understanding the implications of our decisions. I think that is reflected globally. Again, I think that is something to be concerned about.

The Governor went on to say that in our recent history in Western Australia we have, of course, had stability in government. We have been blessed with that. He said that that has indeed been "fundamental to our economic success, and our success in maintaining a cohesive multicultural society". That is something we have had discussions about in this place over the last couple of years, when we have seen those significant events happen in the Middle East, in Ukraine and throughout parts of Asia, in Myanmar. We have seen the flow-on effects of crises, of wars, locally, in our own streets, cities and towns.

They are the things that we have to be very careful about. As members of Parliament, we have to demonstrate support for those in our communities who come from diverse multicultural groups. We have to make sure that we not only support them, but also protect them and encourage them to maintain their level of activity in our community and in our political arrangements. He goes on to say:

Democracy does not just happen. It requires constant effort and vigilance to keep our representative democracy working effectively from all sides—from government and opposition, from the executive, from the public and private sectors, from media, from the people and for the people.

I think that is a very solid and sound statement. It is something that perhaps we should block out in that speech and maybe revisit as we go through the next four years. I think that is a very sound contribution. He then goes on to say that it is expected that all of us would work together to reinforce and strengthen our democracy and that we would undertake our responsibilities with "integrity, diligence, respect and humility". Again, that is a very sound and solid message that perhaps we should print off, put on a plastic card and flick out of our wallets every once in a while to remind ourselves why we are here.

He continued to talk yesterday about how we should work together. We have talked about that in this chamber from time to time. As we know, politics is very robust. It is always healthy to have a robust and open discussion. Sometimes it can step over the line and become more aggressive than robust and sometimes we lose respect in our debates and we lose the ability to care for our own numbers or our opposite numbers by the language that we use, our intonation and the manner of our delivery. There is no suggestion that people should be holding hands and singing kumbaya when we are in the chamber debating a bill, but perhaps he is right that in a time of significant change around the world when democracy and democratic processes are under threat and democracy has become a fragile entity in a range of Parliaments, we need to consider how we conduct ourselves or how the way we conduct ourselves in the business of the house is perceived by the voting public. Again, I thought that was a very good message. He went on to say that our electors expect us to work together to continue to improve and evolve and to gain the best that we possibly can for the people of our state. I am paraphrasing him there, so do not regard that as a direct quote. He went on to say:

This Parliament—

The Western Australian Parliament:

should be a model for a fair and compassionate community where people irrespective of their colour, culture or faith are welcomed, listened to, cared for and represented.

I think we are actually becoming better within our own Parliament at being reflective of the diversity in our community. A number of people in our chamber have come from a range of countries and life experiences. In our new Parliament, in the other place and in this place, we have also added to our diversity and life experience with the incoming members of Parliament. I look forward to hearing from all of them in due course and seeing what they bring to this place based upon their own backgrounds and life experiences.

He talks about how:

Our Parliament and all people across the state must continue to make every effort to walk, listen and talk with our Aboriginal people. To learn from them and support them.

I think that theme resonated a number of times throughout his speech. That should resonate deeply with all of us. It certainly does with me. As a government and certainly, I hope, as a Parliament, we will continue to apply more emphasis on how we support the Indigenous communities across our state and seek to elevate opportunities for each and every one.

I will talk about some of his comments later on in my speech. I think the speech he gave yesterday was powerful, particularly his comments on the democratic processes and the changes that we are seeing not only around the globe, but also that will probably—hopefully not—flow on to our own country and possibly our own state.

I want to touch on some comments made in the other place during the swearing-in process yesterday by Chief Justice Hon Peter Quinlan. When he swore in the members, he talked about taking the oath or affirmation. He said that some people take different options and he talked about the significance of those options. He reinforced and referenced the same sorts of situations that our Governor did when he said:

We live at a time when in other western democracies, with whom we share a common heritage, public institutions such as ours are under significant threat and where public confidence in those institutions is deliberately sought to be undermined.

He went on to say:

Often those threats come from the very people who have been entrusted with responsibility to uphold those institutions. It is a stark reminder of the sometime fragility of our institutions of government, be they the Parliament, the executive or the courts, and how it is the responsibility of each branch of government to uphold the legitimate roles and responsibility of the others, and that it is the responsibility of all of us who are the temporary custodians of public power to exercise those powers with civility and mutual respect.

Again, that reinforces the message that although we can have robust debate and be quite fierce in that debate sometimes, at the end of the day, we can achieve the best outcomes for our people only if we work together. As my colleague Hon Martin Pritchard said earlier, or it might have been Hon Samantha Rowe, the vast majority of work that is done in this place and the vast majority of legislation that is passed in this place is usually passed swiftly and without rancour. There are appropriate levels of investigation and inquiry. It is rare that we have heated debates. I can remember a number during my extensive time here, but it is not a feature of our daily work. The fact that these messages are being sent to us in both chambers at this time is a very important reminder to us about how we should conduct ourselves.

The reason that this is a timely reminder is that, as I have said, we are seeing our democratic institutions under pressure from both within, as we have seen in the United States, and from outside. Different groups are jockeying to put pressure on governments and political parties to take a particular stand. We are dealing with sound bites in the media. We are dealing with people who are not fully informing themselves about activities and are making decisions based on misinformation in some cases. I hate the use the term "fake news", which has become part of our idiom as a result of the first and now the second Trump presidency. It never ceases to amaze me how things can be said without qualification or question and are just accepted. Quite often they are accepted in our media circles and reprinted or resaid without fact checking. I think that is a real danger to not only our community, but also us and how we go about our business. Hon Martin Pritchard referred to how the media conducts itself. Perhaps there is a lesson there for our media to be more diligent and vigilant in how they report activities. Again, that sentiment was echoed by His Excellency. We have to strive to be a Parliament that is firmly engaged in fairness, compassion and mutual respect through the shared commitment to service, which is what we are about. That is why we are here. I do not think anyone in this place is here because they thought it would be a good way to fill their time or that it would be an interesting opportunity for promotion. I think every single person in this place came in here because they wanted to do something solid for their community. They wanted to deliver change and positive outcomes. We are all in the service of others and for others; we are not here for ourselves. I think we all need to keep reminding ourselves of that. The oath that we have taken and the oath that many people will take on 22 May will remind us of why we are here.

Having given those initial reflections on the Governor's excellent speech, I want to talk about the new Parliament and its renewal. This is not my first rodeo; I am going into my seventh one. Like my colleague Hon Sue Ellery, I have been very fortunate to have been preselected many times. In fact, I have just completed my eighth election campaign and my seventh successful one.

Hon Klara Andric interjected.

Hon Kate Doust: I know; it makes you feel so old, doesn't it! You were probably just a child, Hon Klara Andric.

You might think it will be the same each time you go round, but it is always different. Every parliamentary term is different; it offers up different opportunities, different challenges, new legislation, new motions, new colleagues and change. I have always taken it as an opportunity to learn. For our colleagues on the other side, I always thought that opposition was a wonderful vehicle in which to learn. Government can sometimes be a little bit quieter if you are on the back row, but if you are on the front row like my good friend Hon Dan Caddy, I am sure there will be some wonderful learning opportunities coming his way now. I congratulate him on being appointed as a parliamentary secretary. In fact, I have neglected to congratulate all of my colleagues on this side who have been elevated to higher office. I sincerely wish you the best. I know that you are going to do your very best not just for your party or electorate but certainly also for the state. You have some interesting challenges ahead of you, so well done to you.

I look forward to this term. I think there will be lots of interesting opportunities. I heard the Governor go through various highlighted priorities of the Cook Labor government in his speech yesterday and I think we are up for a really exciting term. It is unusual for a Labor government to get a third term in this state. I think it is a great opportunity for Labor to continue to roll out benefits and changes for working people in this state that the other side perhaps would not have done. Having this additional term will give us an opportunity to reflect upon the work that we have done, to mentor the new members who are coming into Parliament and to recommit ourselves to the values that brought us to this place in the first instance.

I want to acknowledge our newest member to the Council, Hon Vicki Helps MLC. It was very lovely to meet her for the first time yesterday and I certainly look forward to her inaugural speech tomorrow. Hon Vicki Helps is in the very interesting position that a number of members have been in before. I spoke to our former colleague Bill Leadbetter yesterday, who is now an Anglican priest. He was with us for a very short time as well—probably similar to our newest member. I stand to be corrected, but I think Bill got up and gave his inaugural and farewell speeches all in the one go. We were reflecting upon that yesterday. I am hoping that Hon Vicki Helps might get to speak on a motion as well or ask a few questions to fill out her next few weeks, but I sincerely hope that she enjoys the period of time that she has here and I know that she will make an interesting contribution. The reason she is here is that we lost Hon Stephen Pratt. We have lost him to the other place, unfortunately, but I know that he will work extremely hard for the people of Jandakot and in the other place, and hopefully raise the standards down there! I wish him well with his future. I know that he worked extremely hard in his campaign to get over the line in Jandakot.

I turn to my retiring colleagues on this side of the chamber. I want to acknowledge the contribution both to the party and the Parliament of Hon Sue Ellery.

I want to acknowledge Hon Sally Talbot. I hope that you and your lovely husband, Jon Ford, have a fantastic next chapter together. I know that it will involve lots of travel and, I hope, good food.

Hon Darren West, I wish you well. I know you are returning to all things agriculture, but I daresay that I will probably see you at some point out your way. I really wish you well. I know that you have worked very hard in your time here, and it has been good to have a farmer's view on our side of the fence.

