Andrew Leigh

I spoke yesterday on a Matter of Public Importance debate, on the topic of Australian government debt (and drawing upon the new Fairfax database of members' interests).

MPI on Debt, 13 September 2012

If you want to know what the member for North Sydney thinks about debt, don't listen to what he says in this House. You know what those opposite say in this House is not to be taken as gospel truth. Listen to what he said on 17 April, when he travelled to London to give a speech and talked about the debt that Hong Kong held. He said that the debt that Hong Kong held was 'moderate'. How much debt does Hong Kong hold? It holds debt that is 34 per cent of GDP in gross terms. That is about twice Australia's gross debt, which will peak at 18 per cent. So the only reasonable way the member for North Sydney could characterise Australia's debt would be 'low'. Australia's net debt will peak at 9.6 per cent. So, if you want to find what those opposite really think about the economy, look at what they say when they go to London. When the member for North Sydney went to London, he noted that Hong Kong's debt was moderate; therefore, ours would be low. When the Leader of the Opposition went to London last year, he said:

‘… Australia has serious bragging rights … Compared to most developed countries, our economic circumstances are enviable.’

The opposition get the economic truth-telling gold when they go to London! The trouble is that, when they get back to Australia, they do not make the medal ranks because they cannot be honest with the Australian people and tell them that Australia's debt levels are around a 10th of those of the major economies. Nine point six per cent of GDP is like someone earning $100,000 a year owing a modest $9,600.

If you want to know what those opposite really think of debt, again, don't listen to what they say in this place; listen to what they tell the Register of Members' Interests. If they really believed what they said, that debt is a bad idea, then you would not expect to find that any of them personally held debt, would you? You would think that, if debt is bad for the country, then it must be bad for them. You would think, for instance, that the member for Aston would not have a mortgage. You would think you would not see a mortgage for the member for Forde, the member for Mitchell, the member for Boothby and the member for Casey. The member for Paterson and the member for Mackellar also hold mortgages, as do the member for Dunkley, the member for Sturt, the member for Wannon, the member for Canning, the member for Herbert, the member for Flinders and the members for Groom, Mayo, Ryan and Gilmore.

I note in passing that the member for North Sydney himself has a mortgage. He thinks it is worth taking on some debt for his own future, but he thinks it is a bad idea to save the jobs of some poor people. The member for Bennelong, the member for Kooyong, the member for Pearce, the member for Curtin, the member for Higgins, the member for Hasluck and the members for Macquarie, Cowan, Stirling, Dickson, Berowra, Bonner, McMillan, Wright, Cook, Indi, Swan, Moncrieff and Leichhardt all hold mortgages, as does the member for Warringah. His mortgage was a little late in coming on to the Register of Members' Interests, but it did get on there eventually, with a story in June 2010 over his failure to declare a $710,000 mortgage. 'What's that as a share of income?' I hear you ask. 'If he's worried about this country's debt levels being 9.6 per cent of GDP, I bet he's got a small mortgage.' Well, no; in fact, his mortgage was then about 300 per cent of his annual income. There is nothing wrong with that. It is perfectly fine for the Leader of the Opposition to take out a mortgage because he thinks that is a good way of securing his future. I would just like to see him have the same commitment to securing the future of low-income Australians, because they are the ones that get wiped out in recessions.

Let's be very clear about what the opposition's anti-debt strategy means. When the global financial crisis hit, the revenue write-downs were two-thirds of the total debt we took on. So, if you take the view that we should not have taken on debt, what you are saying is, 'Bring on the firings; if only the government had cut back at the same rate as the private sector when the global downturn hit, everything would have been all right.' But we have a historical example of just that: Herbert Hoover, in the teeth of the Great Depression, as the member for Wakefield was reminding me earlier, cut back on government spending as the Great Depression hit. But the impact of doing that here would have been brutal to young Australians and low-skilled Australians, who are the first to be hit when a downturn strikes.

