Maiden Speeches Sometimes say Something

But this is a serious moral challenge (climate change). I relish the opportunity to be part of the Labor Party and the Labor government, which gets this, and which gets also that this provides extraordinary opportunities to create new industries and new jobs as we restructure our economy. MacTiernan’ ?(State Minister for Agriculture Maiden Speech)

After nearly a decade of Coalition government the Federal Labor party has just staggered over the line and is back sitting on the government benches ready to change Australia.?As Keating once said; “when the government changes the country changes”.

My interest in this opinion piece is not so much how Labor will change Australia but how the next Minister for Agriculture will change agriculture.

At the time of writing, the new ministry had not been announced, so I have no idea who we will be getting to lead the ag portfolio. Instead, I thought I would take you on a journey of discovery through past maiden speeches to look for what makes a game changing minister.

I will start with our State Minister for Agriculture and Food the Hon Alannah MacTiernan who over her long and impressive career has made four maiden speeches, having come and gone between both Houses and Parliaments since 1993.

Reading her first speech, I have to say that no one listening could question that they had not seen the arrival of a new MP that was a future force to be reckoned with, being both well read and equipped with a serious intellect and a combative personality.

In her first speech she made it clear of her strong distain for the weighted electoral system which had kept Labor out of controlling the Upper House since its inception.?No doubt nearly thirty years later she was pleased to tell the good folk of her South West seat, how pleased she was to be voting to abolish the last vestiges of a system that had kept their voice heard amounts the growing noise of metropolitan MPs.

Her speech makes it abundantly clear she has no time for the property classes who had designed a system that up until then restricted voting in the upper house to landowners, as a result she felt there was no room for our bicameral parliamentary structure.?

Mind you, I suspect she has recently changed her tune on the merits of two Houses of Parliament, now that State Labor has entrenched itself into the Legislative Council through last year’s electoral reforms.

Other comments of interest include a desire to see drug law reform, which makes me think her skills have been wasted on Agriculture and she should have been made Attorney General, and probably a good one at that.

In another one of her maiden speeches the Minister delves into climate change, and like all good MPs that become Ministers, has carried her zeal for change into her Ministerial responsibilities.?Which is why it pays to read maiden speeches as it hints on their future priorities.

In contrast there is Darren West, the farmer politician who represents the soon to be abolished Upper House region of Agriculture for Labor.?

I find Darren an interesting character, hardworking, articulate and never shy of standing up in front of a crowd and defending his party, no matter how unreal his state or federal comrades are in the policies they are promoting.

But, one has to wonder why someone who comes from a farming background would wish to represent a party that had a long standing platform of the democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange.

Politically Darren is a strange fit, no doubt he is treated with suspicion by his comrades on the left of his party as he does not come from union or battling stock, rather he looks more like the wealthy land barons the Minister for Regional Development railed against in her maiden speech.

Personally, I admire him, as I do anyone who puts their hand up for politics and as I have said before he is wasted on the back bench. ?State Labor, needs more people who understand the private sector and both sides of politics need more people who have run small businesses.

But I digress, back to his maiden speech, in it he states that the primary driving force in joining the Labor party was his dislike of the divide between the rich and the poor. ??

“There is enough for everyone in Western Australia, and I find it impossible to condone the allocation of hideous wealth to some and poverty to others.”??

Considering he is today part of the landed gentry classes, who’s personal net wealth is no doubt many multiples above that of the battlers who he entered parliament to support their inequity, I wonder who he sees as being hideously wealthy.

In fact, I wonder where he stands on the reintroduction of a land tax, a farm inheritance tax or higher personal income taxes, all mechanisms of redistribution that members of the left see as the easy solution to levelling the playing field, rather than the Liberals version of offering all access to a trowel to build one’s own castle.

Darren spends some time talking about the struggles of regional WA, but I can’t recall him being outspoken about his party’s reallocation of the bulk of the Royalties for Regions budget into the consolidated fund or where additional funding will come from to improve regional services.?

Maybe he prefers the hideous wealth that the likes of Twiggy and Gina have generated for the state should remain in the ground. I never did understand the dislike from the envious class of those who have helped create jobs and royalties which has trickled down to all of us.?