To my friend Hon Martin Pritchard, this sees the end of a working period for us that goes back to the late 1980s. I think I have said it before, but the first time I met Hon Martin Pritchard was on a picket line outside Myer in Karrinyup when he worked for Aherns. He came up to me and told me that he was going to be my shop steward for Aherns. I thought, "We haven't had a ballot for that; he's a bit enthusiastic", but he became my highly effective shop steward and we ultimately worked together in the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association of WA until I left in 2001. I have always been very grateful for his friendship and support. Without going into any detail, we had some very interesting challenges and adventures together, perhaps not so much in our period as members of Parliament but certainly as union officials. I know that you made a significant contribution during your time with the SDA and that you always put members first, just as you have done as a member of Parliament with your constituents.

I want to acknowledge Hon Kyle McGinn. I know that Kyle has worked very hard, particularly in Kalgoorlie, not just for his constituents but also to support our member for Kalgoorlie, Ali Kent. I appreciate that he is probably disappointed that he will not be returning, but I know that Kyle is an extremely young man; he was blessed to come in here I think before he turned 30. I hope that Hon Kyle McGinn still has a very long and interesting set of opportunities before him on whichever path he chooses. I wish him very well.

Every one of the people I have named so far has made a meaningful contribution to this place over an extended period of time.

I want to acknowledge my Labor colleagues who unfortunately were not successful in this election—Hon Peter Foster, Hon Lorna Harper, Hon Rosie Sahanna and Hon Shelley Payne. I know that it is not always easy to deal with not getting back in, but I note that your service to this place and your service to the party has been defined by both dedication and principle. I want to acknowledge that each of you dove in deep as new members and never failed to step up, to put your view on the record or to pursue issues vigorously. I hope that you might perhaps have another opportunity to return to this place at some point in the future. I thank you very much and wish you very well.

I turn to our colleagues across the chamber. Hon Peter Collier, thank you very much for some of the engaging times we have had, regardless of which side we have been on in the chamber. Perhaps the most fun period was when I was in opposition and he was the Minister for Education—he got to education eventually, once he bumped Liz Constable out of the way—and certainly as Minister for Energy. We had some interesting debates and some challenging times. I certainly thank you for your support for me over my time in this place and I wish you well. I am sure there will be lots of tennis and travel; I think you have already started on that.

To Hon Donna Faragher, again I thank you for your contribution and support. You asked me yesterday whether I will miss your smiling face. Yes, we will. You were perhaps a bit of a trailblazer in this chamber for a long time because you had your two children while you were here, so you had to juggle that balance. Some of us brought our children into this place—they were ready-made—but you had to deal with all the issues of being a new mother and working in a really complicated job with really unusual hours. All power to you for coming through that. You have two amazing children who I know you are going to look forward to spending a lot more time with. They are almost teenagers so I am not too sure how they are going to feel about you hanging around home a lot, but that is something that you have a long time to work through! Good luck to you.

To Hon Martin Aldridge and Hon Colin de Grussa from the National Party, again it has been a pleasure to work with both of you. I thank you very much for your contributions and your support. I look forward to seeing what you are both going to do, because I am sure there are other things that you still want to do. I cannot see you hanging up the stirrups and just retiring from life. I look forward to seeing where you land.

Hon Wilson Tucker is not in here right now and I wanted to thank him. I wanted to acknowledge his contribution as well, because when you come in as an Independent, you might only be here for one term. He has made the deliberate decision not to run again at this point in his life. I respect the fact that, again, he stood up and spoke on issues that he found to be important for himself. He challenged government, he questioned, he raised issues, he got involved with the Parliamentary Friends of Technology and drove that along. He never took my advice about interjections, unfortunately, so that was always a bit of fun. I think he has met that challenge of being a one-term member and I hope that he reflects well upon his time in this place and, again, I wish him well with whatever his new opportunities may be.

For the Independent members in this chamber, I thank them again for working with them, and I certainly wish Hon Sophia Moermond and Hon Louise Kingston well. For the member formally known as—I am not too sure I will miss him at all. Sorry, I have to say that I cannot enunciate verbally the name that he is calling himself. I just cannot believe anyone would want to associate themselves with that surname in any way, shape or form, but that is democracy and freedom of choice, I suppose. But I want to put on the record, I am not disappointed that he will not be returned. When I come to another part of my speech, I will probably reflect upon why I am not disappointed. It comes back to the reasons that the Governor gave about how we should work together collaboratively, with respect and in harmony, with appropriate debate because at the forefront of our minds it is our constituents who we are working for, and I think that the member formally known as perhaps did not have that at the forefront of his mind. Every time he rose to his feet, I have never seen such a disruptive, disrespectful—the words fail me now—approach to dealing or engaging with members within this chamber, across the chamber or the issues canvassed. That is not something I have seen in 24 years and it is something I hope that I do not see again. However, I wish the other members well in their future.

I will now talk about the election day. I have already referred to this publicly on the record as a cluster event and I am sure I am not the only one who thinks that. Again, this is linked back, in my view, to the commentary from both the Governor and the Chief Justice around the fragility of democracy. Sometimes it is not just the issues being dealt with; it is the logistics and practical elements of how someone conducts themselves. I think this election really drove some of those challenges home for me as we worked our way towards the election day. I am sure every single member in this chamber and downstairs has examples that they can provide of what went wrong. What went wrong? It was not just with pre-poll—I have lots of examples that I will share with members—but certainly on election day. Initially, I will share my own personal experience. I went to vote the week before the election at pre-poll out at Victoria Park because that is where I am enrolled and have lived for nearly 28 years and been on the electoral roll. I went into the pre-poll and they could not find me on the roll. I used my formal name, Catherine Esther Doust, and they could not find me. I used Kate—they could not find me. I used my home address—could not find me. I was getting a bit frustrated, thinking maybe something has gone wrong. So, I said, "What do I do?" They said, "Well, maybe you step around the corner and go into the Cannington pre-poll." I thought, "Okay, maybe", because the last term I did shift my enrolment briefly because my husband was the member for Cannington. Members know that little funny rule about how if someone’s partner is the member, they can change where they enrol. However, I did change straight back to Victoria Park the day after the last election, so I knew I was enrolled in Victoria Park. I walked into the Cannington pre-poll, which is literally a steel wall between the two venues and, luckily, the returning officer knew me. She happened to be the Mayor of Cannington's wife. She said, "What's going on?" I told her that, for some reason, they could not find me, but I knew I am enrolled because—guess what—I was on the ballot paper, therefore I have to be enrolled! Anyway, she found me on the roll. I said, "What should I do? Should I go back into the Victoria Park pre-poll?" She said, "No, just do an absentee vote." Members can imagine how ludicrous it was. There I was standing with a tin wall between me and Victoria Park and I had to do an absentee vote. I just could not understand that. That was my initial experience of that.

I had another experience trying to provide a change of address for my mother, who has moved into a nursing home. I must say, the Electoral Commission is not user-friendly online either, particularly if a person has health issues and cannot go online. Certainly, having to traipse into their office and speak into a camera because there is no reception is not user-friendly, so there is a whole raft of issues that I hope that the inquiry by Hon Malcolm McCusker has a look at.

That was my first experience, but I want to share with members some experiences when I got to election day because it just became beyond a joke. I was looking after four separate campaigns: Rockingham, Cockburn, Bibra Lake and Riverton. I will talk about some of the things that happened in the seat of Bibra Lake, where, the day after the election, I sent a message to all of the booth captains who had done a wonderful job for us. I said, "Let me know if you've had any issues on election day." Within 15 to 20 minutes, I was bombarded with emails—and that was just one seat. As members know, we had long queues in a number of seats. We had people being turned away from the polling booth and told to go to another polling booth. I had one polling booth that ran out of ballot papers. Given the Electoral Commission had printed 5.9 million ballot papers, I have no idea how they could run out, but they ran out early in the afternoon, around about two-ish. Then they got more back in, and within half an hour, they had run out again, so people were then being sent over to another polling booth and having to queue up to the point where they had to get them into the room because it was six o’clock. There were long queues of people still wanting to vote. People were going in and being told, "Look, I’ll cross your name off, but it's okay, you don't have to vote." In fact, my newsagent told me about a woman the other day who had a health issue. She went to vote with a friend of hers because she could not speak very clearly. She waited in line, went to get a ballot paper and she was told: "You don't need to vote. We’ll cross your name off but you don't need to vote." Her friend had to intervene to get the ballot paper for her. So, there are some serious issues. I mean, I have queues of up to 55 minutes. I know it is challenging and I know that there are boundary changes, but a person would think that, logistically, there would have been a little bit of war gaming by the commission to work out where there might be additional numbers in some booths and a decline in others, or map that out to make sure there were enough staff and ballot papers and the capacity to deal with the lines of people coming in. I would not have thought it would have been as great a problem because the pre-polls had been pretty busy. All of the pre-polls that I had worked on had been quite busy, so I expected that election day would not have been as chaotic, but unfortunately it was because there was understaffing. We had one booth where staff did not turn up. Again, we had the issues with ballot papers, people waiting in long lines and, again, this weird situation of people being told not to have a ballot paper.