So, really, those opposite are just playing politics with debt. They do not really believe it. They carry debt themselves; they take out mortgages. But they come in here and rail against Australia's debt. If you take them to London, they might tell you the truth; but bring them in here and they will angrily rail against debt. I am reminded of one of the most awful Lenin quotes:

‘It would not matter a jot if three-quarters of the human race were destroyed; the important thing is that the remaining quarter should be Communist.’

Those opposite seem to be taking a leaf out of Lenin's book. They would rather see the Australian economy suffer than see Labor succeed. That is the Leader of the Opposition's modus operandi. As David Marr's Quarterly Essay reminded us:

‘There was always the Santamaria way: when you haven't got the numbers, be vicious. It's called minority politics. Abbott would come to play them superbly, having learnt in the Democratic Club how small constituencies can cause big trouble.’

Mr Marr talks about how the Leader of the Opposition pursued that strategy, first through 'don't know, vote no' in the referendum on the republic, and then in minority parliament. As the then tyro journalist writing for the Bulletin, now the member for Wentworth, wrote of the Leader of the Opposition—this is well before either of them entered politics, but you can imagine some of it is still there today—

Malcolm Turnbull wrote:

‘The leading light of the right wingers in New South Wales is twenty-year-old Tony Abbott. He has written a number of articles on AUS in the Australian and his press coverage has accordingly given him a stature his rather boisterous and immature rhetoric doesn’t really deserve.’

The destructive politics on debt are characteristic of the way in which this opposition does business. In a piece entitled 'Small target, big letdown' Peter Hartcher, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, talked about the opposition's strategy as being in the vein of Achilles: they rage against everything in front of them. My friend Macgregor Duncan has noted, similarly, that the opposition seem to be behaving like an Achilles rather than like a Hector. The opposition are out there to attack, to criticise to condemn. They are not there to build and to create.

I've omitted the points of order that came up when I tried to quote from David Marr's Quarterly Essay. The debate ended abruptly so that parliament could pass the super trawler bill.

I spoke in parliament today about the late war hero and public servant, Sir Richard Kingsland.

Sir Richard Kingsland, 13 September 2012

Sir Richard Kingsland passed away at Calvary John James Hospital after a short illness on Monday, the 27th. Like many of my constituents, his was a life of public service. His wartime service was marked by the bravery and ingenuity he displayed in the 1940 retrieval of Field Marshal Viscount Gort VC from a Moroccan hotel. It is a tale of derring-do that befits 007, perhaps with a hint of the Pink Panther.

Having received orders to extract Gort from the hotel in Rabat, he first seized a police boat, commandeered a car, then shot his way into the hotel. Then, because the French failed to take away his revolver, he shot off the lock, managed to free them both from the room in which they were held captive and made a dawn escape by flying out of Morocco under a guard of pro-Nazi police.

He later served with distinction in the Royal Australian Air Force, was Secretary of the Department of Veterans' Affairs and was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire, receiving his knighthood in 1978. He was an extraordinary Australian.

I spoke in parliament today on a government bill to restrict the impact of the super-trawler FV Abel Tasman (formerly the MV Margiris, among its previous five names).

Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Declared Fishing Activities) Bill, 13 September 2012

Balancing the economics of fishing is no easy task. Quentin Grafton, one of Australia's leading economists of fisheries has argued that the massive expansion in fishing over the past 50 years has brought the industry to what seems like a paradox, where an immediate reduction in world-wide catch would actually increase future profits of the industry—he estimates it maybe by as much as much as $50 billion a year. There has been overfishing throughout the world and that has led to stock declines so severe that about 15 per cent of all exploited capture fisheries have collapsed or are at less than 10 per cent of their unexploited levels.

Quentin Grafton argues that world capture fisheries reached a plateau in the early 1990s and that aquaculture must be the future of fisheries. It is a classic collective action problem: because the fish in the sea are not owned by anyone there is an incentive for every individual fisher to overfish. Good fisheries management recognises this. It recognises that if each individual fisher—each fisherman and fisherwoman—is able to go out and take as much as they want then there will not be enough there for the future. We need to make sure that we have a set of policies that recognises not only individual species but also the ecosystem in which they operate.

