Senator ANTIC (South Australia) (17:00): Mr President, I'd like to start by letting you in on a little secret. This is strictly between you and me. Although I may very understandably give the impression of being cool, calm and collected standing here before you today, I can assure you that that's not the case. Standing in front of a group of family, friends, many of the coalition government's leadership group and one's political opponents, your words being indelibly transcribed into Hansard, is a fairly daunting process. But let me tell you: I've carried a similar burden once before. In 1982, at the age of seven, I stood before a crowd of a hundred or so family and friends during Burnside Primary School's talent night and performed what could only be described as a rousing rendition of the song 'Rockin' Robin', and I nailed it. With the benefit of that experience behind me, I feel that I am ready to go.

With that said, it would be remiss of me to start without first extending my congratulations to those senators elected in May this year, particularly those elected from my home state of South Australia. To serve in this place is a genuinely humbling experience and a tremendous honour. It is my hope that, even though I may not always agree with those of you across the chamber, our efforts will always be constructive and will always be made in the interests of a stronger Australia.

I stand before you today as the 608th senator elected to this place and the 106th from South Australia. But, as I understand it, I'm the first Australian senator of Serbian descent. I was born in Adelaide in 1974, the second child of Dr Ratomir Antic and Vicki Anderson. My mother was the only child of Sylvia Anderson, who we knew as Tup—a widow who raised my mother on her own following the death of my paternal grandfather in 1951. In addition to experiencing the trauma of losing her husband, Tup was left in a perilous financial position following his death. She was not the beneficiary of a life insurance payment or a significant bank balance, but, like so many of her generation, she drew upon the uniquely Australian postwar can-do mindset to enter the workforce, make sacrifices and raise my mother on her own terms. Her generation lived through hardship and war. They had stared down genuine annihilation a decade earlier and knew how to react to life's challenges with a stoic resolve. Today I'm the humble beneficiary of her fighting spirit, and for those homegrown heroics I'm tremendously grateful.

The homegrown heroics of my paternal grandmother have also been critical in the role they played in shaping me as a person and now as a politician. Grandma Seka, as we knew her, came to this country from the former Yugoslavia in 1957 with her husband, her sons and very little else. It's a tale of postwar immigration familiar to many Australian families. Theirs was a family of small-business people on a postwar collision course with the rise of communism in the Balkans. My grandmother's distrust of the communist regime, which had already stripped her family of its modest assets, led her to lecture my father about the importance of private ownership, entrepreneurship and basic freedoms. Inconveniently, my father was prone to repeating her views to his government-appointed schoolteachers, and before long that indiscreet young man had given away his mother's political leanings and raised the ire of party officials in the process. The Antic family's tenure under the red star of Yugoslavian communism was coming to a sharp end.

My father is a man who always tells it like it is. He is a man of immeasurable integrity. He is a man who served his community in his role as Director of Thoracic Medicine at the Royal Adelaide Hospital for more than 40 years with dignity and respect. He is a man who taught me the importance of treating those around you with the same dignity and respect. My mother is a woman who has put her own interests, her own pursuits and her own life behind those of her family. She is a woman who captures a crowd of people with her intellect and wit and who never shies away from a self-deprecating joke. The person who stands here before you today is as much a product of that backstory as of the love shown to me by my family throughout the course of my life. These experiences highlight that which drew me to the Liberal Party, a party which serves to uphold the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of religion; a party which is the friend of small enterprise and which is opposed to authoritarian regimes and tyranny.

I'm fortunate enough to have both my mother and my father in the gallery today, but it is with deep regret my older brother and only sibling, Professor Nick Antic, couldn't be here with us today, after losing a three-year battle with a brain tumour in November 2016. During my formative years at Burnside Primary and Pembroke schools in Adelaide, living in Nick's extraordinary academic shadow elicited in me as much pride as it did trepidation. In his adult years, Nick graduated from medical school, obtained his postgraduate specialist qualifications and developed a formidable reputation as an emerging world leader in sleep medicine, the very field in which our father had blazed a path of his own. He never lost his sense of humour, but ultimately he lost his battle with cancer, and I am extremely sad that he couldn't be here with us today. But he leaves behind my sister-in-law, Corinne; my niece, Holly; and my nephews, Lachlan and Charles Antic. And my niece, Holly, is also here in the gallery today. I'm as proud of them as their dad was and would have been if he could have been here today. In addition to a beautiful family, his legacy proves that much can be achieved in a short amount of time through leadership, collaboration and respect. That statement adorns his memorial in Centennial Park Cemetery and it lives with me every day.

