Inaugural JJ Brown Oration - Vikings Club, Dundas

Parramatta has always been a pretty extraordinary place.
 
And I am not just saying that because I bleed blue and gold.
 
The rock art you can find here tells the story of a people who have lived here for thousands of years.

You can see the fish they caught and the animals they hunted. This place and the river they lived on sustained them.

When the Poms turned up in 1788 it didn’t take long for them to work that out too.
 
Sydney has a beautiful harbour but it’s got terrible soil.
 
The small gardens they planted at Farm Cove didn’t produce enough food to keep fourteen hundred people alive.

The re-supply ship from England that was supposed to help them struck an iceberg off the coast of South Africa.

They were starving and so they headed up the river.

A farm was set up at what is now Parramatta Park.

The crops took and they survived.

Everything that happened after that, started here.

Parramatta has also delivered its fair share of pretty extraordinary MPs.

A Prime Minister. Three Attorneys General. A Chief Justice and an Ambassador to the US.

But no one quite like John Brown.

And that’s the man I have the extraordinary privilege to honour tonight.

John is the oldest living member of Bob Hawke’s Cabinet.

A real living legend.

He was born 94 years ago in Cabarita. He went to school in Burwood and Strathfield.

In 1963 he got hitched to Jan Murray and they had five kids. Including my mate Chris.

They set up home here in Dundas.

He played footy for the Magpies and ran a business at the abattoirs in Homebush.

In 1977 he became the Member for Parramatta. And when Bob Hawke got the top job in 1983 John became a Minister.

Minister for Sport, Recreation and Tourism.

Just imagine what it must have been like to be in that Government. All those titanic egos and IQs.

And John more than held his own.

John is responsible for I think the smartest thing I have ever seen a Minister do to get money out of the Expenditure Review Committee.

He played a video message from the boke who was going to star in the TV Ads he wanted money for.

A bloke who was also from Parramatta. A bloke that most Americans knew as Crocodile Dundee. And most of us know as Hoges.

Hoges told them to “get their fingers out of their arses and give Brownie some money to promote the joint”.

He got the money. And he used it well.

Before those “Shrimp on the Barbie” Ads Australia was the 78th most desired destination for American tourists.
 
After them we were seventh.

In three months.

He basically put us on the map.

More than that. He helped create a whole new industry.

Worth more than $80 billion today. More than 700,000 people work in it.

That didn’t happen by chance. It happened because John, more than anyone else, saw an opportunity and seized it.

Reminds me a bit of Andrew, and what he is doing now with AI.

John also increased funding for Australian sport and the Institute of Sport.

And he got tobacco advertising out of sport.

And when he left Parliament he became part of the Sydney Olympic Bid Committee and the Sydney Olympic Games Committee.

This is the man we honour tonight and will honour every year with this lecture.

Not every politician leaves a legacy, or a good one. Even fewer get to see it fully come to life in their own lifetime.

To paraphrase a line from a very popular American musical, a legacy is like planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.

But you have seen it, John. And it’s extraordinary.

Andrew and I now sit around the Cabinet table that you once did and I think we are very conscious of the big shoes we have to fill.
 
And the responsibility that comes with being a Labor Minister.
 
I feel it every day.
 
One of the biggest things that happened under the Hawke and Keating Governments was the change in the number of kids who finished school.
 
It jumped from 40 percent to almost 80 percent.
 
I was one them.
 
I am the first person in my family to finish school. The first to finish Year 10. Mum didn’t really get the chance to go to high school at all.
 
My life is different because I got the chance they didn’t. That they missed out on.
 
I grew up down the other end of Woodville Road at a place called Cabramatta.
 
In my Year 7 class was a boy called Cory. He was the tallest kid in my Year 7 photo. And he’s the shortest in my Year 12 photo.

Why? Because he was five years older than the rest of us. He was a refugee from Vietnam and his mum changed his age, because she knew how important education was. And she didn’t want him to miss out. 

I don’t want anyone to miss out.
 
And that drives everything I doing as Education Minister.
 
Not just because it’s the right thing to do. But because that’s what we have to do.

I said a minute ago what happened under Bob and Paul. That big jump from 40 percent of kids finishing school to 80 percent.
 
That was nation changing stuff.
 
It created jobs and businesses, including right here in Parramatta, that otherwise would not exist. It helped create the country we are today.
 
And that story is only half done. In the next twenty years we have got to make another big jump.

If I took you in a time machine to 2050 you would find a country where 80 percent of people with jobs haven’t just finished school. They have gone to TAFE or uni as well.
 
And we have to start training that workforce now.
 
That’s what the work I am doing is all about.
 
That’s what the changes I am making to child care are about.
 
It’s what fixing the funding of our public schools is about.
 
And it’s what all the reforms I am making to our universities are about.
 
And again it’s Parramatta that shows what is possible.
 
About 50 percent of young Australians in their 30s today have a uni degree.

In Parramatta it’s even higher. It’s about 70 per cent.

It wasn’t always like that. But it is now. And it’s been transformed by it.

But the suburbs next door haven’t. Not yet.

Merrylands is only two stops away on the train from Parramatta, but it’s a different world when it comes to education.

There the number of young people there with a uni degree is 37 per cent.

It’s the same in Granville South. Two stops away and two different worlds. There it’s 25 per cent.