In that context, the Abel Tasman poses a substantial challenge. This is a supertrawler that has a storage capacity of 6,000 tonnes. The weight of fish that this supertrawler can take is equivalent to 6,000 small cars. That makes it the second largest supertrawler in the world—the largest ever to have fished our waters.

We know a lot about the science of fishing in Australia. We have dedicated teams of researchers looking at the science and the economics of fishing. And I have great respect for those scientists. But when we are dealing with an entirely new way of exploiting fish stocks we need to be very careful. And we need to be careful particularly in the global context, where we know that, as a species, we have overfished and we need to cut back.

The challenge that the Abel Tasman poses to fisheries management is its ability to stay in a single place and to take huge amounts of fish from a single part of the ocean. The impact that that has on a species is complicated. If species move around a great deal then the impact on biodiversity of focused fishing in a single part of the ocean may not be so large. If species are restricted to certain parts of the ocean then it could have substantial impacts on fish stocks. We need to be careful in moving towards this.

When the Commonwealth Fisheries Management Act came into force in 1991 there was not a prospect of supertrawlers the size of the Abel Tasman. They were as distant then as the aviation of today was to the Constitution founders of 1901. They just were not contemplated. So we need to make sure that legislation keeps up with technological developments.

If you listened to the other side you would think that this was an assault on the very foundation of society itself. I was struck by the speech of the member of Fadden, who quoted the Magna Carta—surely a sign that we are about to move into crazy email land—and then talked about how this legislation was impinging on life, love and liberty. I thought he was actually going to talk about same-sex marriage at that point, because that seems the logical place to go with those words, but, no, he was talking about legislation that would allow the minister to restrict the activities of a supertrawler in Australia's waters.

We, of course, have a framework that regulates fishers already. We impinge on the liberties of the fishing community in order to make sure that their industry is stable. Member for Fadden, that happens already. But here I am struck by the way those on the other side are standing up for big fishing operations just as they stand up for big miners and big polluters.

The old argument of the left was: they stand for capital and we stand for labour. I always thought it was a bit more complicated than that, but sometimes that is the way it feels. There is no more capital intensive fishing operation in existence then these supertrawlers. The ratio of what they spend on machinery to what they spend on people is higher than for any other form of fishing. Let us not have lines about the impact on employment—capital-intensive fishing, such as a supertrawler, employs fewer people than labour-intensive fishing. As we have seen those opposite stand for the big miners and big polluters, they are now standing for the big fishers. We need to be cautious. As the minister has pointed out:

‘If we get this wrong there are risks to the environment, to commercial operators and to everyone who loves fishing and they are risks I am not prepared to take.’

The minister has pointed out that he has been lobbied by a number of Labor MPs. This is an issue that concerns me, but I cannot claim to have had the passion on this issue that the member for Fremantle has had. I pay tribute to her and to her hard work and devotion to this issue.

This bill will not impinge on recreational fishers. The minister has bent over backwards to put in place amendments that make sure that if you are going out in your tinny to pick up a couple of fish for dinner this bill is not going to impinge on you. This is a supertrawler bill. Make no mistake, if those opposite vote against it they are saying that they are happy for the supertrawler to come into Australian waters, regardless of the uncertainty that we have over what it will do to long-term fish stocks. That is not a pro-fishing position; that is an antifishing position. That is saying: 'We're not going to go and find out any more. We're not going to get any more research to find out how this impacts on the sustainability of an industry we love. No, just let her rip! Let the most capital-intensive form of fishing come into our waters and take what it needs.'

I have no problem with the fish from the Abel Tasman being exported. Australia has a proud export industry. I think it is a terrific thing that we produce many agricultural services and manufacturing goods that are used by the rest of the world—that is not an issue. I am an open markets guy; I am entirely relaxed about the export capacity. What I am concerned about is the sustainability of our fishing stocks and making sure that we have all the science we need to make those decisions. The minister is making sure through an expert panel that we explore the impact of the FV Abel Tasman before it is given approval to fish in Commonwealth waters. Using an expert panel will make sure that we make the right decision, that we undertake an open and transparent assessment process and that we have public confidence on this issue. I have been contacted by a number of my constituents who have raised concerns about the supertrawler.

