Work hard. Don’t sponge off anybody else. Take responsibility for your actions. Help others where you can. Those are the core values I learnt from my parents. They were hard-working people. When I was young my…

Agitating for the Future
I have spent the last twelve months in the ‘Future of Work’ portfolio focusing on technological change and the profound impact it will have on employment through automation, alteration and addition. Automation will change a number…
Community Integration and Universal Values
Politics, essentially, is about the expression of values. A large party like the Labor Party encompasses a number of different traditions, whereas smaller parties might draw on a single tradition, but whatever the case, we’re all…
I’ll Have The Salad Thanks!
My portfolios of Citizenship & Multicultural Australia, Environment & Water and the Arts capture much of the conversation about national identity. They cover the land and its people and the creative ways in which we express…
American Progress and the Trump Inflection
American progress has many dimensions. There’s technological progress, cultural progress, economic progress and many other types besides. What’s interesting is that the US has excelled at technological innovation and it’s my view, from a progressive perspective,…
Local Vision
All levels of government get criticised for their short-term thinking, focusing on the here-and-now instead of the long-term, state governments being no exception. For me it’s a balance; in part I work to a grand vision…
Security, Prosperity and Harmony
From the time I was elected to Parliament in 2010, my ethics and values have remained constant, a strong reflection of my family and upbringing. One of those values is tolerance, which is absolutely central to…
Equality for All
When I was in my late 20s, I was appointed General Counsel for a major corporation after spending my early career in private practice predominantly in litigation. At the time the reaction from the senior ranks…
True and Substantive Equality
When I think about the values I bring to parliament, I think about my upbringing and the experiences I had as a child. For each of us, it’s typically those early experiences that are pieced together…
Creating An Impact
I started my career as a management consultant, where I was constantly encouraged to focus on the impact I was having on clients and on colleagues. I realised very quickly that creating an impact was a…
The Indi Way
I’m a storyteller, and in many ways an accidental politician. How I interpret what we’re doing – what we call the Indi Way – frequently changes. The Indi Way grew out of a desire to represent…
Listening to Unheard Voices
One of the beauties of civilisation is learning from geniuses. For millennia, people have been imparting useful knowledge through song lines and storylines. Life is a personal journey, with personal battles, but you can pick up…
Why The Environment?
My Mum was what you might call a practical environmentalist. Her parents spent a big part of their life in Tasmania, so from an early age Christmas presents were Wilderness Society diaries and pictures of Tasmanian…
Taking Your Chances For Reform, The Labor Way
I came into parliament in 1996, after Labor suffered a terrible election defeat. Even though we were in opposition, as a new member of parliament, it was an exciting time for me. Being in opposition meant…
The National Interest
I came into parliament in 2001 as the Labor Party’s member for Calwell, the same year as Sophie Mirabella, the Liberal Party’s former member for Indi. Sophie and I quickly developed a good rapport which we…
Individual Liberty and a Prosperous Society
The Liberal Party is a broad church. It contains people who call themselves conservatives, people who call themselves libertarians, and people who just call themselves Liberals. Each of these labels represents a school of thought on…
Hope Is The Best Defence
It’s no surprise that the way people represent themselves in Parliament reflects the way that they’ve been brought up and the places they’ve grown up in. For me, I’m a product of the Dandenong Ranges. The…
The Innovation Economy
My entrepreneurial life started by learning directly from my parents. My Dad left school early and tried a number of things; he eventually started Cedel toothpaste with a manufacturing base in Laverton. Some of my earliest…
Values, Climate Change and the Suspension of Rationality
When I came into Federal Parliament I brought with me a commitment to justice and to fairness, and a commitment to achieving change in Australian society. I think that Australia can be made a fairer place….
Freedoms and Values
Recently, my sixteen-year-old son asked me whether I agree with everything that the Liberal Party stands for. I told him that I agree with all the values of the Liberal Party. That doesn’t mean that I…
Literature that Nourishes the Soul
Books matter a great deal to me, both professionally and personally. There was a time when I wasn’t prioritising reading in my life as much as I knew I valued it so I started to treat…
Decentralisation
I come from a 4th generation farming family in Birregurra in South Western Victoria; sheep and beef mainly. The farm suffered, as Dorothy Mackellar famously wrote, from droughts and flooding rains, along with fires and other…
Australia and the Anti-globalisation Movement
The people of Australia know, as a fact, that we have an open, competitive economy; that our prosperity depends on selling stuff to other countries. First and foremost, we are a trading nation. We even have…
Old and New Australia
I grew up in country Queensland and my family tree is about as ‘Old Australia’ as you can get, straight from the pages of Russel Ward’s ‘The Australian Legend’. My ancestor, John Watts, came to Australia…
The Mallee
I feel like I was born for this job and for this seat. My father was from Pyramid Hill and my mother taught at Lalbert Primary School before my parents moved to Western Australia to work…
Drive
I grew up on a Dairy farm, the youngest of seven children, six boys and a girl. It was a very basic, modest life, but good fun. We went to school in Shepparton. I’d catch the…
Inner City Politics
I was born and bred in the inner city and educated locally at Melbourne University. I take the view that for everything you could possibly want, by way of lifestyle, you don’t need to cross a…
Learning from the Wisdom of Others
My personal philosophies always start from a point of principle and then I seek to enliven and crystallized those initial ideas. The books that sit on my bookshelf, and that I highlight in this article, directed…
Pragmatic Conservatism
I’ve been in politics for twenty-one years, in the lower house and upper house, in government and opposition, twice apiece. I’ve served on every conceivable committee and chaired or participated in inquiries on most key topics…
The Local
I grew up in Berwick in the outer south east of Victoria and studied at Berwick Secondary College and then Deakin University. For part of my life I was raised by a single mother who remains…
The Gems of Mt Waverley
We live in a fast-paced world, and everybody is asked to do more and cram more into the same amount of time. One of the ways I’ve always sought to respond to this challenge and maintain…
Camaraderie Across The Benches
Joe Hockey is a friend of mine and like many of us he had a dual personality. When parliament was sitting it was on for young and old! When we were in the House we were…
On Tolerance
It feels like we are heading into a different sort of time. Many who share my world view believe that the long arc of history bends – inevitably – toward an increasingly better future. Due to…
Everyone’s Political
You are in politics whether you like it or not. Not just because we have compulsory voting and you have a civic obligation to cast your vote. We are all in politics because the choices that…