Susan Carter, Amanda Cohn, Sarah Kaine, Stephen Lawrence, Rachel Merton, Jacqui Munro, Cameron Murphy, Bob Nanva, John Ruddick, Emily Suvaal, Tania Mihailuk

Like so many women, I have worked all my life—and sometimes been paid for it. I have held challenging legal roles and exciting posts in tertiary education but, in common with so many other women, the most valuable and, I fear, the least respected work I have ever done is in my family. It would often amaze me that if I answered "mother" to the occupation question, I would be dismissed. But if I styled myself as "domestic capital manager", which is a fancier way of saying exactly the same thing, I was immediately of interest. It is well and truly time to challenge the false stereotype that the only way we contribute anything of value and acquire worthwhile skills is when we exchange work for money. That particularly impacts on women, who traditionally have spent more time in family and service roles. But it should be an issue for all of us. If feminism was meant to be about empowering women to have agency over their lives and to make choices, then why do we still seem to be valuing some choices more highly than others?

I have come to this Parliament from the front lines of multiple, related and compounding crises, in particular the climate crisis and the crisis in our health system. The experiences that I have had as a country GP, as a State Emergency Service volunteer and of steering a regional community through a pandemic as its deputy mayor have prepared me for this role in ways I never expected.

As an academic, my main area of research focused on parts of the labour market in which the cult of individualism, as facilitated by the dismantling of or opposition to regulation, has resulted rather ironically in bad outcomes for individuals and also dire consequences for society. My PhD research was on labour management in aged care and so it did not surprise me when the royal commission noted that the general approach to aged care has "been that the market will take care of itself without the need for active management or monitoring by the Government". Nowhere do we see more starkly the societal impact of that approach than in the appalling stories of neglect of our elders and the mistreatment of those attempting to provide care. It is that misunderstanding of the role that governments should play that I have fought hard to counter through the evidence‑based, peer‑reviewed rigour of academic inquiry.

Much of my legal work was at the interesting point at which law and politics intersect. I worked as a specialist family violence and sexual assault prosecutor in the Australian Capital Territory as part of a whole‑of‑government project aimed at best practice in those areas. I saw how hard it is for victims of those crimes to speak. Then, war crimes trials in the Solomon Islands from 2004 as part of an international intervention, only to find myself in April 2006 in the middle of an insurrection and then immersed in the trials that resulted from that. Friends from those crazy days are here tonight. Then, advising a reforming Attorney‑General, the brilliant Simon Corbell, as part of his ministerial staff. A stint helping to set up a public defender system in Palestine; I crossed the checkpoint into Israel most weekends to wander around Jerusalem. My young Palestinian colleagues were so proud that I could visit that special place of theirs. They lived just kilometres away and could never visit—not ever, not once. Then, the Aboriginal Legal Service [ALS] in western New South Wales for many years, appearing in trials, sentences, mental health hearings and coronial inquiries, some involving deaths in custody.

In other ways, the Parliament has not changed so much. For example, my illustrious and very kind next‑door neighbour, the Hon. Peter Primrose, was part of that same Legislative Assembly class of 1988 as my father when he was the then freshman member for Camden. It is an honour to serve in this Parliament alongside him. Mr President, I am sure you recall that 1991 was the year of MC Hammer, Dannii Minogue and Vanilla Ice for most teens. For me, it was a Young Liberal Movement branch secretary, with a fax machine for weekly meeting notices. Somehow, there was no spill motion against me. By university, I was an avowed anti-Marxist. I joined the Macquarie University Liberal Club, serving for a time as its president and as a National Union of Students [NUS] delegate. The driving issue for me then, as for so many Liberals over many years and still today, was freedom of association. I was outraged that as a condition of enrolment I was forced to hand over my wages—hard-earned at Castle Hill Target and Dural Macca's drive through—to fund the political projects of left-leaning student unions. I became a firm and vocal advocate for voluntary student unionism.

But before I needed philosophy, I found a calling. Although I had been praising Prime Minister Howard in Facebook statuses since high school—because I am extremely cool!—it was not until after my first successful student election—again, very cool!—that I seriously considered joining the Liberal Party—the coolest! Being a political nerd since school, it troubled me greatly that one of our two major political parties valued compliance over individual liberty, with the Labor Party mandating that its MPs would be kicked out if they voted against the party's collective decision, even if their communities or their own conscience desired otherwise. It did not make sense to me that in a liberal democratic nation like ours, the value of an individual's right and responsibility to contribute in the Parliament, as elected by the people, was stripped away.

My father was Lionel _____, a man about whom much has been said. Born to Irish parents, he was a barrister, a senator, a reforming Attorney‑General and a senior member of a government that transformed Australia. He died a justice of the High Court. Before all of that, he was a scientist. He loved innovation, scientific advancement and new gadgets.

Mum and Dad came to Australia before the fall of the Shah and the rise of the Islamic Republic in Iran. Dad, an academic and a teacher, received an offer to undertake a PhD at Oxford but chose instead to settle in Australia. Our distant shores provided comfort on which secular or religious political oppression could not easily cast its menacing shadow. Distance, contrary to the title of Jeffrey Blainey's book, is not always a tyrant. As an English literature lecturer in 1980s Townsville, Ali, as he was then known, raised the ire of many locals who were outraged that an Iranian would have the temerity to lecture locals on anything, let alone English literature.

The second disappointment was vaccine extremism. On 26 July 2021 the Liberal Premier of New South Wales announced a two-week lockdown. Two weeks morphed into many months and a diabolical catch was added: We will not let you out until you take multiple injections of not only a rushed vaccine but an entirely new class of vaccine. Most relented, but everyone got COVID anyway. Last year NSW Health published weekly data showing the fewer vaccines you had, the less likely you went to hospital or an intensive care unit. The fatality rate was similar for the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Since the vaccine rollout there has been a 15 per cent to 20 per cent increase in excess deaths in nations like Australia that had the mass mRNA injections. Is it the vaccine or the bitter hangover from locking people up for so long? We do not know. But either way, it is almost certainly the result of poor governance and yet another reason for a COVID royal commission.

I was taken to my GP. I had a blood test and within 48 hours I was being seen at the old Camperdown Children's Hospital emergency department. I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and I spent 10 days in hospital on the Sailing League Ward. I was taught how to count carbohydrates, draw up insulin and inject myself, test my blood sugar level, and eat a low-sugar, reduced-fat diet. That was the start of what became an unhealthy relationship with food and numbers. At the age of 14, I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. In the care of the adolescent medicine unit at The Children's Hospital at Westmead, I was looked after by a team of multidisciplinary healthcare professionals: specialist paediatricians, psychologists, psychiatrists, dietitians, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, pharmacists, play therapists, social workers and clinical nurse consultants, along with the endocrine team. I was admitted approximately—and I say approximately because my memory of this time is very vague—10 times to the children's hospital in the two years after I was diagnosed.

When I first entered Parliament in 2011, I was one of only 20 Labor MPs, following the Coalition's return to government for the first time in 16 years, with 69 seats and a 23‑seat majority. The world was still dealing with the aftershocks of the global financial crisis. The world economy was reeling from the worst recession since World War II. Yet despite the terrible economic upheaval sweeping the globe, our economy was proving remarkably resilient in weathering the storm. By almost all indicators, we were performing better than most other advanced economies. While there was a downturn, a recession was avoided. Inflation was sitting at 3.3 per cent and would stabilise at an average of 2.5 per cent over the following five years. Some 12 years later, I re-enter as an MLC for One Nation, with Labor back governing in minority.