Here is another one. At some point in the morning, from about 9:00 am to 1:00 pm, the line stretched to over 50 metres. Voters were required to wait approximately 40 minutes. At that point, there were only two polling officials checking names and giving voters their ballot paper. I am just trying to see which one that was. I forget which booth that person was on. I was initially very keen, when this all happened, that there might have been an opportunity for a parliamentary inquiry into what happened on election day. I know that there was a call for that by other people, including Shane Love, the Leader of the National Party, but I think the Premier has made the right call by having Hon Malcolm McCusker chair the inquiry because of his extensive experience, his understanding of all things electoral and the gravitas he would bring to that role. I think we can expect a very detailed, thorough inquiry and I know that there will be support from the various parties about what sort of issues they will look at. I have been working on elections since the 1980s and I think I have never seen such chaos on election day. I am sure that I am not alone in that experience on the day. As I moved around all the seats I was involved in, it was repeated over and again. It was unusual that it was happening so frequently.

Another issue I found that I thought might have been rectified with the changes to our legislation, but has not been, is the interesting way in which returning officers at different booths interpret the legislation. I refer to one returning officer at a pre-poll site. I was standing on public land, because there was a footpath between me and the polling booth, and I was well and truly more than six metres away from the door, and I was told to move. There was a line on the wall that he had determined was the extent of the area in which we could stand, but it was beyond six metres of the entrance. I said to him, "No, I am standing on public land. I am beyond six metres and I can stand here." He said, "No, I'm the returning officer, and I'm telling you that you have to move." I said that was interesting, because I know the law, and I did not think I had to move. At every election, there seems to be confusion about how to interpret the basic rules of function of a polling booth, and I really wish that at some point there would be a checklist or some improved clarity or better training for people who are running these polling booths so that we do not have these types of issues.

Once this inquiry kicks off, I think it will be really interesting to see the response from members of the public about how they perceived election day. As we now know, it is just mind-blowing that so much money was provided to PersolKelly to run not just this but also the next election. I think it was $86 million. I look forward to the McCusker inquiry having a look at how that money was expended in training, recruitment, resourcing, printing, management, even down to the arrangements for the selection of polling booth and pre-poll sites. In Cockburn, they cancelled the first pre-poll venue, which would have been okay—there was access—and changed it to a shop inside Cockburn Gateway Shopping City in which the six-metre rule would have put every volunteer right out in the middle of the car park. Then the shopping centre decided that no volunteers were allowed to hand out cards on its premises. The only thing that political parties could do was put a bunch of their how-to-vote cards on a table inside the shopping centre and hope that they would not be removed and that people would actually go and take them. I am sure that that is not a singular experience. I hope that some recommendations might come out about that. It is not like we do not know when an election is going to happen; we know about it four years in advance. One would hope that there would be a bit of pre-planning and maybe a look at the opportunities for appropriate venues with access. Voters need access. I think about the site in Rockingham, where parking was atrocious. There was not great disability access in a lot of these places. People were turned away because they could not access the site in a wheelchair. At one pre-poll site at Bibra Lake, because one particular candidate misbehaved so outrageously—not one of ours in here, I might say—and was so offensive to people, not only to my candidate but also to voters, as a result, the returning officer decided that volunteers could no longer stand in the shaded area of the verandah. This happened in the first couple of days. They had to stand out in the sunshine for the whole two weeks of pre-poll. There was no shade, so from eight in the morning until six at night, that is where they stood, because they were not allowed to stand on the verandah and hand out how-to-vote cards. It just seemed crazy. Quite frankly, it was a health and safety issue. I thought it was very poorly thought out, and it did not change. There was no capacity to move people back in, so it was quite unfair.

As I said earlier, election day is a cluster event. I sincerely hope that this inquiry will have the opportunity to gather the views of all the political parties, candidates, members of the public and all interested groups to see if it can be done much better next time so that we do not have to deal with these issues again.

I suppose this is my final point on that. One reason I hoped there would be a parliamentary inquiry is because, ultimately, the Western Australian Electoral Commission and the Western Australian Electoral Commissioner are accountable to the Parliament. That was my view. It will be interesting to see what recommendations come out of the inquiry and how we deal with that—not just how government deals with that, but how we debate those issues in the house, because, let us face it, we all have a vested interest in making sure that the Electoral Commission functions appropriately, in accordance with the law, and sensibly and does not create problems of its own. I certainly look forward to the outcomes of that inquiry. But it got me thinking about other states such as New South Wales, Tasmania and I think Queensland. The Parliaments of those states each have parliamentary or standing committees that have the capacity to inquire into and review the electoral processes. The New South Wales committee is perhaps the best example. It is the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and it goes through issues such as proposals to increase voter engagement, the administration of the state election in 2023 and the adequacy of funding and preference counting in local government, so it is not only restricted to state government, but also covers local governments. It looks at public funding, local government elections and voter enrolment issues. It covers quite a diverse array of issues. That committee is currently reflected in a similar way in those other two Parliaments. I think that, given what has happened, perhaps it is time to look at either creating such an entity—a vehicle that could actually perform some of those roles and functions—or enabling one of our current standing committees to perhaps better engage in this space and see what can be done to make it better.

Another thing captured my interest during the election, and I think that one of the members across the way might be interested in this. I am not going to talk about the pros and cons of it, but I will say this about the changes that happened to the Electoral Act over the last couple of years going back to 2023—not so much the changes in the last year. I live in Victoria Park, and members will all be aware that during the election period there was a government announcement about some changes to Burswood Park. The announcement received a very interesting and significant backlash from part of the local community. I will not challenge what they do; people are entitled to protest or oppose or support things, and the way they go about doing that is entirely up to them, so I fully respect the local community's capacity to do that. However, I am interested in the propaganda that came out of that particular effort. There was a document headed "Save Burswood Park—Vote Labor Last" that I think hit the vast majority of houses in Victoria Park. In fact, this is a photocopy of the one that hit my letterbox. What is interesting, though, is nobody had the guts to put their name to the document. Nobody put down who printed or authorised it. As we all know, anything put out during the election period has to be authorised. I am looking forward to this inquiry. I do not know whether how we deal with these types of issues whereby people want to raise an issue that a government or a party has put forward can be canvassed during this inquiry, but, in my view, this is a serious issue. Somebody has sought to direct voters to vote in a particular way because of an issue but has not nominated who has paid for the material, who has printed it and who has distributed it. Individuals have the right to do this but they must adhere to the law.

I think there are some very interesting questions to be asked about who funded this, and I think that the Mayor of Victoria Park might have some very interesting answers about who funded this. I only raise that because I have been fortunate enough to receive some information from a constituent—in fact, a copy of an email sent to them—in which it very explicitly says that Mayor Karen Vernon paid for the printing of these flyers.

Hon Dan Caddy: She didn't!

Hon Kate Doust: She did indeed.

I have not had the opportunity to ask her. I do not think anyone has had the opportunity to ask that question, but I hope that happens via this inquiry or the media. I do not know whether the media pays attention to what is happening in this house, but it is a significant issue if the Mayor of Victoria Park, who is elected by the people of Victoria Park, has sought to influence a vote in the state election by paying for the printing and enabling the distribution of a document that explicitly targeted one political party in the election campaign. As I said, people have the right to do this, but they should put their name to it and claim the credit. I think a penalty should be imposed when the person who has authorised and printed the document is not named. It is an interesting little email because it talks about how they have got the Greens in the bag as well. I wanted to make that comment because I know it was distributed by a group. As I said, I fully respect community groups expressing a view, but I have difficulty when people do not have the courage to put their name to their actions. If the Mayor of Victoria Park, Karen Vernon, is indeed the person who paid for the printing and enabled the distribution of this unauthorised piece of election material, she needs to step up, admit to it and deal with the consequences.

Coming back to our work in Parliament, one of the big issues that we have to deal with—this comes back to the challenges about the fragility of democracy and the work of members of Parliament, regardless of where they are—is how we manage ourselves in our day-to day-work, not just in here but outside Parliament, and how we deal with matters in an ethical way, which is a real challenge. I do not think it is a challenge for anyone in here, but we see this happening elsewhere. The comments that were made by His Excellency the Governor and the Chief Justice, the Honourable Mr Peter Quinlan, have reinforced for me why it has become more and more important that we talk about the ethics of being a parliamentarian and the ethics of being a politician. In my mind, they are two different things. The advent of this Parliament is probably a good time for us to reflect on the responsibilities that we hold in this place as not just politicians, but certainly as parliamentarians. As politicians, we can seek to persuade, campaign and lead public discourse. However, as parliamentarians we hold the specific duty of upholding the legislative process. We shape the law and scrutinise the executive. We are the stewards of this institution, and that distinction matters. With that responsibility should come strong ethical guidance.

I am going to raise something that I have been very keen on for quite some time, but have not had success with; that is, a code of conduct. Most Parliaments around the country—in fact, around the world—have a code of conduct for members. It is not a silver bullet and it will not fix or change members' behaviour, but it certainly sends a clear message that members should behave within a set of guidelines and rules. That brings me back to our departing colleague, the member formally known as. If we had had a code of conduct, he might have refrained from some of his behaviour—I do not know. It might have assisted. The Assembly has a code of conduct but the Legislative Council does not; we have not reached that point. It is something that I flagged when I was the Presiding Officer; indeed, I wrote to the current Procedure and Privileges Committee on two occasions asking that it engage on this issue and give consideration to having a discussion with members and to crafting a code of conduct. Some of the matters that could be included could be the commitment to act in the public interest, avoid conflicts of interest, refrain from personal gain, maintain respectful conduct and uphold transparency and accountability. This is something that is important to me and I am hopeful that it is important to other members in this chamber. It is not something that will be resolved by 21 May this year, but I hope that over the next four years there might be some discourse in this chamber about the possibility of developing a code of conduct for our members and delivering on it. Certainly, we do not have to reinvent the wheel. A significant number of codes in operation are effective. The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association has drafted a code of conduct. I happen to have a copy to hand; it is a template, if you like, that can be used. It has developed very clear standards over an extended period of time that have been put in place in Parliaments across the board. It is a good model to align ourselves with. I will keep pursuing this issue over the next four years. I hope that is something that the privileges committee will consider and bring back to Parliament.