It lives with me because my own path through life has been arguably less expeditious than his. In the 1990s, I studied a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in history and politics, and a Bachelor of Laws at the University of Adelaide. I enjoyed the opportunity to think and challenge the ideas around me, but I realised that my time in the university system was drawing to a close after a visit to my grandmother's house in the year 2000. While sitting in her living room, weighing up how I was to best use those university years and while passively smoking a portion of her eighth cigarette, which was incidentally lit from the tail end of her seventh cigarette, she looked at me, paused and said in a matter-of-fact manner, 'You know, even if you haven't still decided what you want to do with your life, I'm not worried about you.' The clear inference to be drawn from that statement was that other family members were less confident but that she was generous enough to buck the trend to so conclude it was time to hit the work force!

That Freudian slip, however, did highlight in me something about my personality which I knew to be a virtue rather than a vice, being that I preferred a considered approach to life—a conservative approach to life. In many respects, this moment was something of an epiphany regarding my political views. It might be best summed up by the great urban poet Ice Cube, who said, 'Life ain't a track meet; it's a marathon', which is really a modern incarnation of an old Serbian phrase: 'Triput meri, jednom seci', or, in English, 'Three times measure; one time cut'. A conservative approach must always inform our decision making and take precedence over the utopian propositions injected into the policy cycle by those who seek to impose rather than to improve. And it's regrettable that too many politicians seek to treat that which purports to be progressive as universally meritorious regardless of the consequences.

Too often our history and institutions are unnecessarily devalued. In life, actions should only be taken following a proper assessment of the ramifications, not simply to play to a crowd. This is not to say we should endorse stagnation but rather that we should practice consideration when making decisions which affect Australians. We must always embrace stability and structure and recognise that only cautious change honours our institutions and that only cautious change allows us to both preserve and improve.

In my time in this place I hope to play a part in preserving and improving that which makes South Australia great, which is why, despite having been fortunate enough to have had an opportunity to travel the world, I, to paraphrase the late Peter Allen, still call South Australia home. There may be no simpler way to light the fuse of debate in this place than to claim one's own state as the premier state in the federation. However, in this instance, I'm hopeful those in the chamber will forgive my parochialism.

My home state of South Australia was based on free settlement rather than on convict labour, a fact anyone who visits South Australia will be reminded of by a local several seconds after stepping off their flight! But nonetheless it's a fact of which South Australians are rightfully proud. Our great state, from the electorate of Grey in the state's north to the lush green surrounds of the electorate of Barker in the state's south-east, has natural resources and beauty which are the envy of the world. I have spent much time in regional South Australia, and my fondness for the country runs deeper than my admiration of its stunning scenery and fresh air alone. It goes to the heart of what it means to be Australian.

The commonsense, pragmatism and respectful interaction that one receives from regional Australians is something from which our city folk could learn a great deal. People from the regions have an unwavering grasp of the things which really matter. The basic tenets of family, faith, freedom and the flag are all alive and well in the country. In many respects there are elements of the regions which remind me of some of the best parts of the Australia of my childhood—an Australia in which we retained our sense of humour; an Australia unaffected by the tyranny of political correctness, a phenomenon favoured by those who have become so duplicitous that they seek to construct matters of concern as a method of attracting attention to serve their own political hubris; an Australia without corporations seeking to impart a confected political ethos upon their customers; an Australia in which sporting codes did not prioritise social justice causes over the core business of playing the sports which breathe life into the pay packets of their executives while, in the process, riding roughshod over the interests of grassroots supporters; an Australia without revisionist vandals who seek to rewrite history by defacing public monuments, such as statues of Captain Cook and Queen Victoria and, most appallingly, our Anzac memorials. Happily, that Australia, the commonsense Australia, is alive and well in the overwhelming majority of Australians. But we cannot allow it to be further hijacked by the destructive forces of fabricated outrage, lest it shall wither and die. We have much to celebrate and much to protect and much to preserve.

With the benefit of Liberal state and federal governments, I'm certain my state, South Australia, is on track to join Tasmania as the federation's next 'turnaround state'. If it isn't already, South Australia is on its way to becoming the defence industry capital of the country, and, with the defence and space sectors taking the place of manufacturing, South Australia can look to a bright future. But, in order to ensure our economic recovery continues, it is critical that South Australia retains all of those projects. To relocate them would come at a significant financial cost for this country. It would result in the loss of jobs in my home state and, importantly, it would erode the skill base and knowledge capabilities which ensure the country's defence sector remains world class. In addition to retaining those industries in which South Australia already excels, we need to encourage new industries and new investment, and, in one sense, everything old could be new again.

