House of Representatives
Date: 23 July 2025
Speaker:
I give the call to the Member for Fisher.
Andrew Wallace MP:
Thanks, Madam Deputy Speaker.
It’s with great humility that I rise tonight to renew my promise to my electors, to my people in Fisher, that I will once again serve them in the best way that I can.
It’s been one of the greatest privileges of my life, perhaps the greatest, to take my seat in this place. To be given the honour of representing your community as an elected representative in this place, I just, I, every time I drive up into this place and I see the flagpole, that special goosebumps that you get when you see that flagpole…
To the newbies in the room, I hope you never lose it, because it is incredibly special.
Mr Deputy Speaker, this is my ninth year now serving the Sunshine Coast, and it’s a great privilege.
And of course, you and I have been sparring partners, and dare I say, good friends, because you and I have done a lot of good work in this place. And I think with all the time that I have spent in this place, some of my fondest memories here are the work that I’ve done with you, Mr Deputy Speaker, on the Social Policy and Legal Affairs Committee.
And the Member for Bruce has chimed in, and I’ve done some good work with him as well, but I do hold, and of course, I, look, I love yous all. As Geoff Bennett would say, “I love yous all.”
But no, in all seriousness, Mr Deputy Speaker, you and I have done some really, we have done life-changing work. And I’m very proud of that work.
(Interjection)
Speaker: Me too.
Andrew Wallace MP: Me too, Mr Deputy Speaker, as you should be.
John Howard is renowned for having said that when it comes to elections, the people never get it wrong. And I think he’s right. Again, he’s right.
I’m not going to go into some diatribe of all the things that we did wrong in the last election, although I’m sure the Member for Bruce would love me to…
(Interjection)
Speaker: I’m sure he would.
Andrew Wallace MP: I’m sure you do.
But this next short while will be a period of self-reflection, because it’s important that we take a good, long, hard look at ourselves, to see where we went wrong.
And I’ve lost a lot of good friends that are not here today, not here in this sitting term, because of the many things we did that we shouldn’t have done, and the many things that we didn’t do that we should have done.
And I’m very sad for them, and I hope that they’re getting over what is, no doubt, a pretty significant grief, of not being in this special place serving their communities.
But Mr Deputy Speaker, since the election, I’ve hit the ground running in my usual style. I’ve done 20 listening posts since the election, because it’s really important that we do listen.
I always draw upon the analogy that the good Lord gave us two ears and one mouth, and we should use them in that order. We need to listen a lot more than we speak.
And the Vicar General, in the church service yesterday, spoke about that very thing.
Mr Deputy Speaker, as I sit and listen to those members opposite on their victory lap, for many of them, I’m not going to criticise the newbies, because it’s a very special time for them.
But clearly, the Prime Minister is on a victory lap. And I would just say to the Prime Minister, and senior members of the Government, that it is incredibly important that they understand that Australians are still absolutely hurting.
Nothing has changed. We are still in a period where more small businesses have gone to the wall in the last three years than in any other period in modern Australian history.
And as a small businessman of some 30 years before I went into politics, I feel their pain.
It seems like the world is just getting more and more and more complicated.
And that’s not just at the feet of the current Government, I think that’s almost universal.
I think back to my days when I was a young carpenter, swinging a hammer for a living, and life seemed to be so much more simple in the ’80s.
But of course, we can’t just hanker for the past, we’ve got to live in the future.
But we really do, in this place, need to take stock.
Every single bill that gets tabled in this place, as lawmakers, as parliamentarians, we should take stock and stop and think about, how is this going to impact upon Mum and Dad Australia, and small businesses?
Because small businesses are not just the backbone of my electorate in Fisher, they are the backbone of the Australian economy.
They don’t have human relations departments. They don’t have in-house lawyers. They don’t have IT specialists.
It’s Mum. Or it’s Dad. Or maybe both, sitting up at night doing the books.
My dad used to say he felt like an unpaid tax collector, and he was a motor mechanic for nearly 70 years. And nothing’s changed.
If anything, it’s just got a whole lot worse.
So I call upon my colleagues in this place to think about every single law that we look to pass, about the consequences that they cause upon everyday Australians.
Every law we pass makes life, often, more and more complicated.
And of course, over the last three years in particular, we’ve seen a significant increase in the cost of living.
Groceries are up. Rents are up. Mortgages have been significantly up. Everything has gone up.
The cost of energy under this Government is crippling Australian families.
There are now 300,000 Australians in energy debt.
100,000 Australians who cannot pay their energy bills.
Just stop and think about that for a moment.
That’s people who in summertime can’t afford to turn the air conditioner on.
In wintertime, they can’t afford to turn the heaters on.
There are so many Australians who, they can’t heat and they can’t eat together.
They’ve got to make a decision:
Do I stay warm and not eat?
Or do I eat and not stay warm?
And that includes families across my own electorate.
So my heart goes out to those people, and to those small businesses that are doing it tough.
I often remark, and have remarked over the last nine years, that unless you have sweated blood wondering about how you are going to make payroll tomorrow, as many small businesses are doing tonight…
Payday is tomorrow, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses tonight are making decisions about how they are going to pay their staff.
And you know what? They are very often dipping into their mortgages.
They are very often dipping into their overdrafts to pay their staff tomorrow.
So many small business owners put themselves last.
They will pay their staff before they pay themselves.
So I say to those small business people out there in Australia, we hear you.
We understand the pain that you are going through.
But I’m not sure that the Government does.
In fact, I’m quite certain that they don’t.
Mr Deputy Speaker, over the last nine years, I have been absolutely driven, as the Federal Member for Fisher, to deliver for my local community on essentially four pillars.