I want to talk very briefly about the CPA because I think it does an exceptionally good job across our Parliaments on a wide variety of issues. I particularly want to focus on the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians group. I am very pleased and privileged to hold the regional chair position for Australia. I am on the international steering committee; indeed, I am the deputy chair of that committee. Also, for a bit of fun, I am on the editorial board of The Parliamentarian, which is a very interesting role to have. This is something I will perhaps talk about when we return with the new chamber composition. The CWP plays an important role for women in Parliaments. Its function is not just about encouraging women to step forward and step up into Parliament, to stay in Parliament and to grow their voice and build their capacity and engagement; it is also about challenging norms and enabling women with pathways to leadership. I know my colleague Hon Shelley Payne attended a very good conference in Malaysia late last year at which we had similar discussions. It is about ensuring that all legislation deals with all genders—not just males, but all genders. I note that in this election we have again increased the number of new women in both chambers. I look forward to working with those women as they arrive. An important part of the work of the CWP is to find ways to grow the voice of women in Parliaments right across the Commonwealth. I hope that over the next four years we will become more active at the state level with CWP. At the national level, we are looking to run some programs with our Pacific partners. The Tasmanian branch is running programs for young women. We ran a national program late last year at which we had young women representatives from every state. We had a young woman from Western Australia who attended a program that encouraged young women to become more engaged in politics with whichever party women chose to engage with and to perhaps contemplate the idea of stepping up into Parliament.

There is a lot of written information, guidebooks and support. There is a wonderful network across not only Australia, but certainly internationally. There are webinars and a range of other forums that women can engage within Parliaments to become better informed and more confident about their role. I encourage women in particular to get involved with that. Certainly, I hope that at some point the Western Australian Parliament might establish gender sensitising parliamentary guidelines. They have been picked up in a significant number of other Parliaments. I will have more to say about the CWP post-May after I attend its next conference, which will be about empowering women financially. I am quite looking forward to that and to seeing what happens in other countries in terms of providing support for women via legislation.

There are a number of other issues I want to talk about. Will I be able to get an extension or is one hour my limit? Acting President (Hon Sandra Carr), I seek an extension of time because I have got a whole lot of stuff to go through.

Leave granted for the member's time to be extended.

Hon Kate Doust: Thank you, very much. It has been a long time since I asked for an extension of time!

I want to talk about some of the specific topics that His Excellency spoke about. One of them, which is very close to my heart, is the issue of homelessness and housing, particularly for women over 55. It is one of the most complex and urgent issues that we have to deal with in Western Australia. I certainly see that a lack of housing is an issue in my electorate, particularly for women. I recently had to find housing for three or four women who, for a variety of reasons, had lost their homes at a later stage of their lives. It has been a real struggle, but we have been successful on most occasions—sometimes because of pure luck—to get them into housing. It is a real challenge.

I know that the Cook Labor government has worked hard, particularly John Carey. I want to give him a really big tick because that minister has been very good to work with on these issues. He has never hesitated to provide assistance or support when asked. I know that he has an enormous challenge ahead of him in trying to pull back the waiting list. If anyone is capable of delivering for our community, it is John Carey. I look forward to seeing how he progresses through that very challenging issue and the change to his portfolio, which is now "Housing and Works". I wanted to put on the record his support and the great work he has been doing. I particularly want to reference the support he has given to an organisation with which I am involved, Connect Victoria Park. It does amazing work providing housing for seniors and women in Victoria Park and other areas. I am a member of that board. Over the last couple of years we have been working with both the state and federal governments to get support to build a three-level 15-unit development in Victoria Park for women over the age of 55. I am really pleased to put on the record that over the last couple of weeks, with the superb support of Minister John Carey, we were able to get that project over the line literally 45 minutes before the Prime Minister went to see the Governor. We were able to lock down our state and our federal arrangements. Hopefully, we will soon press the "go" button for the construction of this really wonderful property that will be built in Victoria Park to provide housing for women in the long term, starting with 15 women. If we can prove that this type of project works well, the board is hoping there will be other opportunities down the track. I just wanted to acknowledge the contribution that Minister Carey has made to that project.

Coming back to the housing issue, I want to say how difficult it is for people to get rental properties at the moment. One of my electorate officers has been battling to find a property for the last couple of months. It is diabolical out there. That is a real challenge for anyone in this state.

One of the other issues I wanted to touch on relates to hospitals. I know that is a challenging area. I do not know whether we will ever have a magic card to fix everything health-wise. I am looking at my good friend, the doctor across the way. I know that he is always reluctant for us non-doctors to talk about health, but we are entitled. It is a challenge. It is an enormous pit. I do not think it matters which side of government we are on; we will always have the same types of issues. It just comes down to how the funding is allocated. This time around, the Premier made a very sensible decision and did not just leave health for one minister to manage but actually shared the load. It will be really interesting to see how that works over the next four years and how things will improve. We are a diverse community. We live in a huge state. We are spread out. It is a question of how we allocate resources and find the appropriate staff, and also how we juggle all that. It is really difficult.

Unfortunately, I have had quite a bit to do with hospitals and doctors over the last few years, not just in my immediate family but certainly for my parents because they are going through a challenging period of dealing with dementia issues. I was really pleased to see during the election period that the government committed to a $140 million aged-care package. I am really pleased that part of that funding will be directed to an integrated older adult care hub, which will provide clinical services from GPs, geriatric specialists, physiotherapists and psychologists, dementia support, including memory clinics and advanced care planning—hopefully not something that any of us will have to deal with but probably will—and assistance for family navigating aged-care services. I thought I was reasonably savvy on these things, but it is an absolute diabolical minefield. It is complicated and they do not make it easy for us. I have sat in Centrelink offices, hospitals and doctors' surgeries for a number of hours, and I have had to deal with nursing homes. It was a whole new learning curve and not one that I ever anticipated. I am really pleased that the government is focusing on that because it becomes more and more important with our ageing population.

The government also committed to launch the very first dementia action plan, which will look at issues around hospital staff, training and dementia care and a public awareness campaign to support families managing dementia. The Memory Walk and Jog was on a couple of Sundays ago. The plan will also include dementia-friendly designs in new hospitals and a review of existing services to support accessibility. I am looking forward to that plan and perhaps even having a say on it. There is nothing like some practical hands-on experience when dealing with dementia. It is a tragedy. One of the most difficult things we can ever see and deal with—I am sure I am not alone in this chamber—is watching our parents decline, seeing their memory fade, seeing them forget to eat and drink and dealing with all sorts of other complications in nursing homes. I put on the record that my mother was assaulted in her nursing home a week ago, which is not something I thought I would have to deal with. Sometimes family members forget who we are. I think my dad thinks I am his caregiver, not his daughter, at the moment. There are lots of challenges. I am really pleased that the Cook Labor government has decided to invest in that space.

The other thing I wanted to put on the record while I am talking about health is that quite often we see people, particularly those in the media, malign health staff. To be at the coalface, working in hospitals, including emergency departments, people have to be so courageous. They have to be committed, compassionate and patient. It is a drive. I am trying to think of the word. Some people become nuns or priests; I would say that it is like a vocation.

Hon Louise Kingston: A calling.

Hon Kate Doust: It is like a calling. Thank you very much. It is a really tough gig.

Tragically, we have had two family deaths over the last few months. One was expected, and I would say it was a good death in terms of how we dealt with that. The other one was not. On 18 December, a much-loved cousin who I have looked after since she was born, who has lived with me and who worked with Hon Martin Pritchard and me at the SDA had not been well. She was flown up from Bunbury that night because her blood pressure just kept dropping. She arrived at Fiona Stanley Hospital at about 9:00 pm and within 24 hours she died. She did not even think she was that sick. She had no idea. The hospital staff did everything. I just want to say thank you very much to the nurses and the doctors. In 24 hours, they pulled out every stump. They did everything possible. Unfortunately, within those 24 hours, she had contracted thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura sepsis. No matter what they did, she was gone. I understand that it is exceedingly rare. After she passed, the doctor said to me that if people come in with that, they do not go home. I just wanted to put on the record that the staff were superb. Absolute acclamation goes to the staff down there. I did not think that would upset me.

I was going to talk about vaccinations because that is a significant issue, but I might do that during an adjournment speech because I think it requires a bit of time. I have concerns about where we are heading with some of our numbers and some of the incidents that are happening.

I want to go back and acknowledge that, as reflected in a speech yesterday, the Western Australian Government has acknowledged the complexity of dealing with health and has put in place a number of ministers to share the load and continue to provide the best services it possibly can. Similar initiatives have been done in education, particularly in early education. I want to acknowledge that the Premier's reshuffle of ministers and certainly the machinery-of-government changes, including the establishment of the Office of Early Childhood, which hopefully will strengthen our efforts in early childhood education and care, is a renewal of the commitment to children and parents in our state. It was certainly demonstrated with the appointment of Hon Sabine Winton MLA, who has taken on the roles of the Minister for Education; Early Childhood; Preventative Health; and Wheatbelt.