I think they raise perfectly reasonable questions that suggest that we need to make sure that the decisions are based on sound science. The current regime is based on 1,500-tonne storage capacity vessels. We need to make sure that that is updated for 6,000-tonne storage capacity vessels and we need to recognise that there is always uncertainty in the science. We do not dispute the AFMA science on catch limits and the effect of localised depletion on target stocks, but the Abel Tasman's capacity to stay on top of a single school of fish, to take hundreds or thousands of tonnes of an individual species, means that it is uncertain what impact the Abel Tasman may have on individual species.

The Commonwealth policy on fishing bycatch, endorsed by then ministers Truss and Hill, makes clear at a broad level that the definition of fisheries bycatch includes all material, living or nonliving, that is caught while fishing, except for the target species. But in practice that term is used differently by different parts of the industry and by stakeholders. What we are concerned about, for the purposes of the EPBC Act, is bycatch of protected species. We are concerned about the impact of the Abel Tasman on seals, dolphins and seabirds. We need to make sure that the impact on those species is no larger than it needs to be.

In doing so, we need to make sure that we do not adversely affect recreational fishers. I have been contacted by recreational fishers who say that they support this bill. Why wouldn't they? They are not the ones going out with a supertrawler. They are the ones who want to make sure that Australia's fish stocks can be managed not just for our generation but for future generations. We are here not just for ourselves but for the generations to come. The work we do in parliament recognises that policy has continuity. We want to leave the country and the oceans better than we found them, not worse than we found them. We do not do a service to future generations if we allow a supertrawler to take fish species in a way that does irreparable damage to the oceans.

As previous speakers have noted, this bill fits in with a Labor tradition of standing up for our oceans. The marine parks that have been announced form a historic network. They fit in with a Labor tradition of looking after the environment. It is a Labor tradition that saw the creation of Australian national parks in the 1940s and 1950s, saw us sign the Kyoto protocol and saw us move to put a price on carbon pollution, because if you do not put a price on carbon pollution you do not save the Barrier Reef. We need to leave a legacy in the oceans for our children. The previous speaker, the member for Moreton, noted that in a splendid speech in Parliament House the great Australian author Tim Winton highlighted what a legacy moment that is.

Sitting alongside the network of marine parks that we have established is good fisheries management. It is making sure that we do not do harm to the oceans that cannot be done afterwards. That fits in with a Labor legacy of listening to the scientists and the economists and thinking for the future. Too often I worry that those opposite are here just for the here and now, for what can be grabbed. They are the supertrawlers of the policy world: they grab what they can and get out. That is not the Labor view.

On Sky AM Agenda this morning, I spoke with host Kieran Gilbert and Liberal MP Kelly O'Dwyer about the killing of the US Ambassador to Libya, why profits-based taxes are more efficient than mining royalties, and what the savage cuts in Liberal-run states tell us about Tony Abbott's secret plans.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/G2hxYhsp5mQ

I spoke in parliament today about the importance of early childhood education and the United Voice Big Steps campaign.

Early Childhood Education and the Big Steps Campaign, 13 September 2012

As a parent of two young boys, I am a heavy user of early childhood centres. I remember with great fondness taking my then one-year-old to daycare on the back of a bike. These days I tend to drop them off in the car but it is always a pleasure to see their great enthusiasm when arriving at the Acton Early Childhood Centre. It is a place where they not only have friends but are also learning. One of the great changes over the last couple of decades has been the broad recognition that early childhood is not babysitting; it is education. And high-quality childhood education is fundamental to the future of those individual children and collectively to the productivity and the social wellbeing of our society. I pay tribute to the hard working staff at the Acton Early Childhood Centre.

The fact is that Labor has put record investment into early childhood. We are investing $22 billion dollars over the next four years—more than triple that of the former Liberal-National government. We have raised the childcare rebate to from 30 per cent to 50 per cent of parents' out-of-pocket costs and increased the cap from $4,354 per child per year under the coalition to $7,500 now. Despite this, the United Voice Big Steps campaign has pointed out, there are challenges with the low wages currently paid to workers in the early childhood sector. The Big Steps campaign estimates that 180 educators leave the sector every week due to low wages and conditions.

