John BERGER (Southern Metropolitan) (15:02): Thank you, President, and congratulations to you on your election.

Let me first take a moment to acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people, the traditional owners of the land we are meeting on, and pay my respects to their elders past and present and emerging. I would also like to pay my respects to all First Peoples, but I want to single out the Bunurong Boon Wurrung in particular. My electoral region of Southern Metropolitan lies within their traditional country, and I want to say thank you for their long custodianship of the land: thank you for caring for the waterways, the beaches and the native flora and fauna of this stunning part of what we call Narrm, or Melbourne.

I want to thank and pay tribute to my campaign manager Joshua Bruni and the countless campaign volunteers, including my electoral staff of Jesse Gardner Russell, Molly Britt and Zachary Kaplan. I would also like to pay tribute to Richard Marles, Sam Rae, Glenn Sterle, Tony Sheldon, the late Alex Gallacher, Matt Burnell, Jana Stewart and Chris Ford for all of their support.

Thank you also to my family. Some of them are here today. My wife Vanessa – my best friend, my sounding board – has been a tremendous support to me over the journey. Nessie has one of the toughest jobs imaginable, caring for people with cancer at all stages. Her compassion, empathy and caring nature for the unwell people is what defines her. If I contribute to this place in even a fraction of the way that Nessie contributes to the life of her patients, then I will be truly grateful. I know the years of serving the union movement have been very long. They kept me from home, and my new job in Parliament will do the same. But your commitment to me, to us, is the rock I build my life on, and I will love you and admire you always.

I would also like to acknowledge my father-in-law Gary, who proudly served in the air force, mothers-in-law Helen and Jill and my sister-in-law Natalie and her husband Rob and thank them for embracing me into their family. Special thanks to my niece and goddaughter Emily and her husband Mark for all of their support.

My late parents John and Mary would have loved this day. My mum was a nurse and a midwife and a very talented musician. There were three big things in her life: her family, the Catholic Church and making sure all the kids in the Broadmeadows area of Melbourne were vaccinated against polio, TB and diphtheria. My dad had a very varied and interesting life. At one stage he worked at the local flour mill in Glenroy in the accounts department. It was there he discovered he had an aptitude for working with figures, an aptitude he used to eventually become a successful businessman.

Dad was what people at the time called a self-made man. He had a strong work ethic and a deep commitment to his family and to his faith. He battled poor health but still managed to run a small business, developed land on Melbourne’s outskirts and for a while even got into cattle breeding. So how did the son of what these days we would call an entrepreneur end up as a union official and now a Labor member of Parliament? Dad had great eyes for a business opportunity, but he also had an enduring sense of fairness, that everyone deserved a fair go and that it was his job to work hard and to make the pie a little bigger so that there was more to go around for everyone. So that is where my sense of justice, my sense of fairness, comes from.

As for dedicating my life to representing working people, that came early. I was a teenager when I started working as a jackaroo on a property in the Riverina. It was tough work, but I loved it. It also turned out to be the place where I saw how unfair life could be for working people who were in no real position to bargain with their employer. After crunching my knee on the weekend playing football, the boss offered me two choices: leave the property or be sacked. On the other hand, it was also near the Riverina that I saw the power working people could exercise through unions when they grouped together. I witnessed the wide comb dispute unfold. That culminated in a 10-week shearers strike coordinated by the union movement. The funny thing is a lot of those shearers would have voted for the conservative side of politics, but they were diehard unionists. Why? Because they could see firsthand the power they could exercise to get better pay and conditions for hard and often dangerous work by coming together. I could see perhaps what they could not – that Labor, the party founded during the previous Shearers’ Strike way back in the 1890s, was the only political movement that was really ever going to have their backs. I would see this time and time again in all the jobs I held.

When I worked at Ansett I saw the real outcomes that the Transport Workers Union delivered for working people doing hard, strenuous, often dangerous work. Inspired by this, in 1993 I stepped up and became a delegate. I wanted to be a voice at the table, sharing the stories and concerns of my airline industry friends and colleagues. The then legendary Bill Noonan, my mentor, brought me aboard full time with the TWU as a union organiser. I eventually became the branch secretary in 2016.

I want to pay tribute to those who worked with me to get those great outcomes: people like Chris Fennell, John Rowe, the late David White, James Hughes, Allan ‘Shorty’ Taylor, Mike McNess, Mem Suleyman, Dissio Markos, Bill Baarini, John Parker and the branch committee of management, and Frank, Sandy, Matt Rocks and the directors of TWUSuper. I am lucky. I have been paid to sit at the big tables with the CEOs, bosses and superannuation trustees and talk about what really drives me: the core Labor values of fairness and improving the lives, employment conditions and retirements of working people so they can retire with dignity. But I also got time to chat to truckies, airline ramp workers and catering staff. In short, I get it, and now I get to be part of a government that gets it, delivering for working people. What really matters to working people is fairness, and that means making a case for fair and decent wages.