I am sure Hon Darren West will continue to deal with Hon Sabine Winton in some way, shape or form on the Wheatbelt. The portfolios are interconnected. I am not so sure about the Wheatbelt but certainly the first three are interconnected. Hon Sabine Winton's appointment is a very strategic decision and I look forward to seeing her deliver early childhood policy and change in our state. Certainly, I have just written to her in this last week because, as some members will know, I have had a long-term engagement with Carson Street School, which is a special needs school. It is an amazing school. It delivers a broad variety of specialist programs for primary school children. Out of 10 or 11 schools, it is the only one that is purely a primary school, so basically from children from zero to about 11 years. Unfortunately, it is the only primary school in an area of education and it is not funded to the same level, so I wrote to Minister Sabine Winton this week on behalf of the board—I am a member of the board as well—expressing concern about the current arrangements and inviting her as a new minister to come and visit the school and meet with the board and to talk about how some of the issues could be addressed and hopefully improved for the benefit of those children. I am sure she will do that. I am sure she is very keen to get out and about; she certainly did that with her previous portfolios dealing with domestic violence issues and refuges.

In my last five minutes today I just want to touch on some of the campaigns I have worked on. I have already referenced the four that I worked on, but I just want to acknowledge that we now have a fantastic new young member Ms Sook Yee Lai MLA in the seat of Bibra Lake. It is really good to be able to say that about her. Sook Yee Lai is an amazing young woman. She is a former teacher and Christmas Islander. I think she is our first Chinese heritage member of the Assembly in WA, and she is a powerhouse. She will work so hard for people in her seat. It was a privilege and a pleasure to work her hard during the election campaign. I think it was a big learning curve for her and for me.

I want to acknowledge David Scaife MLA, member for Cockburn. It was my second time directing David in his campaign and it is always a pleasure. I want to congratulate him on his promotion as a parliamentary secretary and wish him well for his future. David Scaife has worked extremely hard with continuous campaigning throughout his first term, and that was reflected in his outcome. He is so well known throughout his seat. In fact, he is so well known that I think he spent most of his campaign time, particularly during pre-polling, sharing the love working on other people's campaigns to help them out. He is a very generous soul in that regard. He had a fantastic campaign team, and I want to acknowledge the work that they did to get David re-elected as well.

I was fortunate as well to direct Magenta Marshall in the seat of Rockingham. As members know, Magenta Marshall replaced former Premier Mark McGowan as the member for Rockingham when he retired, so she has had about 18 months in that seat. I must say it was a particularly toxic campaign in Rockingham. It was a very personal campaign and a very nasty campaign. It was perhaps not as nasty as the first one when the young candidate had a go at Magenta about what would happen if she became pregnant and had a child. Well, fortunately, she has a beautiful child and I think it has actually strengthened her capacity. I know that Bowie came with us on pre-poll at least once or twice during the election campaign, so she is learning early. Magenta is going to be delivering on a significant number of commitments, as will Sook Yee Lai and David Scaife for their respective electorates. I know those benefits will be well received by constituents over the next four years. They are fully funded and fully costed commitments by a Labor government, which is not something the Liberal Party under Colin Barnett used to be able to say. From memory, I think they were FM radio-type commitments. Hon Sue Ellery might confirm that—yes, thank you very much.

Now to the final campaign that I worked on; again, it was for the second time. I am really pleased to see that we were able to get Dr Jags Krishnan re-elected in the seat of Riverton. It was a tough campaign, and not one to be taken for granted. Again, sadly, it was another toxic campaign. I think I spoke about it for the first time in 2021. It was a very racist campaign run against Dr Jags. There were a lot of negative comments about his heritage. There was not so much of that this time, but there were other things that came into play. What people did not take into account was the level of respect and regard that Dr Jags's constituents have for him, and that is what got him over the line. We did not have any difficulty manning booths, manning pre-poll, getting people to turn out to vote or getting people to turn out to events because they genuinely like the man. They like what he has done for them over the last four years. I want to congratulate him on his win and wish him well for the next four years.

In my closing remarks, finally—I will not ask for and I cannot get another extension—I really look forward to the next four years. I want to acknowledge the fantastic contribution from our Governor yesterday. I think we are up for exciting opportunities over the next four years. I look forward to working with the new incoming members and the new opportunities that they bring with them. The first few weeks will be a period of discovery for all of them, finding their voice, finding their seat, learning about the rhythms and the movements and watching how people do things in the chamber, looking for their tells, and looking for the connections that they will make on their ongoing parliamentary journey. They are all very important things to do. For those of us who are returning, it is a moment for us to reflect, to renew our sense of purpose and to offer support when we can. As I said at the outset, the opening of a new Parliament brings with it energy, momentum and a deep responsibility. It is a moment to be both bold in our vision and wise in our judgement. At its best, this Parliament is democracy in motion; it is vibrant, hopeful and charged with the potential to shape lives for the better. Every member here, regardless of where they line up in a political party or what position they hold, has a role to play in the writing of the next chapter for Western Australia. Let us do it with clarity of purpose. Let us do it with compassion and integrity, as outlined by our Governor. And let us not forget who sent us here and who we serve—the people of Western Australia.

Hon Dr Brian Walker (East Metropolitan Region) (3:26 pm): Thank you, Acting President. I have to give thanks first of all to Hon Kate Doust for a wonderful reply speech, which took away a lot of my words, I might add. It is good; it will save a bit of time! Bearing in mind that a certain amount of time was spent on this, I very much thank a very experienced and very eminent colleague in the chamber for the guidance.

Having listened to the first speeches, starting with my colleague and friend Hon Dan Caddy, I was taken with the amount of esteem with which members opposite, or to my left, have praised the government for what has been an excellent campaign with an excellent result for themselves. I would like to start off by saying that I will regret not seeing some faces in this chamber. There are people who I will absolutely miss when it comes to the new Parliament. I say thank you to departing colleagues for having brightened my days and having educated me and for having shown me the beauty of politics in this building, because four years ago, when I first entered this place, I had no idea what was to be expected of me as a politician. Naive as I was, I came into this chamber wondering what I was going to experience. I was told in the induction phase that in the other place—that place that shall not be named—there are politicians of disreputable, rowdy character; whereas here, we are the parliamentarians—the august body of reviewers and upholders of the standards. I am reminded of this because Hon Kate Doust mentioned in part of her speech the idea of a code of conduct for this place. I have to say, on the one hand, a code of conduct is a fine thing to be recommending. On the other hand, I would say that it is quite sad that it is felt necessary to have a code of conduct by which we ought to abide in this august chamber, because that would imply that we have actually been falling short of our standards. I would like to think that that is not the case, with perhaps one memorable exception that has already been mentioned, and I will not mention it anymore—well, not often.

I ought to mention at the start of my response to the Address-in-Reply a quote from the excellent speech given by His Excellency the Governor outlining the government's plans over the next four years. I cannot give the origin of the quote; I simply have it. The quote is that the role of government is to regulate business and protect the people, not to regulate the people and protect business. I will refer to that a few times and maybe allude to it in passing because one of the problems we are facing in our political trajectory is bringing the people along with us as we strive to do our best to serve the people of our wonderful state. We have a huge responsibility. We are parliamentarians who have come to this place to serve and to give. I think that is evidenced by the contributions made in this chamber that have been mentioned most memorably by my colleagues who have reflected on the past four years and of past experience.

His Excellency the Governor gave an outline of the government's agenda. It would be churlish of anyone to disagree with that because when we look at what binds us together as a people, we find that most of the decisions we make are made by consensus because they are the right things to do. When people work together in whatever shape to do what is right for the advancement of the people, we can generally agree on the broad range of measures. What we might disagree on is the fine detail. For example, the cost of living is a major problem that was mentioned in the speech by His Excellency the Governor. He mentioned the power bill assistance, which I think is admirable. That was in the last budget as well. Everyone must welcome the assistance that people are getting, yet it is but a drop in the ocean, is it not? It is a welcome drop in the ocean, but still a drop nonetheless. The student assistance package and the capped public transport fees are also a benefit.

I was particularly interested, however, as a medical practitioner having worked in the Wheatbelt, with the Patient Assisted Travel Scheme. That is to be enhanced. My experience of PATS is one of a bloated bureaucracy striving to deprive my patients of finances for travelling and staying in Perth or further afield for essential treatment. Even now I am dealing with patients of mine who have come from the Wheatbelt because they require my care and attention. Although it is a four-hour car drive, they prefer to see me because they are simply not able to access the same level of care in the regions. That is a major problem that I am glad to say the Cook government is addressing. I would like to think that if another party were in power, it would have the same concern.

Again, I have to give thanks for the TAFE scheme because my eldest son benefited from the ability to have a subsidised TAFE education, which has set him on a path. I will probably bore people in the future when I boast about my children, as any proud father would. My eldest son has now passed through that and is a valued member of the Royal Australian Navy. He is now in uniform serving his country, I think far away, and is blossoming as a young man, as all young people should. I would highly recommend every young person making full use of every opportunity afforded to them. Anything we can do to help our young people develop themselves is a benefit because they are our future. If we make it difficult for the future of our nation to thrive, we will damage ourselves for generations to come.

I looked at the government support for the residential battery scheme. I personally want to make use of that and I highly recommend that all of us consider making use of that because, from an environmental point of view, it is nothing but good for us. I will speak about that more in the future.

I was very pleased to hear the Governor mention the job creation schemes and the increase in the housing supply. I had hoped to hear the wonderful words of support from Minister Carey that we could perhaps be a bit more successful in providing accommodation for rental purposes because at the moment it is a burden on our people, even if it was slightly improved on what it is now. We recently moved out of our rental property and bought a property. The queue to see the property we were vacating was around the block. I am not kidding. There were complaints about the parking to attend the single viewing of our vacated apartment. I am sure that reflects a pressure for accommodation throughout our state and maybe throughout our nation.