I have been grateful for the passionate advocacy from United Voice workers Yvette Berry, Rebecca Garden and Verity Mays as well as centre directors, Catherine Konkoly and Timothy Toogood among them, who came to see me to speak about the importance of raising wages and qualifications. The two big challenges for the government in the early childhood space are to improve affordability and access; as well as increase quality. The number of Australian children in childcare last financial year reached 1.3 million, an increase of 20 per cent over five years.

As I have noted, the government has increased the share of the out-of-pocket costs borne by the federal taxpayer, but at the same time it is vital that we improve the wages and conditions in the sector. The Big Steps campaign calls on the federal government to improve funding for the early childhood sector so that the turnover decreases and we are able to ensure that the sector continues to attract and retain the very best educators. In a recent survey I did of childcare issues in my electorate of Fraser, I asked parents how happy they were with their child's care. Forty per cent said they were very happy and another 39 per cent said they were happy. Only 10 per cent were rather unhappy or very unhappy. That is a big tick across the Fraser electorate for the great work being done by early childcare educators. I also asked parents how they received the childcare rebate and discovered that 11 per cent received it annually and 35 per cent received it quarterly. That means that only around half of all parents are receiving the childcare rebate in the two new ways that federal Labor has enabled them to receive it—paid either fortnightly or directly to the centre, perhaps the most convenient way of receiving the childcare rebate.

Even more concerning are figures from Kate Ellis, the Minister for Early Childhood and Child Care, that 100,000 families across Australia and 1,400 families in the ACT are eligible for the childcare rebate but are not receiving it. I encourage all families to check whether they are eligible for the support and to consider whether they are receiving the childcare rebate in the way that best meets their needs. I also asked parents whether, if they used formal care, they would be willing to pay higher fees in order to increase the salaries of staff and reduce staff turnover. The question was evenly split: 55 per cent in favour, 45 per cent against. The work of early childhood educators is vital to Australia's future and I commend them for it.

With last week's launch of the 2013 Centenary of Canberra program, I'm particularly keen on the local angle. Portrait of a Nation, of which I'm a patron, will encourage Canberrans to use 2012-13 to learn more about the people after whom their streets and suburbs are named.

Of course, no history is complete without a counterfactual history, and that's where celebtrity suburb names come in. This is the game where you see who can come up with the silliest suggestions of celebrities after whom your suburb could have been named.

Earlier this year, I posted a list of suggestions from Maryann Mussared, and then called Twitter for more. Here are some of those that came back:

• @ArabellaSL - Pearce must be named after Guy Pearce & Russell after Russell Crowe


• Nicholas Ellis ‏ - Weetangera after hip-hop band The Wu-Tang Clan


• Karen Hardy ‏ - real housewives of the OC - o'connor.


• Policy Australia ‏ - Had Bruce Hawker double dipped?*


• Karin - Lyneham after Paul Lyneham (the late ABC journalist)


• @TinyTheCabbie - Theodore after the chipmunk


• David Mathews - Hughes after Merv Hughes

* This suggests another game. Who are the celebrities named after two suburbs? The only other I can think of is ANU economist Bruce Chapman.

Update: They keep coming.

• @MarciaKKeegan - Harrison Forde


• Ian Warden alerts me to this 2011 Canberra Times article, featuring adult film actress Paige Turner, Test cricketer Phillip Hughes, ABC journalist Russell Barton and retired English soccer goalkeeper Gordon Banks.

I spoke in parliament this morning about the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

NDIS, 12 September 2012

On 24 August it was my pleasure to join with parliamentary secretary Jan McLucas and member for Canberra, Gai Brodtmann, at the Griffin Centre in Canberra to hold a forum on the National Disability Insurance Scheme. It is the second forum in my electorate on the NDIS that I have helped organise. A previous forum in Belconnen was well attended by a range of carers, people with disabilities and people of goodwill who are committed to building a national disability insurance scheme. I also met in my electorate office with a range of people with disabilities and their carers to discuss what an NDIS will mean for them.