Those four pillars are:
• Infrastructure,
• Healthcare,
• Small business, which I’ve spoken a lot about already, and
• Protecting our future and the safety of Australians.
Now, in my first two terms in this place, the first six years, I was able to secure funding, when we were in government, for increases and better funding for the Bruce Highway, $3.4 billion for rail to bring rail from Beerwah into Birtinya.
I got funding for the Mooloolah River Interchange. I got funding for Third Avenue upgrades.
Unfortunately, though, the Member for Ballarat, the Minister for Infrastructure, in her infrastructure cuts, cut the funding for the Mooloolah River Interchange.
She cut the funding for Third Avenue.
And what really upsets me, what really gets up my goat, is that members opposite talk about what they’re doing in relation to the housing crisis, building 1.2 million homes.
But when this Government, this callous Federal Labor Government, cut funding for the Mooloolah River Interchange, the then State Labor Government had demolished over 100 homes to make way for that upgrade.
That’s hundreds of Sunshine Coast locals that were evicted from their homes to make way for a road that the Federal Government then cut funding for.
And yet this Government talks about all they’re doing in relation to building homes, which has never eventuated.
Some $10 billion in their Housing Australia Future Fund, and no homes to show for it.
Homes were demolished. People were evicted.
And for what?
For nothing.
Until, of course, the Crisafulli Government in Queensland was elected.
And to their eternal credit, David Crisafulli reinstated 100 percent of the funding for the Mooloolah River Interchange.
So, as it turns out, those people weren’t evicted from their homes for nothing, but they would have been, but for David Crisafulli and the LNP State Government.
Mr Deputy Speaker, one of my passions in this place, and you know this pretty well, has been my great interest in mental health.
There are millions of Australians tonight who aren’t just sad, aren’t just down about something, they suffer from anything between mild to very chronic mental health conditions.
My family has lived this path.
We’ve walked that path for more than 20 years.
And I want to say to those millions of Australians, particularly in my electorate of Fisher, that even though we are in Opposition, I will continue to hold this Government to account on mental health.
In the six years that we were in Government, I was able to secure $12 million to build the Wishlist House, which provides accommodation for families who have a sick person in the Sunshine Coast University Hospital.
I was able to secure more than $20 million for the Thompson Institute, the first research centre for post-traumatic stress disorder for our first responders and our veterans.
I was able to secure more than $6 million to build Australia’s first residential eating disorder facility.
And based on the experience that we learnt through that process, Greg Hunt, when he was Health Minister, allocated $70 million to build a dedicated residential eating disorder facility in every state in this country.
Because prior to that, if you had a loved one with a chronic eating disorder, you had to travel to Sweden, or the United States.
And while the rollout by the states has been appallingly slow, I’m very pleased to see that they are finally starting to get on with spending that money and building those facilities in their respective states.
Mr Deputy Speaker, we live in uncertain times.
Everybody talks about that.
As the former Deputy Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, the Member for Bruce served admirably on that committee as well, we worked very well together, there is no doubt in my mind that we live in perilous days.
The security of Australians, from a national security perspective, is at greater risk today than it has ever been, perhaps with the exception of the years leading up to 1945.
Australian Government departments and businesses are subject to constant cyberattacks, from the likes of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.
It is incredibly important that we, as a Parliament, ensure that our security agencies are properly equipped, with the legislation, the tools, and the funding that they need to be able to keep our country safe.
And I’ll take this opportunity to suggest to the Government, once again, to implore the Government to look at the National Security Strategy that Jim Molan put forward.
It is not enough, as the Government has done, to institute a National Defence Strategy.
A National Defence Strategy is just one aspect of a broader National Security Strategy.
The defence of our nation involves the entire community.
It involves business, local government, state governments, territory governments, the business community, both small and large.
The entire civil society needs to be on board to assist us in defending this nation.
Because make no mistake, Mr Deputy Speaker, this country is under attack.
It is under attack every single second, of every single minute, of every single hour, of every single day.
And it’s all very well for the Prime Minister to be in China, but if we do not recognise the threats that we constantly face by the likes of the Chinese Communist Party, North Korea, Iran and Russia, we are turning a blind eye to those risks.
And we do that at our peril.
Mr Deputy Speaker, this has been a sobering experience.
This last election, for my colleagues, and for myself.
I acknowledge in the chamber the Member for Monash, and the Member for McPherson, who used to work for me. I’m very proud of him, to see him in this place.
But still, it is a very sobering moment.
We have much to learn.
We have to go through this period of listening, as to where we went wrong.
We need to develop our policies, without losing our values.
I know that the Shadow Defence Minister, sitting at the table here, will play a very important role in that policy development, and I look forward to working with him.
There are many other things I could say, Mr Deputy Speaker, in the time remaining.
But I do want to thank my family, for putting up with me, and this very strange career that we’ve all chosen.
I want to thank the 573 volunteers that helped me on my campaign.
You know I would not be standing here representing you, but for those 573 people.
I’m immensely humbled by the hard work that you put in.
I want to thank you.
And I want to thank the people of Fisher for showing their support.
I will not let you down.
I will work hard every single day that I am in this place.
Speaker:
I thank the Member for Fisher, and I’d also like to acknowledge the work you’ve done for people with mental health issues in this Parliament and elsewhere. So thank you.
The question is that the Address be agreed to.
I call the Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs and International Education.
Assistant Minister:
Thank you, Deputy Speaker. Can I also acknowledge my friend, the Member for Fisher, and his work on mental health. I greatly valued our time working together on the Defence Subcommittee of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and I wish you a long and illustrious career serving in Opposition on parliamentary committees.
END