I was also very pleased to hear the comments from my colleague Hon Kate Doust about what is being undertaken in the health sector. I note the experiences she has had with her family. That surely guides us. It is all very well talking about theory. I remember sometime back people saying to me, "Yes, we've read all the reports and we know what's going on." My comment to that, in silence, of course, was that if you have not lived it, you do not know what is going on until you have experienced what actually happens in aged care, the difficulty we have managing that, and experiencing the tragedy of dementia. I regard dementia as one of the major issues that we have to deal with. It is heartbreaking, both for the family and the medical and other healthcare practitioners. When it gets to the point that a loved one is being buried, you realise that you are actually burying a stranger. That is heartbreaking. What do we have here in the way of facilities to help people at that most difficult time in their lives? The answer, my friends, is not enough. We must do more. We must also do more to address the rise and the frequency of dementia in our population. That is an area that I am particularly concerned about because it can affect every single one of us here. What are the causes for it? It will probably be noted that the causes might well be found in our environment and our nutrition. Not enough is said in this chamber and in this Parliament about the need for a clean environment and clean and healing nutrition to allow us to live good-quality lives for as long as we can.

I noted the Premier's words of praise about splitting the health department over a number of ministerial posts. He said that might add breadth to the portfolio. That is a fine thing to expect. However, I will point out a word of warning on that. When we have a subcommittee and a teams approach to the health portfolio, we also risk spreading ourselves too widely, failing to communicate adequately between departments and lacking a unified approach to the single topic of wellness. Wellness, of course, is multifactorial. It is probably appropriate to look at it multifactorially, but I would counsel, hope and expect that the communication between the various offices be of the very highest quality, or it will risk creating gaps that people will fall between.

One of my main problems with managing wellness is the bloated and manic overstaffing of bureaucrats whose functions seem to be excellently providing pieces of paper on which crosses are to be made but which actually obstruct and obscure the business of offering services to the people who are most in need. I ask that serious concern be shown to the overbureaucratisation of our services, resulting in a less efficient service. I would not ascribe to anyone the idea that we offer a poor service, because I am sure that all people are engaged to their highest ability, but bureaucracy seems to be adept at slowing processes. I can speak from personal experience. I am perhaps biased and was embittered in my childhood because my first experience of bureaucracy was at the age of four months when I was flown back from my then home in Malaysia for eye surgery for a congenital condition. The surgery was conditional upon the colonial bureaucrat giving written permission for the operation when I was aged three months. He was on Christmas leave. One month later, the permission was granted and the operation was carried out, during which time I lost effective sight in one of my eyes.

A bureaucratic error was directly responsible for my inability to serve in the air force, as I had initially wanted to do as a young man. Another very well known bureaucratic failure happened when I was entering university and was required to put down my dead father's future income, as my six-year future grant was based on that. I thought that there had to be a limit to bureaucratic idiocy, but I have been repeatedly proven wrong.

Looking again at what we are facing in this current term of Parliament, one large part of that is going to involve the environment. We talked about the parks and the big batteries, and all of that is highly recommended. I very much look forward to my friend Hon Matthew Swinbourn's work in that portfolio. I promise to do all I can to speak on this, as I am sure all members of this chamber will do, and to provide the best support for and best review of legislation to result in our beautiful environment being maintained and enhanced. I can only welcome a reduction in coal-fired power generation. I note past arguments in this chamber about the difficulties and how we would need coal forevermore, but I sincerely believe that that is not the case.

Decarbonisation is a case in point as something on which we ought to be more effective. We need to give more energy to the topic of reducing the carbon loads in our environment. I am going to go back to one of my main topics, which is that we really ought to look at how we can enhance the environment by using broad-based hemp cultivation, which is a wonderful way to capture carbon—much better than the forests. I wonder why we are refusing to do this. I also wonder why the Environmental Protection Authority carried out its broad consultation with only industry and not those who represent environmental services. I am still wondering why no-one can explain to me why 70% of vegetation in Western Australia has been lost. Are we prepared to continue putting up with that? I have also looked at the issues with the planned mining of the jarrah forests by Alcoa and how that might negatively impact not just the water source now but also the future of the environment. It has been adequately shown that the plans to re-establish the natural environment on the mined jarrah forests are far from perfect.

I am going to mention the AUKUS infrastructure in due course, but I note that it is a large part of the burden that our nation must bear. I look forward to how it might help the area from Fremantle down to Rockingham with certain very large infrastructure developments, fitting in with Westport and the further expansion and completion of Metronet, which I welcome. I will be very happy to support sensible advancement of that.

Before I get on to the first reply to the Governor's speech by Hon Dan Caddy, I need to make a very clear statement about where I stand in my approach to and support for sensible legislation in the future, and that is the clear statement that we need to support people before profits. That is not to say that profits are unimportant, but I hope and pray that we put people first and that profits come second to support the people.

Hon Dan Caddy mentioned the wonderful new pool of talent coming in on both sides of the house. I very much look forward to working with my new colleagues and also the colleagues I have grown to love over the last four years.

One area about which Hon Dan Caddy was very effusive in his reply to the speech of His Excellency the Governor was that of family violence restraining orders and coercive control. I could not agree more. This is an area of extreme concern to me as well, and I am glad to see that the Cook government is looking at it seriously. That will find my support. This morning I had a constituent come to visit me with precisely this problem. She is separated and her ex-husband is coercively controlling her. He is financially controlling her. She is unable to afford a lawyer so she had to stand in front of a magistrate in the Family Court completely unsupported and alone while her ex-partner had all the control. Her children have been separated from her by order of the court based, sadly, upon the fact that she is taking medicinal cannabis. If I were to prescribe medicinal diazepam, medicinal OxyContin or medicinal pregabalin, there would be no concerns at all because a doctor had prescribed them. The court demanded that she be investigated with a hair analysis for cannabis, upon which the court based its judgement that she was taking too much cannabis. I am not sure what medical qualifications the magistrate has, but had they any medical qualifications, they would realise that hair analysis for cannabis is completely irrelevant. This lady collapsed on my floor crying tears of desperation because she was being deprived of access to her children based on completely inappropriate pseudo-medical tests. I wonder how long we are prepared to put up with this, especially as the lawyers supporting her ex-husband were using the system—gaming the system—for a victory in the court. I cannot think of anything more reprehensible than a system that purports to stand for justice being used to manifest injustice. I ask the Cook government to act on this urgently. I have had personal experience of two patients of mine committing suicide following similar violence or coercive control. The result has been death.

What I really want to do in this reply speech is to address the elephant in the room, which I think was partially addressed by my colleague Hon Kate Doust. As an elected member now for the whole state of Western Australia, I must stand and speak on all areas, including the evolving geopolitical changes. Like other members, I have been watching what has been going on in this world with increasing horror. It affects every single one of us in some way or another. I was recently blessed with an invitation to attend a global conference for cannabis regulation in Washington, which I will speak about at another opportunity. It was interesting to experience entering that country and, for the first time, regarding it as an enemy state. I found that to be quite a remarkable experience. What I also found remarkable was that the people I spoke with from that once great country were completely unaware of the feelings, views and understanding of every other nation that I had contact with. I spoke with people from the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Germany, France, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico and Colombia, and the experiences we shared were entirely foreign to many of the people in that country. Western Australia, as part of the nation of Australia, is committing significant sums of money that could be spent on homelessness, hospital building or assisting those who are being coercively controlled to find a safe place to live and donating it to a failing empire to support the military industrial complex. Why? Why are my people here in Western Australia being deprived of significant financial support and what are we doing about it? We are being complicit by being quiet because it is a federal matter. Actually, it is not. It is a matter that affects our people here.

We are obliged to speak to this because it is our people. We are no longer in different electorates; this is one state. It is our people in Western Australia. We are in a relationship with—let me call it straight out—a failing empire, and we have been taught that it is our ally, our friend, and it may be a temporary glitch. There may actually be a trade surplus with us on the part of the Americans, but still they have slapped 10% tariffs on us. Still the aluminium we are exporting has been tariffed while it is building the submarines that we are paying for. We are being told that the Americans are our friends and allies based on an experience 80 years ago, which might have been true then, although it was actually a self-serving interest. We are being told that other nations are our enemies. I would say to all members here now that both statements are wrong. Whether it is the United States or China, they are not our allies—not at all. They are not our enemies either—not at all. They simply are. We are in a relationship with them.

Like many here, I am in relationships. I am in relationships with my wife, my children and my friends. A relationship is a two-way process of understanding and being understood, or understanding and making oneself understood. I suspect that in this AUKUS partnership, as a body, we are failing to make our view clear on behalf of our people to those elsewhere in our nation that we need a better approach to our international relations. Our silence makes us complicit in failing to do that. It is like being in a marriage: Would we be happy to be married to a bully? Would we put up with being abused physically, mentally, socially or financially? Would we put up with that, or if we saw someone who was suffering that, would we do something? Would we say, "If you have a problem, let's help. Where can we get you some help, because being in that relationship is going to be destructive to you"? Is this current relationship disruptive and destructive to ourselves? Are we, in fact, as a state, in a coercive relationship with another nation? We must have a voice.

