Mr GEORGE (Lismore) [7.30 p.m.] (Inaugural speech): It is with pride, honour and privilege that I stand in the oldest Parliament in Australia as the member for Lismore in the Fifty-second Parliament to deliver my inaugural speech. I offer all members of this House, regardless of political affiliation, my congratulations on their recent election success. I trust that we will all be blessed with health and guidance to carry out our duties to the people of New South Wales in a proper and responsible manner. I view my election as being part of the board in charge of running the State of New South Wales, and respectfully ask all members to view their appointments in the same way.

I wonder whether there is a need for the daily theatrical performances that we continually see in the House. Enough is enough. Even some inaugural speeches have reflected this attitude. There seems to be an opinion that unless you represent the Labor Party you do not come from a humble background. I am testimony to the fact that that is incorrect. I believe that political parties or beliefs do not describe or represent a person's upbringing.

My parents, Nadim and Nora George, came to Australia from Lebanon in October 1948. I was the first of five children born in Australia at Casino. My parents arrived here without money, friends or any idea of how they were going to survive in their new home town. Admittedly, they were encouraged to Australia by our uncle and aunty, the late Peter and Waded George, who had been encouraged by her mother. In those days it was natural that once you migrated to Australia and became established you then acted as a host family to encourage others to your new homeland.

In spite of their initial hardships, as well as not being able to speak English or understand the English language, mum and dad started to settle in and become accustomed to their new way of life. They instilled in us from a very early age the feeling of being lucky to live in this wonderful country, Australia. We are proud Australians. As I grew older I was always embarrassed when mum and dad turned up at school and tried to speak to the teachers and explain themselves, or find out how I was going. I could sense my schoolmates laughing at these so-called new Australians. I was never ashamed of who I was or where my parents came from. I just did not want to be different. I simply wanted to be one of my mates.

As the eldest child, and the only one who could speak English in the household, from about the age of eight I have memories of accompanying my parents to places such as banks, accountants' offices and councils, and trying to explain what their needs were. I quickly matured in business activities and communicating with people. I had the pleasure of completing my education at St Mary's primary school and Marist Brothers High School in Casino.

The support of my wife, Rhonda, who is in the gallery tonight, has been unquestionable for more than 30 years. Rhonda, you have been there to support me in whatever responsibilities or challenges I have embarked upon. Rhonda, you are always there, together with our three sons, Stuart, Brendan and Cameron, who are also here tonight. Your continued love and encouragement are always special. My decision to seek endorsement for the seat of Lismore was a family one.

My father, Nadim, is also here tonight, and I acknowledge my late mother, Nora. I acknowledge also my brothers and sisters, Esther and Garry, Paul and Estelle, Raymond and Robyn, and Barbara; Rhonda's family - her parents, Eric and Joyce Waldron, and Graham and Jan Waldron; Alan and Gwen; and our nieces and nephews; many of whom are here tonight. I simply say thank you for being
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our family and for being there. Your love and support are very special to Rhonda and me.

I am very conscious of the enormous job that I have inherited. It would be inexcusable not to recognise in my inaugural speech the two previous members that I have been associated with. Mr R. B. (Bruce) Duncan, who held the seat for 23 years, together with Mrs Marlene Duncan, certainly laid down the foundation and tradition for Bill Rixon to continue for the next 11 years prior to his retirement on 26 March 1999. I place on record the electorate's recognition and appreciation of the work and respect that Bill, his wife, Merrilyn, and staff have earned for their honest dedication and support, and for maintaining a down-to-earth approach to his electorate, equally serving the needs of all constituents.

In claiming victory on 27 March, our success was certainly overshadowed by the fact that Bill Rixon was suffering from a virus of the heart muscle and was admitted to Kyogle Hospital, transferred to Lismore, and later flown to Brisbane by the Northern Region Westpac lifesaver rescue helicopter in a serious condition. With God's blessing, Bill is now at home enjoying his retirement from politics and the day-to-day running of his property. Bill wishes to place on record his personal thanks to all his former colleagues for their concern and good wishes.

Being elected to this position does have negatives, as I have had to resign from organisations that have been a big part of my life. For example, I was a director of the Northern Co-operative Meat Company based in Casino. That organisation is the biggest single site employer north of Newcastle, employing 800 people. It is a successful co-operative that is proudly Australian-owned by beef producers. However, like all employers in the State, especially when you are situated near a State border, the company has major problems with workers compensation and payroll taxes in New South Wales, causing an uneven playing field to its competition in Queensland, which is less than two hours drive away, and in Victoria.

