Page 4 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 10 February 2015
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an opportunity, and to value a conversation with anyone, anywhere, but especially in the middle of the footpath. Together, they gave me their love of talk radio and their example of an enduring friendship and marriage for over 45 years. Thank you.
To my own kids, Al, Esther and Eva, you are a curious, thoughtful and funny trio and you make our lives glow. I do all this in part for you and I hope you experience some of the joy that it can bring. To Pierre, we met talking about how we could change the world and then realised we could start right where we live. Here we are. Thank you for reminding me always of the big picture, for everything you do for us and for how fundamentally good you are.
Madam Speaker, it is an honour to represent the people of Molonglo. The electorate is large and diverse. I would like to talk in particular about one part—Gungahlin, my own local community. In a city only 100 years old, Gungahlin is the infant. With a rich Aboriginal and settler history, it is now what the inner suburbs were in the 1950s, Belconnen in the 1970s and Tuggeranong in the 1980s. It is growing fast every day and remains one of the fastest growing regions in Australia. But Gungahlin is not all shiny and new. Palmerston and Ngunnawal were built over 20 years ago, its residents pioneering the move to the far flung northern suburbs on single lane roads past paddocks.
Twenty years ago locals shopped at a marooned building in the middle of nowhere, but today the town centre is thriving and group shopping centres are emerging across the region, with small businesses being built from the ground up. You can eat Persian, Italian, Korean, Indian, Sri Lankan, Thai, Chinese and Japanese, and there is a vibrant sense of community—that people are building not just their own house but their neighbourhoods and communities.
The people who live in Gungahlin are diverse—from Australia and around the world. We are nurses, teachers, pensioners, retirees, IT professionals, retail workers, public servants, defence personnel, stay-at-home mums and working mums. And there are lots of babies being born; lots of them. In 1991 Gungahlin had 382 residents. Today it is close to 50,000.
Gungahlin is Canberra’s latest pioneering region. This Labor government has invested significantly in high quality community and public infrastructure in the past 10 years especially, but before this there were no schools, no roads, no shopping centres and no recreational facilities. That is why, in 2012, I advocated strongly for a cinema. I look forward to work starting on that this year. There will always be more to do—especially on our roads—but we have always also known that this must be balanced with investment across other parts of our city. Every suburb counts.
I am proud to be the first member of this place to be elected on such strong support from Gungahlin. I came to Gungahlin via Canberra’s inner north, Sydney and New Zealand, where I grew up in a pretty typical family: mum, dad, two kids. Dad was a policeman, mum a nurse. This normal life shaped me but was influenced by two particular experiences. When I was in primary school we lived in Singapore for a few years, a country where multiculturalism and trade are the norm.
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