I speak about the recent election and the issues that have arisen from that. First of all, I congratulate all who have won a seat in this current electoral round. I preface my statement with a brief word of acknowledgement that the Electoral Commission, both at state and federal level, must stand above all suspicion. I have complete respect for all that it has done. Of course, it is a difficult time for it, and we will work our way through that. However, there is a problem. There is a perception—a perceptual matter. It is now 9 April and, since 2 April, there has been no update on the outcome of the election so far. The button push will come in two days, but the idea should be to keep us informed about what is going on. It is a black box. It is entirely opaque. We have no idea what is going on. I and other members know that this is entirely appropriate, because the commission is busy doing the counting. It is all above board. We are assured of that, because we trust the people who are doing this. They are eminently respectable. But there is a perception, is there not, that seven days of silence could infer that there may be things going on in the background that are not acceptable? That is what happened in another country—riots happened—and so far we are accepting that. We need and we absolutely must have clarity on this, and I am delighted to see that the response from our Premier has been to seek an appropriate resolution. I think that the McCusker review is going to be entirely supportive of the rights of a democratic nation to live in freedom and free from any suspicion of inappropriate behaviour, and I can only thank the Premier for his work on this.

What I do not want to have at any time in the future is fear and anger in our society like that which has arisen from the other place—not our other place; that other place, the one ruled by the OSG. I am not going to mention what the OSG acronym stands for. It is unparliamentary language.

A member interjected.

Hon Dr Brian Walker: I will explain it later. We are being faced with a great danger to our democracy, and, like other members, I greatly value this institution. I stand here ready to serve, as we all do. We stand here at the front line of the democracy that we hold so dear. I will be here every day, as will other members, standing up to give voice to the democratic values of our state of our nation. This will be our epitaph, if you will. One hundred years from now, people can look back and say, "They stood for that which is right. They stood for democracy. They stood for the people." We are standing for that.

In this moment, with this great danger facing democracy not just here but democracy in our free world, we need to call for unity. We need to call for serving the people. That is who we are. We serve the people.

Hon Ayor Makur Chuot (North Metropolitan Region) (3:56 pm): I acknowledge the President. She is not in the chamber, but I give her my congratulations on being selected to be our President for the 42nd Parliament. I want to say that we trust her and we know that she is a great role model in this chamber. She is going to lead us in the next four years, and I put on the record that I am really happy that we have her back as our President for the next term.

I would also like to do something that I think is right, because it is my first time getting up in this Parliament. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet and I pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. I am always grateful to be in this beautiful Noongar land and I acknowledge them.

I give a big shout-out to Hon Sue Ellery, who has been our Leader of the House. I was a bit naughty yesterday; I did a shout-out on social media. I take a moment to reflect on my four years in this house and acknowledge Hon Sue Ellery. She is a true mentor and leader. She is a strong advocate for serious leadership in our Parliament, and that is something I am deeply proud to take forward in my next years.

Hon Sue Ellery mentioned in her speech yesterday that she has been able to leave on her own terms. I wrote this before she said that. It is something for which I am really grateful, as a future generation of people who are staying in this Parliament, because by making senior leaders such as Hon Sue Ellery happy to leave on their own terms, it means she can pick up our phone calls. If we have any questions, she is one minute away—unless she changes her number! That is a good thing, because she is leaving on her own terms.

Of course, as I said on my social media post, she is a leader who leads by example. One has to lead by example. She is a great role model and I am sure that other members agree with me.

When I came to this Parliament in 2021 as a member of a marginalised community, I was really scared. I thought that, firstly, my English is not good enough. When I came to Australia, I could not speak English. I did not have a skill set. How will I go and communicate with those western people in Parliament? That was my biggest fear. But when I entered our first caucus with Hon Sue Ellery, I felt that sense of belonging and acceptance and support. They are the biggest things for which I acknowledge her and the President of the house. I acknowledge them for allowing me to be a mother and a member of Parliament in this house and for allowing me to thrive and grow in my role, because mothers need to be given that support. As a government, we cannot advocate on behalf of mothers out there if we do not practise this important thing. As policymakers, we need to make sure that we create a safe space in our workspace.

I remember when I used to sit outside, some of my colleagues would say, "You look very normal; you're not stressing about this job." Of course, I have been supported by everybody here, and I would like to say thank you to all my colleagues for being so accommodating when I, as a mum, had to take some time off, especially on Tuesday nights. I agree with Hon Martin Pritchard that not every parent can be strong. Some parents would be too afraid to put up their hand for Parliament, especially as it sits on Tuesday nights. I hope some adjustments can be made in Parliament, not so much for me, but to encourage the future generation and allow them to feel that they have a place in this Parliament.

As I look around this chamber, I see many of my dear colleagues who will be departing in the next term. I commend each of them for their contributions to this place and the inspiring work they have done in Parliament. Some of them have supported me. In particular, I would like to thank my comrade Hon Lorna Harper for her support and sisterhood. I congratulate Hon Lorna Harper for her advocacy for the East Metropolitan Region, the workers and those who are culturally and linguistically diverse. I bumped into some ladies from the Sister Project the other day. They were quite shocked to learn that Hon Lorna Harper will not return in the new term of Parliament. They asked me to pass on their love to you, Hon Lorna Harper, and thank you for your continuous support over the last four years. Of course, your friendship has been invaluable, and I cannot thank you enough for your support, wisdom and encouragement. When I became a member of Parliament, I was at times not very confident, but Lorna is one member who really believed in me. She said, "You're a strong woman and you can do this. Get up. You can do this." I want to put my thanks on the record. Sometimes we sound different, but the work we can deliver as policymakers is the same. We have the heart for our people. It is rare to find people who really believe in you and who believe that the language that we speak should not define the work that you can deliver at the table. Thank you so much, Lorna.

Of course, Lorna is not the only member who will not return after May. I give a big shout-out to my tall friend Hon Darren West. I am going to miss you. I thank you for your support and all the work that you have done all these years. I also acknowledge my dear friend Hon Martin Pritchard. It was lovely listening to his valedictory speech. Hon Martin Pritchard and Hon Pierre Yang were the first MLCs who supported me. I still have that beautiful photo that we took outside your office—thank you for your support. I also acknowledge Hon Shelley Payne for her contribution in the region. Everybody values her contribution. Thank you. To the guy who runs the show, Hon Kyle McGinn, I am definitely going to miss you.

Hon Kyle McGinn interjected.

Hon Ayor Makur Chuot: It is not bullshit; it is true!

Several members interjected.

Hon Ayor Makur Chuot: Oh, did I say that? I withdraw that comment. Hon Kyle McGinn did not say that!

I also acknowledge Hon Rosie Sahanna, the first First Nations person in this chamber of Parliament. I thank her for her fantastic contribution. Of course, we are going to miss the wonderful years of experience of Hon Sally Talbot.

Margaret Quirk from the Legislative Assembly was my local member when I was growing up in Girrawheen. I thank her for her wonderful contribution during her time in Parliament. Of course, I really admire our Christmas minister, the wonderful David Templeman. I would like to give him the best wishes for whatever he is going to do. He is still young, and I wish him all the best!

I appreciate all the effort and incredible work of members in the chamber. I am very excited about the incoming members who will join us in the chamber. As many members have done during their contributions to the Address-in-Reply, I, too, acknowledge the members of the opposition whose term in this chamber is concluding. I acknowledge Hon Peter Collier, who has been a great and strong advocate for his community. I acknowledge Hon Donna Faragher, who is also a mother and has been through what I have been through. There is a lot that the two of us can relate to. I give her a big thankyou. We may have our differences, but we are here for the same cause—to serve our community. I have seen the great work that she has done. Hon Colin De Grussa and our daylight saving member, Hon Wilson Tucker, will be dearly missed. I also acknowledge Sophia Moermond and thank her for her contribution. Although we may have our differences, as I said before, I never doubt that members of the opposition have come to this place for the right reasons—in pursuit of the justice that reflects the value of their communities. I commend them for their work and wish them well.

Hon Peter Collier just walked into the chamber. I acknowledge him for his wonderful contribution and thank him for being a kind opposition friend. During my time as a member of this chamber, everybody has been very respectful, which is what democracy is all about.

It is never easy to see colleagues leave this place; however, we can take comfort knowing that it is the natural order of democracy for members to come and go. They make their contribution then move on to new projects or retire. For those of us who continue in this term of Parliament, and for those new members who will be joining us, our departing colleagues will serve as guides and inspiration for the work that awaits us in the coming session of Parliament. Their insight and legacy will not be forgotten. It will continue to underpin the work our government does in this Parliament and the wider community.

I would like to congratulate the government. I give a big congratulations to Premier Roger Cook on his re-election and for his values and vision for Western Australia. His commitment to our great state and leadership have led our party to a third-term historic victory in the Western Australian Parliament. As other members have said, the recent election was a clear choice between an experienced and focused team doing what is right for Western Australia and an opposition that needs to see the way forward. I will not go into details, but it would be nice if the opposition could see the way forward.

I thank the people of Western Australia for putting their faith in Labor's strong and stable leadership for a third term and my second term as a member of the Legislative Council. I am deeply honoured to return as a member of the Cook Labor government. Our campaign put forward a very strong and cohesive agenda for the future of Western Australia. We have worked so hard to deliver world-class public transport, including the 72 new kilometres of rail, the 22 new train stations and the return of railcar manufacturing to Western Australia 20 years after it was shattered by the former Liberal government. Alongside the Albanese Labor government, we have invested in housing, with $3.2 billion in funding for homelessness and new housing. More than 200 social housing dwellings have already been delivered, with another 100,000 on the way, which will guarantee that people can access housing, which is their human right. This will reduce the pressure on families in Western Australia.