Some of the stories of people who care for people with disabilities are profoundly shocking. As the Every Australian Counts website says, 'Which developed country would expect someone to live with two showers a week?' That is Australia. We heard the story of a Queensland woman who has to reapply every 15 days for emergency care. We heard about mothers of children with Down syndrome who have to constantly prove that their child's chromosomes have not changed. They have to be constantly reassessed. We heard stories about a child in the Northern Territory who has to hand in his hearing aids when he leaves school at the end of each day.

Building a national disability insurance scheme must be done in collaboration with people with disabilities and their carers. We need to ask, 'What do you want and how can we deliver it?' Assessments under the National Disability Insurance Scheme need to be done no more frequently than is necessary. Over-frequent assessments are enormously frustrating for people with disabilities and their carers and sometimes contribute to carers losing their jobs.

The parliamentary secretary had three asks for people at the forum and I share them with the  House. She wants people to go to the Every Australian Counts website and sign up. Go to www.ndis.gov.au and learn more about the NDIS, and talk about the National Disability Insurance Scheme with all Australians. Recognise that we need to build a nationwide national disability insurance scheme.

I am very proud that the ACT is one of the launch sites for the NDIS. I was pleased to join the Prime Minister and Chief Minister Katy Gallagher at Black Mountain School on 26 July to discuss the issues. Canberra is one of the sites that is leading the way in improving care for people with disabilities, but we still have a long way to go. I applaud the passion of the parliamentary secretary, the Prime Minister, the Chief Minister, Minister Macklin and many others. This is an important task and it is a mark of a civilised society that we do it.

I spoke on Ten News yesterday about my Child Care Survey results and the Gillard Government's work to improve the quality and affordability of child care.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/JSKV-ebo43M

I spoke in parliament last night about one of the central questions in the refugee debate - why have many countries in our region chosen not to sign the refugee convention?

Dealing with Non-Signatories to the Refugee Convention, 11 September 2012

In recent months much of the debate in Australia over refugees has centred around whether countries with which we deal have signed the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 protocol. For the coalition I think this is largely just another excuse to say no. Let us face it, refugee policy in the Howard years was hardly characterised by a great deference to international law. But there are many people of goodwill who I meet at my community forums and mobile offices who ask me, quite reasonably, why the government wants to deal with a non-signatory country. I wish to use the chance this evening to answer that question.

Broadly, there are three sets of countries. There are rich countries that are able to enforce their border protection—for example, OECD nations are almost entirely signatories. Then there are poor countries to which many refugees would not wish to go. Somalia is one country that comes to mind. Again, they are happy to sign the convention. Then there is a third group of countries—those poorer countries situated close to refugee sending nations. In many cases these countries are not signatories. As a branch member in the ACT, Barbara Phi, has pointed out to me, countries like India, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia are non-signatories, and they are non-signatories for various reasons. Chief among those reasons is that they do not wish to attract refugees from neighbouring countries.

The reality is that the refugee convention was created to deal with the mass flight of refugees from war ravaged Europe in the 1950s. The reality now is that people are fleeing in much greater numbers. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, at the end of 2011 Pakistan had 1.7 million refugees. As a result, there are substantial resource implications for such countries of signing the refugee convention. The costs of processing asylum seeker claims and meeting education, health and housing obligations can be prohibitive for poorer nations. For those bordering refugee-sending nations, these obligations are a very real resource issue.

In April 2007, the Malaysian foreign ministry's parliamentary secretary told the news outlet Malaysiakini it would not officially recognise refugees since:

The government is of the opinion that if Malaysia becomes party to the Convention, considering its strategic geographical location in the region, it would be a drawing factor for refugees to come to Malaysia.

Malaysia is concerned that, were it to sign the refugee convention, it would be obliged to resettle close to 100,000 people in its camps. A recent UNHCR evaluation on the protection of urban refugees reported Malaysia 'considers the task of providing refugees with protection, assistance and solutions to be the responsibility of the international community'. It went on:

While refugees and asylum seekers are tolerated, it was on the clear condition that UNHCR provides any resources and services associated with their presence.