In 1906, South Australia's first uranium mine was opened in Radium Hill and, along with sites such as Olympic Dam, the world's fourth-largest uranium producer, South Australia has a sizeable share of this country's uranium reserves. Australia is now the third-largest uranium producer in the world, after Kazakhstan and Canada. The reckless rush into the unproven, uncosted world of renewable energy in my home state represents both the deceased canary down a renewable energy coalmine—to coin a phrase—and a masterclass of failed policy from a failed former Labor government. The curiosity of exporting uranium to the world—and, in so doing, supplying our neighbours with cheap and proven to be virtually emission free energy—while at home we are restricted from accessing the same benefits must be addressed.

In May 2016, the South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission determined that there was enough evidence of safety and technological improvements that, consequently, South Australia could safely increase its participation in nuclear activities, and that nuclear power should not be discounted. I welcome the news that the Morrison government has commissioned an inquiry to investigate the viability of nuclear power generation. New technology in the form of generation IV and small modular reactors will increase the safety and reduce the cost of nuclear power generation. Comparing the old tech generators to the future of nuclear power is like comparing a Motorola DynaTAC mobile phone from 1983 to a brand new iPhone 11.

The commission also determined that South Australia has the necessary attributes to develop a safe, world-class waste disposal facility, which could generate up to $100 billion of income in excess of expenditure over the 120-year life of the said facility alone. The French, who, by the way, have power prices approximately 17 per cent below the EU average, seem to have struck a balance, and I doubt that there are many in this chamber who would register concerns about knocking back a bottle of French champagne for fear of developing radiation sickness. At the very least, there is enough evidence before us to now have a proper debate, one which uses an evidence based approach devoid of emotion, devoid of obvious hyperbole and devoid of political pointscoring.

I come to this place determined to play a part in ensuring that the legacy of brain drain, industry closures and economic malaise imposed upon my state draws to a close. I would not be standing here today, however, without the love and support of my family. My family is the foundation upon which everything around me rests. Families allow us to learn from our mistakes, to grow and to balance our needs against the needs of those around us. To have been raised in a loving family has been critical to my life. The lessons taught regarding respect for authority and cooperation with those around us are lessons which we must continue to teach our children. I thank the membership of the Liberal Party of South Australia, its state councillors and the people of South Australia for the honour they've bestowed upon me, and I ask for their trust to use my judgement and work ethic to serve their interests.

I thank my parents for their tireless support and love, two people who have consistently put their own interests third and fourth behind those of my late brother and my own. I thank my late brother, Nick, for the love and support he showed me and the standard of excellence which he demonstrated to us all in his 45 years. His children, my niece and nephews, have so many of his admirable characteristics, including his sense of humour, his wit, his compassion and, most notably, his love of sport. It's a privilege to see them grow into outstanding young people.

I'd especially like to thank my fiancee, Edwina Storer, without whose love, support and friendship I wouldn't be standing here today. Edwina is also in the gallery today, I note. Her intelligence and her emotional maturity have been a critical plank in my journey to this place. She is a person who has been there through thick and thin and who provides reassurance, laughter, companionship and a sounding board for life's tricky issues. It takes a special kind of selflessness to indulge a partner's pursuit of his or her passion, and the manner in which she has invested herself in this role is nothing short of spectacular.

Thank you also to Edwina's parents, Nick and Trish Storer, for welcoming my family and me so warmly and graciously. And I thank Tony Pasin, the member for Barker, for his years of friendship and guidance. He is one of the most loyal, hardworking, trustworthy and honest people I know, and I thank him for that which he has done for me leading up to this day. I also thank Nicolle Flint, the member for Boothby, and my state parliamentary colleagues who have travelled here today from South Australia: Sam Duluk MP, the member for Waite; Steve Murray MP, the member for Davenport; and Fraser Ellis MP, the member for Narungga. I don't think I've missed anyone! I also thank state Liberal vice presidents Dr Nicola Centofanti and Morry Bailes, who are here today, as well as the partnership of Tindall Gask Bentley Lawyers for their support and those friends who have travelled here today as well.

Thank you also to the South Australian Young Liberal Movement for their tireless support. I note the presence today of former South Australian Young Liberal presidents Alexander Hyde, Sam Duluk MP and Jocelyn Sutcliffe and current Young Liberals President, James Porter. Thank you to our unsuccessful lower house candidates, alongside whom I campaigned in the May election, namely Laura Curran, Jake Hall-Evans, Shaun Osborn, Kathleen Bourne, Georgina Downer and Hemant Dave. Your outstanding efforts greatly assisted the party in securing the sixth Senate position in South Australia.

In conclusion, during my time in this place I undertake to discharge my duties in good faith, to work hard and to dutifully serve the people of South Australia to the best of my ability. As a person whose sense of irony has been known to get him into trouble from time to time, I hope to show that a sense of humour can still be the comfortable bedfellow of a strong policy agenda. Thank you.