I was also a director of the Northern Region Westpac Lifesaver Rescue Helicopter Service, based in Lismore, which services areas from the Queensland border in the north to Goondiwindi and Armidale in the west, and beyond Coffs Harbour in the south. I compliment the Minister for Health, Craig Knowles; his department; the business and community support of the flight area; the board, whose chairman, Warren Tozer, and general manager, Perry Wells, are here tonight; and the crew and staff for their continued support in ensuring that the service is maintained in a professional manner. It is now the envy of other services in New South Wales.

I was also a director of George and Fuhrmann (Holdings) Pty Ltd, based in Casino, which is one of the largest private stock and station and real estate agents in New South Wales and which I had the pleasure of establishing with Paul Fuhrmann and Arch Northam in 1976. In 1989 I had the honour of being elected President of the Stock and Station Agents Association of New South Wales. The stock and station and real estate agency is a vital part of rural communities, and I believe that country towns are strong and safe while there was still an agency in their community.

I thank my hard-working campaign committee and supporters for their support, guidance, hard work and encouragement, which I appreciate immensely. I ask that you accept that time does not permit me to mention anyone or everyone individually. However, each and every one of you has played a part, one way or another, in my standing here tonight. To my colleagues in the National Party, your support during the election was very much appreciated, as were the visits by both the National and Liberal Party shadow ministers.

It would be remiss of me if I did not thank my staff, Bronwyn Mitchell and Karen Wilson, for their dedication and commitment and for the courtesy extended not only to me but, more importantly, to my constituents. They are at the cold, hard face of the office every day, affording me the opportunity to attend to my parliamentary duties, knowing full well that they are part of the team servicing the seat of Lismore. Mr Speaker, I thank you and the staff of Parliament House for their support and commitment and for the courtesy extended to me as a member, which has certainly been appreciated in adapting to this new environment.

I am honoured to represent the people of the seat of Lismore. The fact that I am standing in this Chamber today is an acknowledgment of their overwhelming support. The seat of Lismore covers 6,049 square kilometres and takes in the areas of Lismore City, Richmond River, Casino, Kyogle and parts of areas administered by Tenterfield and Byron councils. Its industries produce beef, hides, pork, Norco dairy products, timber, world-class engineers, tea-trees, macadamias, avocados and a range of fruit and vegetables, soya beans and tea and coffee, to name just a few. Today I am proud to announce that Lismore coffee will soon be available on the menu in Parliament House - and that is just the start!

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Lismore district is renowned for its physical beauty, its rich heritage and cultural life - a thriving university city with top-notch sporting facilities and a variety of restaurants and cafes. On its doorstep are four world heritage-listed national parks and it is only 40 minutes inland from spectacular beaches. Lismore is the thriving commercial and service centre of this region and a new transit centre in the city adds convenience and comfort for visitors and locals alike. Lismore has long been regarded as a city of sports, with excellent facilities, the jewel in the crown being Oakes Oval, which can hold a crowd of 10,000 people.

The Northern Rivers Organisation of the Performing Arts, the Lismore Theatre Company and Theatre North provide Lismore with a rich cultural calendar. For lovers of the visual arts, Lismore Regional Art Gallery has a changing program of touring exhibitions, local artists and an annual local indigenous exhibition. The Southern Cross University takes pride of place in the city. It offers a fully-equipped sports science and fitness testing laboratory. The laboratory is an Australian Sports Commission accredited elite athlete facility, the only university laboratory in Australia with this accreditation.

Casino is a major town on the Richmond River. It plays an important role as the main commercial and business centre for rural industries in the Northern Rivers region. Settlers travelled overland from the Clarence River and established a 30,000 acre cattle station, which they named Cassino. This later became Casino when a surveyor misspelled it. Casino services the region by road links and daily air services to Sydney provided by Hazelton airlines, and it has a rail junction. Casino is a strong rural base and is the centre of the region's cattle industry. It is the home of the regional livestock selling centre at Nammoona and the Northern Co-operative Meat Company Ltd, which, with subsidiary companies, supplies products for local, interstate and export markets. The importance of beef to Casino is reflected in its name - Casino, beef capital of Australia - and the famous Beef Week Festival held recently in May. This annual promotion is now the envy of regional areas throughout Australia. I am proud to say that in 1981 I was the inaugural president of that festival committee and I continued in that position until 1990. [Extension of time agreed to.]