I am committed to international agreements; I support the aims of the refugee convention. But we must realise the context in which the refugee convention was built. Even the opposition spokesperson, the member for Cook, has said the refugee convention 'no longer reflects the practical reality'. The practical reality is that we are in a region in which many of our neighbours are non-signatories to the convention, and if you want a regional framework then that necessitates dealing with non-signatory countries.

The Houston report recommended that we establish bilateral agreements in the short term while working towards a longer term regional framework under the Bali process. That means that we have an international agreement that is able to share appropriate responsibility for the 3.6 million refugees in our regions. That is why we have endorsed the recommendations of the Houston report and have made the necessary compromises, many of them painful, to stop the politicking and make sure people do not risk their lives at sea.

I spoke in parliament this evening about a bill to give the National Portrait Gallery its own piece of legislation.

National Portrait Gallery of Australia Bill, 11 September 2012

It is my pleasure to follow the member for Hinkler and to agree with so much of what he had to say in his very articulate speech. There is much that divides us in this place, but I think it is often the arts which can bring us together. I particularly appreciated the member for Hinkler's comments about the great wisdom and prescience of the Whitlam government.

The National Portrait Gallery was something I remember first thinking about when I lived as a whippersnapper in London for a number of years. I was there on my own and loved the opportunity to visit the British National Portrait Gallery. It has that great combination of art and history you get in a portrait gallery. Wandering amidst the portraits there, I remember thinking to myself, 'It would be great if Australia had one of these.' As previous speakers have noted, Tom Roberts had had that idea in the early 1900s, but it was not until much later, 1999, that Australia got its National Portrait Gallery.

For its first ten years, the National Portrait Gallery was in Old Parliament House—a beautiful venue but not one which was created as an art space. The new National Portrait Gallery space is a unique spot. You get that sense of what an interesting location it is going to be when you approach it and see the imbalance of the architecture on the front—it looks as if it is not possible for the cantilever to hold up. Then, as soon as you enter, you are struck by portraits which range right through Australian history, such as Ah Xian's ceramic bust of John Yu, Bill Henson's triptych of Simone Young and Howard Arkley's portrait of Nick Cave.

Mr Neville interjecting—

Dr LEIGH:  As the member for Hinkler points out, it is the way the light strikes those works which really makes it such a success—as is the case in any great gallery space.

I have two favourite portraits at the gallery. One, in common with the member for Hinkler, is the portrait of Michael Kirby by Ralph Heimans. I was associate to Michael Kirby at the time the portrait was done and it sat in the corner of his office for the first few months while he wandered forwards and backwards past it, trying to work out what he thought of it. It is of course not the most modest of portraits. It portrays the judge as, I think, a sort of Romanesque figure standing out—the only one facing the artist—amidst an array of judges. I think it is quite befitting of Michael Kirby's career as a judge—constantly with his face to us, not just writing the judgements but engaging the polity.

My other favourite portrait is the one of Deborah Mailman painted by Evert Ploeg. Deborah Mailman is just looking directly at the viewer with a sense of boldness and a sense of power. There is such strength coming out of the portrait.

The National Portrait Gallery is engaged in digital portraiture as well. My favourite portraits, I confess, are the oils, but so many of the new portraits these days are screen based digital portraits. On 2 August, the National Portrait Gallery announced the inaugural winner of its $10,000 iD Digital Portraiture Award. The artist judged to have made the most outstanding screen based digital portrait was Laura Moore. Her portrait was titled Animation 1. Other finalists were Aaron James McGarry, Nina Mulhall, Clare Thackway and Bridget Walker. Those portraits can be viewed in the National Portrait Gallery until 28 October.