We are delivering a world-class education system, with four new primary schools, including one for families in East Perth, despite constant pushback from a member in the other place whom I will not mention. Our government committed $750,000 to deliver quality school infrastructure and facilities for Western Australian schools. In early childhood education, we have committed to a full-time kindergarten in 10 locations, which will change lives. As a mum, I know the importance of having an organised calendar for my family. It can be quite difficult at times, like today when my son said, "I told you I don't have school today", so I had to make sure that proper arrangements were made for him. I have heard from some of the parents that they are excited about the government's election commitment on kindergartens because it will change many lives. Some parents face child care by themselves. They do not have a good support system. Having continuous days at school will reduce a lot of pressures on families whose children are in the education system.

Our government is so invested in our healthcare system, as we have heard over the last four years. I would like to acknowledge and commend Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson for her humility in handling the most challenging portfolio in our government. As someone who grew up in different countries, I normally say that we are very lucky to have a beautiful health system. Some families in Third World countries do not have the privilege of having a healthcare system that can be improved each day. Our government is definitely active and seeking solutions to elevate the pressures on our growing health system. As we know, Western Australia is a very popular state. We have people coming into our state. More children and families are coming into our state. We have a growing population, which impacts on our healthcare system. I am really proud to see that our government is really committed to making a significant investment in health care.

As we know, our Premier recently formed a very strategic cabinet that focuses on health issues. I was very excited about this announcement not because our previous Minister for Health was not able to manage but because the health portfolio is a very big portfolio. Dividing it means that there can be a focus on each particular area. I would like to congratulate my friend Hon Meredith Hammat, the new Minister for Health; Mental Health. She is a very effective and hardworking woman. When she got this portfolio, I said to Hon Meredith Hammat that she is in a very safe seat. She goes out doorknocking every day and does a lot of work. She goes to every community event. She is such a hardworking person. I said to her, "Now you have got what you want, you're going to do a fantastic job." I said it in a very happy way. I feel like she is the perfect person for that portfolio and she will really grab it with both hands and deliver health care for the people of Western Australia. Congratulations once again to Hon Meredith Hammat, the Minister for Health; Mental Health.

We have also seen some other incredible senior ministers, including Hon Stephen Dawson, the new Minister for Medical Research; Kimberley. The other person who has a health portfolio is Hon Simone McGurk, the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors; Women. Hon John Carey, another hardworking person, has been given the health infrastructure portfolio. He has a great housing ministry record. I know that he will do wonders in his new portfolio. The other person with a health portfolio is Hon Sabine Winton, the new Minister for Preventative Health; Wheatbelt. We have already seen the work that Hon Sabine Winton did in her previous portfolio. I know for sure that she will handle her new portfolio with care.

Our government has invested a record $14.3 billion in health and mental health funding since 2021. Along with an additional 800 hospital beds and a decrease in ambulance ramping, which is very significant in our communities, we have the best funded hospital system in Australia per capita. We will continue this program to ensure our communities have the care they deserve. We will continue to listen to the community.

We want to continue to strengthen and diversify our economy. I am glad that the WA Labor government has regained a Aaa credit rating. We have the strongest economy in the nation. That was a result of standing up to Canberra and getting back our fair share of the GST. That was not the case under the previous conservative government. I am very proud to be part of the Labor team. The Labor Party has created over 330,000 new jobs since winning government in 2017, in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic and the global inflationary crisis.

We have invested in 130 free TAFE courses across our state to ensure that Western Australians are ready for the jobs of the future. Our plan to build more in WA is a key part of our strategy. It outlines what we will do to ensure that every Western Australian has job opportunities and we will continue to thrive. We will boost our manufacturing sector to make sure that products are made right here in WA, such as household and industrial batteries, transmission towers and energy infrastructure, wind turbines, trains, ferries, electric buses and railcars for iron ore. Most importantly for all Western Australian families, we have tackled, and will continue to tackle, the cost of living through the energy rebate for every household, which we know has made a massive difference since we introduced that wonderful initiative. I have seen families who appreciate this coming to their electorates. It is a great Labor commitment at both a federal and state level that has really reduced cost-of-living pressures in family households. The cost of electricity has gone up. That was the best thing we could do as a government when we talk about the cost of living. We have introduced new and increased payments for every child at school to make it easier for parents. It is the second time we have implemented this scheme. I know for sure that it will make a massive difference.

We have also provided cost-of-living rebates for seniors. Our seniors contribute so much to our economy and to our communities. They deserve dignity and support. We have capped the cost of public transport at two zones and made it free for kids and young people so our suburbs are accessible and getting to school is easier for children and young people. We have done the same for regional airfares, making it cheaper to travel to every corner of our state, which boosts tourism in our regions and ensures that all Western Australians can live and work without missing out on services.

The resounding majority with which the Cook Labor government was re-elected last month illustrates that Western Australians know that the WA Labor government can deliver on its promises, and when we made commitments during the election campaign, we made sure that we would deliver our promises.

In the last two Parliaments we built on this trust within the community by delivering on the promises we made on issues that matter most to our constituents, not just on the cost of living and world-class services but also on big policies like reforming the electoral process for the Legislative Council. That is one of the things we have done. We have advanced public safety and pushed for diversification to make sure that our economy is strong.

Without dwelling on partisan concerns, which are inherent in election campaigns, let me say congratulations to all my colleagues who contested the state election and extend my thanks to our WA Labor members and volunteers who have returned our Cook Labor government team. One hand cannot clap and we can achieve only if there are many people. We are forever grateful for our volunteers and our Labor supporters.

As elected members, regardless of our party alliances, we must remember that politics is underpinned by our grassroots membership and their activism. Without the work of countless volunteers on doorknocks, phone banks, pre-polls and election booths, none of us would be here today. As members sitting in this chamber, that is something we can all agree on. Setting aside our differences, I believe that we all appreciate the work of those who are willing to give up their time to make sure that the political process that guides our work in this Parliament is achieved. Let me thank and congratulate all the WA Labor candidates who did not succeed in this most recent poll for both their tireless work and the commitment that they made. In particular, I would like to acknowledge and thank Karen Beale. Let me acknowledge Karen’s work. She was a very hardworking local candidate. Her campaign team put in the work. It was a neck-and-neck finish to the campaign for Karen. I was proud to work with many volunteers on that campaign. Whatever Karen may feel in any sort of way, we know that she is a winner in our hearts. She put in the work and her contribution will definitely continue to benefit the entire electorate of Kalamunda through the commitments that she has already won, including investment in local schools and community groups. I am confident Karen will continue her advocacy through her role as a Shire of Mundaring councillor, and I look forward to working with her in the future.

I would like to also congratulate members across the political divide for their work. They maintained a civil and respectful discourse throughout the election and have accepted the result that was handed down to the Labor team in this historic election. I would also like to make sure that I appreciate our WA Labor team, which was led by a an incredible woman, Ellie Whiteaker. Thank you so much for the work that you have done with your party office team because without you, I would not be here. Can I also give a big thankyou to our unions. As we heard from other honourable members, I must give particular thanks to the support of our affiliated trade unions, which have always been the backbone of our movement and our most successful campaigners. I would like to give thanks to them. Over the course of our campaign, I had an opportunity to meet and campaign with many union members who are passionate members of Labor. In particular, I would like to give a big thankyou to my own United Workers Union in keeping its tradition of unity and solidarity. It played a big role in this election, with effort in not only our recent campaign that we won but also in fighting for the federal Labor government. For me, there is a choice for people. I come from a CALD background. It is a choice between the Albanese government and a Peter Dutton government. A lot of people have seen the changes that are happening around the world, and for me, personally, I would like to thank the union for standing behind us, because we need a Labor government in the current world crisis that we are in. We need a Labor government both federally and in the state. Can I particularly give a thankyou to Dom, Carolyn and Emily for the work that they have put in, all the delegates and everybody within the campaign. They are still continuing with the campaign.

We live now more than ever before in a world in which, as I have just mentioned, we know there is a lot of uncertainty, yet the campaign and the state election have left me with a renewed sense of hope that the world and our state is looking for what they want. Our state could enjoy the Labor policy commitments that we have put out. I know many of us came here for the right interests and to make sure that we are delivering for the people.

Yes, I am looking for the time, and I will come back. The other thing that I would like to speak on is the effort of all our previous and current ministers in the cabinet to make sure that they are ready to go out and really deliver on our government’s agenda. It is a very committed job and I know that many of the new cabinet ministers will deliver for the interests of the people of Western Australia. I would particularly like to congratulate our new minister in this chamber, Hon Matthew Swinbourn. He has been a dear friend to many of us here and we know to many members of the opposition. I remember a comment made last year about Matthew Swinbourn that he should be a minister. I think we all know about the hard work that he has put in and I know Matthew is going to deliver. I would also like to congratulate Hon Dr Tony Buti for being our Attorney General. He is a very effective minister and a great role model to me. I know he is going to do wonders. I already congratulated Hon Meredith Hammat as a new minister who is coming up. I also acknowledge Jessica Stojkovski, who is a newly appointed minister as well. I do wish her all the best in this role. And of course to all our senior ministers who have done wonders previously; they will continue to deliver for the people of Western Australia. I will continue with my remarks after question time, but I would like to give a thankyou to all Western Australians for believing in and putting their trust and faith in us, the Labor government, and giving us a third term.

Debate interrupted, pursuant to standing orders.

(Continued at a later stage of the sitting.)