Even though I am no longer on that committee I am still very involved in the event each year. Kyogle is nestled beneath Fairymount and offers ready access to the spectacular North Coast rainforests, including the Border Ranges National Park, the Tweed Valley, Mount Warning, Mount Lindesay and the Richmond Range. The park contains such points of interest as the Border Ranges lookout, the Pinnacle, the Tweed lookout and the Spiral Loop. These are just a few of the spots that one can see along the way.

Nimbin, just 30 kilometres from Lismore, is famous for the 1973 Aquarius Festival, which attracted people seeking an alternative to the rat-race of city life. Ecotourism was born out of the ideals and attitudes of the Aquarius Festival. Following the redistribution, the electorate now includes the areas west of the Richmond Range and the towns of Bonalbo, Urbenville, Legume and Woodenbong. These towns provide the basis of the prime cattle-producing areas in the electorate, with Urbenville and Woodenbong heavily dependent on the Ford timber mills which employ nearly 70 people.

The Cellulose Valley project is based on a vision that north-east New South Wales will become an international centre for research and development and commercial production of herbal medicine and related products, products that are now becoming mainstream in the health sector. This is a major knowledge-based biotechnology initiative that will put the region and the State at the forefront internationally of the rapidly expanding natural and complementary medicine industry. Cellulose Valley is considered to be an area covering much of northern New South Wales, including the North Coast and New England Tablelands areas.

Planning for the development of the Cellulose Valley Technology Park is now complete. The Premier, the Hon. Bob Carr, launched the strategic plan for the park in August 1998. The Minister for Local Government, and Minister for Regional Development, the Hon. Harry Woods, attended an official function to announce the project to the Sydney media in September 1998. The Treasurer, the Hon. Michael Egan, also visited the park site in July 1998. The business plan for the park was released in May 1999, the master plan was completed and a study of employment outcomes for the next five years has now been completed.

Today, the Vice-Chancellor of the Southern Cross University, Professor Barry Conyngham, and I presented both documents to the Hon. Harry Woods. According to the business plan and the employment study, in the next five years Cellulose Valley Technology Park will result in 600 direct and 600 indirect jobs in the region, $30 million in new investment, $20 million of farm output in medical herbs, support for the development of new
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businesses in the region, innovation in biotechnology through expenditure of $16.5 million in research and development and important replacement and export development in herbs and natural and complementary medicine products. I look forward to this proposal receiving the necessary funding and support to establish what will become an international centre.

The recent Drug Summit was educational, to say the least. In the past I have had the view that drugs is a law and order issue. However, I soon learned that it is just as big a health problem. I have developed a strong view that we need to provide future generations with education immediately. Young people and their parents need to see the consequences of drug abuse - they do not just want advice that drugs are not good for them. As I indicated earlier, Nimbin is part of my electorate. I have no hesitation in saying that no town in New South Wales would have had more publicity, exposure or experience with the drug scene. When drugs are mentioned internationally, people think of Nimbin, and when Nimbin is mentioned the first thought is of drugs.

Local youth carry a lot of shame for this reputation. They cannot tell prospective employers where they come from for fear of discrimination. Nimbin is already a place that cannot say that it provides a safe, nurturing environment for its young. Every service we have introduced to help the sick heroin user has meant that our ability to provide a good, safe place for our young becomes more distant. In trying to fix the problem we have lost the focus of our first responsibility: that of seeing our young have the best opportunities available. They are dependent on us to provide for their needs and currently are suffering because we have failed to do this. Drug users have needs, but those needs should not be met at the expense of a group that is least likely to represent themselves: our children. I believe that the following quote by the author James Baldwin is most relevant today:

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed at imitating them.

I am concerned about where we go from here. Residents of Nimbin do not want shooting galleries, so I ask all members of this Fifty-second Parliament: Are you sure that the communities you represent want shooting galleries? The message that has been reinforced to me by many of my constituents is that if we adopt the Summit's resolutions we will take the wrong option in combating the drug problem.