This bill gives the National Portrait Gallery its own piece of legislation. That will be important, as previous speakers have noted, in allowing the gallery to stand on its own two feet and to engage, as the other cultural institutions do, with other entities and with other government departments. As the member for Canberra eloquently noted in her speech, the National Portrait Gallery will be involved in the extraordinary Centenary of Canberra celebrations which start next year. The theme of the Centenary of Canberra, curated by the energetic Robyn Archer is: 'seed now, blossom in 2013, flower for another hundred years'.

Not surprisingly, the National Portrait Gallery is involved in the centenary as well. It is going to feature a number of exhibitions coinciding with centenary themes through next year. A particular highlight will be Elvis at 21, an exhibition toured by the Smithsonian Institution Travelling Exhibition Service, with Canberra the only Australian venue. It consists of a collection of photos of Elvis Presley that are 'remarkably candid, intimate and fresh' according to the publicity material.

Although it is not at the Portrait Gallery, the Portrait of a Nation project will form part of the Canberra centenary celebrations. Portrait of a Nation will remind Canberrans that our nation's rich history lies in our street and suburb names. Portrait of a Nation, for which I am one of the spokespeople, will encourage Canberrans to rediscover the significant national figures after whom their streets and suburbs are named and learn a little bit more about the history of those people, perhaps even make a family link. For example, the relatives of one of those people might attend a Christmas celebration in your street which is named after that person.

If Canberra were a person, I think it would be an egalitarian patriot, someone who understands the past but is not bound by it—and the National Portrait Gallery is very much part of that. It recognises our rich history and the great value of design in nourishing the soul as well as the mind.

Another design event recently brought to the national capital was the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects national landscape architecture awards, which I attended with pleasure last week. I want to briefly acknowledge the award winners. The 2012 Australian Medal for Landscape Architecture went to UDLA. The AILA National Landscape Architecture Award of Excellence went to Plan (E). Other awards went to Jeavons Landscape Architects for their Clifton Hill railway project and to Fresh Landscape Design for their Roogulli project in Bywong, New South Wales. ASPECT Studios won an award for their innovative work at Pirrama Park and another for their project at Jack Evans Boat Harbour in Tweed Heads. Andrew Green received an award for their SW1 project; Ecoscape Australia, for Mueller Park Universal Playspace; Vee Design for the Robelle Domain in Ipswich; and McGregor Coxall, for the Australian Garden and the new entry of the National Gallery of Australia—and it is great to see such high-quality design here in the nation's capital.

Taylor Cullity Lethlean received an award for their Wild Sea exhibit at Melbourne Zoo. They are a really innovative firm of landscape architects. I know they are still mourning principal Kevin Taylor, who, tragically, died in a car crash last year. He was an alchemy of extraordinary qualities, being not only a great designer but also an extraordinary teacher.

Spackman Mossop Michaels received an award for the Humanities and Science Campus in the Parliamentary Triangle; John Mongard Landscape Architects, for Bingara and the Living Classroom; UDLA, for the Kimberley LNG precinct strategic assessment report; and the City of Bendigo, for the Bendigo Botanic Gardens Master Plan. Harris Hobbs received an award for the Bonner P-6 School and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Learning and Cultural Centre, a project in my own electorate of Fraser. Clouston Associates received an award for the Clarence River Way master plan; and Fitzgerald Frisby Landscape Architecture, for Lollipop Creek.

Zoe Metherell received a research and communication award for a comparative study on Melbourne's freeway planting designs; Oxigen Landscape Architects, for Green Infrastructure; HASSELL, for their project, Local-area Envisioning and Sustainability scoring system; Spackman Mossop Michaels, for their Chinatown Public Domain Plan, a really innovative re-design of Sydney's Chinatown area; and Taylor Cullity Lethlean, for their Victoria Square project. There were also two leadership awards, which went to Lucinda Hartley and Gweneth Leigh. I would like to acknowledge the national jurors who worked to select the award winners: Niall Simpson, Paul Harding, Alison Breach, Catherine Brouwer, Gary Rake and Catriona McLeod. Again, it was a great showcasing of design here in the national capital.

So much of what makes Canberra extraordinary is that meld of design and history of which the National Portrait Gallery is such a strong part and one that I am enormously proud to be engaged in as a Canberran. I commend the bill to the House.