His speech was similar to another state Minister for Agriculture in its wishful thinking with no hard solutions. The late Kim Chance was known for his long winded speeches and his maiden speech was the first of many that talked of the problems but didn’t offer any viable solutions.?

In it, he railed about the failure of the wool industry to value add and dismissed claims that our inefficient labour system was a root cause of the lack of industrialisation in the state. Just as he refused to believe the waterfront was a basket case and was a strong supporter of regional development without a clue of how to attract businesses to the state other than building industrial parks.?

Seems nothing has changed with the current Minister also thinking that value adding can be attracted by throwing small grants around at value adding and large amounts of taxpayer funds at building wave, wind or hydrogen projects and hanging signs on new industrial parks hoping they will come.

All the time ignoring the reality of our labour costs, labour shortages, energy costs, heritage and environmental restrictions that scare away investment.

I contrast these two maiden speeches with that of two other Labor party champions who were farmers and became Federal Ministers.?John Kerin (NSW) ?and Peter Walsh (Doodlakine) Ministers in the Hawke era.

Both joined the Labor party out of disgust of the self-serving agrarian socialism displayed by the National Party during the Menzies era and the servitude of Australia to the United States that saw our troops being killed in Vietnam.

Both were interested in economics and incredibly well read, both had a clear vision of the problems holding agriculture back and both offered and the solutions which included utilising the power of the free market rather than government intervention.?Both would have made good Liberal MPs.

Their early potential as Ministers was reflected in their maiden speeches and their achievements via Peter Walsh’s book ‘Confessions of a Failed Finance Minister’, and The Legacy of John Kerin by Neil Inall.

Senator Walsh spends much time lambasting the level of subsidies being applied to the industry and the need for farmers to stand on their own feet something no doubt our state Minister would agree with.?As Finance Minister he went hard to abolish the statutory marketing schemes.

Interestingly I suspect our current state minister would be looked down upon by the late Senator for the lavish funding she has applied to support her areas of interest including hemp and aquaculture while being highly critical of the rampant subsidies and support that is being thrown at renewables and green hydrogen, both of which smack of being the new versions of agrarian socialism.

My favourite quote from his speech is the following which I would suggest the State Government should consider before it wastes of the elements C and H.

…that governments are better able than private investors or business managers to decide into which areas or which economic sectors investment funds should be directed and allocated. If that is the rationale for investment incentives I would like to place before the House the simple fact that it is also a rationale for a centrally planned economy since both presuppose that governments are better able than private investors or business managers to make sensible decisions in that area or, as the right wing rural propagandists would say, a rationale for the collectivisation of agriculture.

It was a brutal and uncomfortable truth for those that supported government subsidies for agriculture.?Just as it is a brutal and embarrassing for those who support billionaires today to build aquaculture farms, go regenerative farming or develop green hydrogen plants. If it’s such a good a business proposition then why does the government not own the assets eg Western Power or Water Corp, if it’s not a good proposition then let them thrive without government support.

Walsh hated wasteful government spending which he blamed for distorting markets, misallocating resources, bleeding taxpayers and hurting the poor by creating artificially inflated prices for basic foodstuffs.

?But I don’t see any such concerns from the progressive left who support imposing ever more carbon costs on the poor.?Something we will no doubt see the Greens and Teals urging on the new federal government to save the planet at the cost of the battlers. All ripe politics for a Liberal Opposition if they have the courage to exploit as the full economic pain of the 34% cut in emissions by 2030 makes itself felt.

Now here is my favourite quote from John Kerins 1973 maiden speech.?

Mr Bate, along with his colleagues in the Liberal Party, believed in subsidised, protected and privileged free enterprise, but was consistent enough to oppose the socialist legislation of the Poultry Industry Levy Collection Act when it was introduced in 1965.

Kerin was a chicken farmer who understood that the use of taxpayers funds to support an industry never works. I doubt he would be backing the hydrogen or carbon industries.?But he would be investing in R and D and producing many scientific papers which our minister has failed to do.

Maiden Speeches are important.?Lets see who the next federal Minister for Agriculture is and what they said when they first entered parliament.