Did I mention I am a stickler for fairness? I want to tell you why the fight for fairness is in my bones. We know all too well that certain employers will take advantage of their employees. Given the current cost-of-living constraints these days, every cent counts. Regardless of the economic climate, the underpayment of wages and non-payment of superannuation is never acceptable. You see, I understand the sinister consequences of wage theft, especially in the transport sector. It creates financial pressure on truck drivers, which forces them to speed, drive excessive hours, skip rest breaks and take other risks just to put food on the table. In short, it is dangerous, and the result can be catastrophic for drivers, their families and the community. I proposed a motion at the 2017 ALP conference, calling for wage theft to be criminalised. The resolution was adopted. It took some time to come to fruition, but it was momentous that on 1 July 2021 it became a crime for an employer in Victoria to deliberately and dishonestly underpay employees.

It also became a crime to withhold wages, superannuation and other employee entitlements deliberately and dishonestly or to falsify them. Only a Labor government would make this law, Labor values being not racing to the bottom by short-changing workers decent wages and superannuation, robbing them of a decent retirement. I am proud of the progress the labour movement has made in delivering these wages reforms and ensuring there is adequate deterrence against unscrupulous employers. But this work is never done, and in my new role I am not going to throw in the towel of fighting for fairness.

While I am now here in Spring Street, my good friends in the trade union movement such as Michael Kaine, Nick McIntosh, Richard Olsen, Ian ‘Smithy’ Smith and Tim Dawson will keep flying the flag and fighting the good fight on behalf of the mighty rank-and-file members and fearless delegates and health and safety reps of the TWU. Who could forget my friends at the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, particularly long-serving state secretary Michael Donovan; the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union and their strong state secretary John Setka; and the Rail, Tram and Bus Union and their newly elected state secretary Vik Sharma – I congratulate you. I would also like to acknowledge the union movement as a whole: the ACTU, Victorian Trades Hall and the regional trades halls, the many friends from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the TWU of America. I also acknowledge my many friends in this place and the other place who I am proud to serve with: Minister Natalie Suleyman, Minister Anthony Carbines, Matt Fregon, Sarah Connolly, Anthony Cianflone and the newly elected member for Koroit and my good friend Luba Grigorovitch. I was in the chamber during her inaugural speech two weeks ago, and I am excited to keep up the fight with her.

We know public infrastructure is disproportionately relied upon by working people, not the rich, so how inspiring is it that the Andrews Labor government is delivering the largest infrastructure program ever conceived in this state’s history. Every day I drive past the Big Build projects, and I can see what an astounding transformational impact they are having on our state now and the long tail of productivity that is to come. These are not just roads, tunnels and bridges, they are pathways to creating thousands and thousands of jobs, boosting skills, careers, opportunities and choices, while enabling people to get to work, to school and back home to their families faster and helping bring people and communities together. My dad would have loved this – a government investing to create opportunities for all, lifting everyone up.

I mentioned my mum was passionate about health and health care. In fact such was her conviction and sense of duty she kept up her nursing registration until she was almost 80, just in case she was ever needed in the field. Care and compassion are a big deal with my family. As I mentioned before, my wife Vanessa is an oncology nurse. One of my sisters is a midwife, another works in patient transport and a third works in the allied health field. My eldest daughter Kate is a nurse at the Mulgrave Private Hospital. My middle daughter Megan has a double degree in social science and services and works with vulnerable Victorians. So it is important to me that the Labor Andrews government is putting health front and centre, with bold plans for the system and the people on the front line to ensure the best care through a multibillion-dollar program for new public hospitals and emergency care, community health services, ambulance branches, residential aged care and mental health facilities.

This government will deliver on the biggest hospital projects in Australia’s history, with massive upgrades to the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Royal Women’s Hospital and the construction of the new Arden medical precinct, giving patients right across Victoria the very best of care, connected by a brand new train line. This is game-changing stuff. But do you know what really excites me? The fact that the Andrews Labor government is providing free degrees and training and upskilling the next generation of healthcare workers. This $270 million healthcare workforce package is designed to support the recruitment and training of 17,000 nurses and midwives. That is 17,000 more health workers making a real difference to the lives of Victorians. That is the work of a government that gets it.

The region I represent is home to Monash University, which counts among its thousands of students my youngest daughter Rachel, who is currently studying music and science. I have three adult stepchildren. Elise has a degree in human resources, Megan is commencing her university studies in social work, and Lucas has begun a career of service with the Australian Defence Force and will march out this Friday at Kapooka.

As a parent and step-parent of six kids all up, I have plenty of firsthand experience of the primary, secondary and tertiary education systems. Both my parents were lifelong learners before the term was even coined, and my eldest sister is a teacher. So you do not have to tell me about the importance of education and how vital their jobs are in shaping the future of our children. We need to do much more to ensure that we have qualified, well-rounded teachers to address the shortages across the system, from kindergarten to VCE. That is why I am incredibly excited about the Andrews government’s free TAFE program. Again, this will be a game changer for our state. This government was elected on a platform of doing the stuff that matters. I could not be prouder to be part of this Labor team, with its extraordinary mandate to deliver on a progressive agenda and to find innovative and lasting solutions that will make our state better and a fairer place. There is plenty of vision and courage, but there is much work to be done, and it will be done. I look forward to making a solid start alongside so many fresh faces in this house and contributing to Labor’s third term, led by Premier Dan Andrews.

I am honoured and humbled to be here. This is a place of robust debate, and I look forward to the brave conversations, ideas and arguments and to listening, representing and advocating respectfully – always. But I always look forward to getting stuff done, the stuff that matters to me and you.

Members applauded.