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 mother and father took multiple jobs to make ends meet. Mum was washing dishes and Dad was pumping petrol…

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 of jobs fundamentally, often to the point where they no longer exist. Alteration means that time will be ‘freed…

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 driven by values. I was raised in a household where my mother had us quite young. She was nineteen…

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, that inclusive politics has helped to drive that. A number of our largest technology companies were founded or are…

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 for Victoria, but I weigh that against the short-term steps that are required to get us there. Melbourne is…

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 a harmonious society. In my time in parliament I’ve sought to build respectful relationships across the political divide and…

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 of the male dominated Melbourne legal fraternity was one of shock and surprise – mixed with a touch of…

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 the young people from my electorate who initially pushed me into standing. They said, “We want to come back…

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 maintain to this day. We have a very different way of seeing things but there are elements of commonality,…

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 the centre-right of Australian politics. I’m often described in the media as a conservative or a libertarian. I don’t…

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 environment means a lot to me, as mine was a life spent outdoors, firstly as a Queen’s scout and…

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 memories are from primary school where I would buy bagels from the local Glick’s bakery and then resell them…

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. We have a great starting point, which is a shared understanding in the Australian community that fairness is worth…

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 instinctively agree with every single policy, especially as they are being debated. For me, political parties are groups of…

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 calamities. It wasn’t an easy pathway, yet nevertheless, it was very satisfying. I always enjoyed the lifestyle of being…

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 a grudging acceptance that we benefit from importing cheap stuff from other countries. In America, the situation is different…

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 in the 1840’s and by the 1860’s was a member of the first Queensland Parliament. Growing up, I was…

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 with Aboriginal communities in Norseman, Carnarvon and Onslow. Whilst my parents returned to farming when I was very young,…

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 river. No need to cross the Maribyrnong in the North West and no need to cross the Yarra in…

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 of interest to Victorians. This also means I have a very low tolerance for nonsense. I came to Australia…

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 a big influence on my political life. A Liberal voter, she had a strong sense of social justice and…

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 progress made possible by our values, society will continue to get better and will continue to move in a…

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 we make and the things we care about are, in and of themselves political. If you choose to never…