It’s the same in Cabramatta, where I’m from, 30 per cent.

In Guildford it’s 32 per cent.

Fairfield – 26 per cent.

In Villawood – 24 per cent.

It’s the same story with school.

Kids who go to school in Parramatta are more likely to finish Year 12 than kids who live a couple of stops down the track.
 
Incomes are higher too. The average income in Parramatta is about $300 more a week than it is ten minutes down the track in Merrylands.

And unemployment is lower too.

Can you see the link?

There’s lots of reasons for this. Fixing it is complicated. But one thing is essential. What we do in education.

Talent is everywhere. It’s opportunity that’s not. And education can change that.
 
And that starts at the very start. Before kids start school but when most of their brain is forming. When most of who they are going to be is happening.

And that’s why what the NSW Government is doing here is so important. They are building public pre-schools on the grounds of our local schools.

In one hundred schools across the State. Half of them here in Western Sydney.

Including Granville East and Granville South, Guildford West and Merrylands, Yagoona and Villawood, Fairfield and Cabramatta.

Now that’s a game changer. What happens in those pre-schools means fewer kids will start school behind.
 
It’s also why we have changed the law to help more kids from poor families get access to child-care.

The way the law used to work was if mum and dad didn’t work, they didn’t get the child-care subsidy.

And so their kids miss out on early education. And they start school already behind.

That’s now gone. We changed the law. And it means every child who needs it gets that subsidy three days a week.

It means the poorest kids in our country aren’t shut out right at the start.

In schools we are doing something that Gough talked about before I was born. That Gonski designed and that no Government had ever done. Until now.
 
We are fully funding our public schools. It means about an extra $20 billion for public schools over the next ten years.
 
And about $50 billion over the decade after that.
 
And about $5.7 billion of that will go right here in the suburbs I talked about and others like them in Western Sydney.

It’s not just money though.

Money is important but it’s also important that it is spent on the right things. The sort things that are going to change the statistics I just gave you. 

And if you want to know what those things are just have a look at the NAPLAN results that came out today.
 
These are the literacy and numeracy tests that students do every year.

What they showed today is that we are doing a little bit better on numeracy and a little worse on literacy.

What they also reveal is the schools where things are changing massively.

Schools like Croyden Park Public School, where in the last few years the number of children in the top level of NAPLAN for reading has jumped by 11.2 percentage points.
 
Now what do you think is happening here? I’ll tell you.

Phonics. Breaking words up into sounds. Explicit teaching. And small group tutoring where kids who are struggling get extra intensive help to catch up.

It works. In schools that have been doing it for a while like Croydon Park we are seeing results go up.

Now just imagine if that was every school. What that would mean. How many more kids would keep up and catch up. How many more would finish school and maybe go on to university.

That’s how you change a system that is treading water into one that is swimming.

That’s what this funding is about.

It’s also what the big investments we are making in TAFE are about.
 
And universities.
 
When I was growing up I saw a lot of KFCs. A lot of Golden Arches. A lot of Westfields. But not a lot of university logos. That’s now changing.
 
Western Sydney Uni is here. And so is UNSW. They are opening a Law school in Parramatta next year.

ACU is in Blacktown and Strathfield, Wollongong Uni is in Liverpool and Notre Dame has just opened a university hub in Auburn.

In between I have set up University Study Hubs in Fairfield, Mt Druitt, Emerton, Liverpool and Macquarie Fields.
 
I am also putting an extra billion dollars over the next ten years into free bridging courses to help people in places like ours who have finished school or don’t have the skills to start a uni degree, to get those skills.
 
And I have legislation in the Parliament right now that means if you are a kid from a poor family and if you get the marks, if you have got what it takes, you will get a guaranteed place at university.
 
I don’t want us to be a country where your chances in life are dictated by your postcode.

Or who your parents are.

Or the colour of your skin.
 
These are the sort things that can change that.
 
That can open doors that would otherwise be closed.
 
That can make the rest of Australia a bit more like Parramatta.

And that brings me back to Andrew.

In this job I spend a lot of time thinking about the future. And how to build it. How to shape it.
 
I also get to see it. Every time I go into a classroom.
 
And I see it when I am around this bloke.
 
There aren’t many people I know who understand the crazy, complicated world we live in better than Andrew.
 
Or where we are heading. And how to get there.

A couple of weeks ago Andrew was awarded the McKinnon Emerging Political Leader of the Year Award.

I was there that night, and I was inspired by what he said.

He reminded us not to underestimate ourselves.

That we should face into big challenges.

That that’s the story of this country.

That we should be optimistic.

And that when we seek to occupy the centre ground, we need to remember that it’s not a place – it’s a method.

What did he mean by that? He meant the discipline of starting with a problem not an ideology, using evidence to guide us, and that we need to listen to the people whose lives are shaped by the decisions we make.

We are very lucky to have Andrew to help us craft that path.

He is a big part of the future of our great party, and the fact that he has organised this event tells me that he also understands something all of us in the Labor Party need to know.
 
That we don’t just honour our history and our heroes like John Brown because they did great things, we do it because they still have something valuable to give us.

A compass for how Labor governs.

How to do things that make people’s lives better. Make our country better. And fairer.
 
We look back not just for inspiration but for guidance.
 
John, you give us both.

And Andrew and I and the whole Labor family are so very, very grateful.