MARK DREYFUS MP

Our lifesavers protect us. Lifesaving is part of a quintessentially Australian activity and holds a very special place in Australian culture.

I want to pay tribute to the work done in my electorate by the Friends of Braeside Park.

All in all, this set of reforms is directed at achieving consistency, transparency, accountability and the reduction of red tape all of which aims are touchstones for the Rudd Labor government.

High-speed broadband is no longer an optional extra. It is critical to full participation in contemporary society and in the modern economy.

The Edithvale-Seaford wetlands support a very rich biodiversity.

Many people at the festival told me that the Year of the Rat is a good year to begin a new job, being the first year of the 12-year cycle, and that it is an auspicious year for the first year of the new Rudd Labor government.

In one of its more miserable acts, the Howard government scrapped Labors Commonwealth Dental Health Program on taking power in 1996, which ripped more than $100 million from public dental services. This had an enormous impact on the lives of ordinary Australians in need of dental health care.

People who are homeless often require help with more than just housing.

I strongly support this apology. It is a decade late but its lateness makes it all the more welcome.

First speeches are full of hopes. I hope that on the day on which I last sit in this place I will be able to reread this first speech and recognise its themes in what I will, by then, have done here.