The Lismore electorate is continually being threatened with cutbacks in its health budget. However, of late I have been encouraged by the comments and actions of the new Minister for Health, the Hon. Craig Knowles, who has already selected the site for a detoxification centre in Lismore, the first one in rural and regional New South Wales. He has also indicated support for a multipurpose service [MPS] at Nimbin and will consider a proposal from the Kyogle community. On 27 May in this House the Minister, referring to people requiring cancer treatment, said:

Patients without cars who needed that treatment had to travel . . . which took at least 1½ hours, feel as sick as a dog and make the return journey of another 1½ hours. Because that was unacceptable the Government set about changing it.

My constituents, even those who have cars, are travelling up to three to four hours for the same treatment. This again highlights the need for the Government to urgently address such issues in regional New South Wales. Law and order is a major concern in my electorate, especially in the Lismore area command, which does not have adequate human resources. To be frank, the new system in the bush is not working. The Government needs to address the issue of the strategic placing of police officers throughout the command to provide service in times of emergency. The community deserves better because, as with health issues in country areas, this is not satisfactory or acceptable.

During the election, my home town of Casino was promised 24-hour policing on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights as soon as possible. I ask Minister Whelan: When is "as soon as possible"? Casino would appreciate his answer. Again, the Government needs to address this issue. As honourable members would be well aware, the North Coast has a per capita income of less than $19,000. The young and the old are the most disadvantaged. The young need jobs, and I will continue to make representations to the Government to decentralise departments based in Sydney to the North Coast. I want government incentives for industry to relocate and start-up incentives for new high employment industries. Self-funded retirees and pensioners alike need greater access to health, recreation and occupational facilities. Small business in our region is hurting from government on-costs, and from paying high transport costs. These issues need to be addressed urgently to ensure the survival of small business.

As a stock and station agent, I will never forget the light-hearted description a farmer gave me
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of how he came to be in strife. He said, "It all started in 1966 when they changed from pounds to dollars: my overdraft doubled. Then they introduced kilograms instead of pounds: my wool clip dropped by half. They changed rain measurements to millimetres and I have not had an inch of rain since. When degrees Celsius was brought in, the temperature never got over 40 degrees. No wonder my wheat would not grow! Then they converted acres to hectares and I ended up with half of the land I originally had. By this time, I had had enough and decided to sell out. You wouldn't want to know: I just got the property into the agent's hands when they changed miles to kilometres. Now I am too far out of bloody town for anyone to buy it!"

The constituents I represent, and honourable members from other regional electorates have also said this in their inaugural speeches, feel there is bias in the spending priorities in New South Wales. Recently, Sydney city sought $140 million for a further kilometre of tunnel. It sounds a small amount if it is said quickly. However, in reality, that figure shocked many people in regional New South Wales who face daily the rapid deterioration of their roads and bridges and the continuing retreat of government services. Our local road networks are physically declining and financially depreciating at a rate faster than existing funds can provide for the necessary repair, let alone for maintenance and replacement. This process is accelerated by the continuing wet climate of our region. School bus operators who travel these roads daily have to combat the horrific conditions, and the lives of schoolchildren are virtually at permanent risk.

The Summerland Way needs to be completed to provide an alternative route for both tourists and heavy vehicles from Grafton through Casino and Kyogle to south-east Queensland. The Kyogle-Murwillumbah road currently needs only $1.5 million to finish sealing this popular tourist link. To provide creative options for these required services in regional areas the Government needs to show leadership. Perhaps an extra 50¢ shadow toll to help fund the local regional roads in New South Wales may be one creative option.

I wish to place on record my appreciation to the volunteers and employees of the New South Wales Fire Brigades, New South Wales Rural Fire Service, and State Emergency Service personnel of the Lismore electorate for coming to Sydney to help in a time of need. There was never a question of the city or the bush: When help is required we are one. Rural communities are doing it tough and are steadily losing services. Many parts of regional New South Wales are not experiencing the services and infrastructure that are enjoyed by our city cousins.

However, we, as the board of New South Wales, should conclude that it must be a question of the city and the bush when it comes to a fair distribution of capital infrastructure funding, rather than the pro-city bias we are currently experiencing in New South Wales. Finally, it is important for me to stay in touch with my electorate, to listen to my constituents and to work hard with other country representatives to achieve results for regional New South Wales. I am honoured and thankful to my parents, family and the people of the electorate who have given me the opportunity to call the seat of Lismore home.

Mr SPEAKER: I congratulate all members who have been part of this program of inaugural speeches. It has been wonderful to see the group of members attending each other's inaugural speeches. It augurs well for the future comradeship of Parliament.