A new breed of pollies are in Canberra and their maiden speeches show they might be the answer to desperate voters’ prayers

If you want to know what politics should be, it’s there in the first speeches delivered by Australia’s new federal politicians.

Across parties, and outside them, this class of taxpayer-funded MPs and senators has painted a telling picture of the impetus behind their decisions to run, and how they want to make a difference.

MPs often open up during their first speech to Parliament. But this time, more than previously, these speeches reflect the change that many newcomers are demanding from the big party systems, providing a new and welcome diversity. Their political tenure will depend on how determinedly they stick by their reasons for upending their safe jobs and lives to travel to Canberra and advocate for those they serve.

Too often the promises in maiden speeches are compromised by the need to fit into large, unwieldy party plans, by growing personal ambition, or by the need to hang on to the job. Trust has been the victim.

Zoe Daniel, the MP for Goldstein, was almost turned off politics because of the “murky mess of factionalism and dark political tactics” she’d seen. Kylea Tink, the independent member for North Sydney, said the constitution did not even use the word “party”, and Kate Chaney, granddaughter to a former Menzies government minister and niece to a former deputy Liberal leader, said she never felt a sense of belonging with either political party. She felt “stranded in the middle”.

For all of them, with or without political pedigree, personal experience has shaped the journey to Canberra’s Parliament House.

For Elizabeth Watson-Brown, the Greens MP for Ryan in Brisbane, it was the arrival of grandchildren: “No longer content to yell at the television during the nightly news, I joined the Greens and took to the streets of Ryan.”

She was a young woman during Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s authoritarian state and found running a business in the 1980s entirely different for men and women. A bank once refused her a business account without her husband’s signature.

Her vow, after knocking on more than 10,000 doors and holding more than 3000 one-on-one conversations, is to continue to listen and hear what her constituents are telling her.

Seems simple. But too many MPs on the road to high office forget. 

The Greens’ Stephen Bates is the unlikely winner in the inner-city seat of Brisbane, formerly held by the Liberals but which Labor believed was in the bag. 

His first speech should resonate with young voters and families across the nation: “I spent much of my teenager years knowing I was gay and doing everything I could to hide it. I told myself I would force myself to get married to a woman, have kids and live in the suburbs.”

He made a promise that if he ever held a public position he would be “open and proud” of who he was. He kept that last week — but he went further, explaining the second reason he ran for Parliament.

The 29-year-old talked about earning $7.56 an hour working for a theme park in America. One day he found a colleague crying because she was unable to afford both her rent payments and insulin: “That was a choice. Life-saving medicine or a roof over your head.”

It’s a genuine understanding of those issues — from cost of living to identity — that can mould our nation, post-COVID.

Similarly, it was hard not to applaud as Sally Sitou, the Labor member for Reid, in Sydney, told our sons and daughters that they are not “defined by your postcode, the school you went to, or where your parents came from”. Character was what defined an individual, and how we made others’ lives better.

Marion Scrymgour, the Labor MP for Lingiari, talked about the scourge of domestic and family violence, and Northern Territory Indigenous Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price in the Country Liberal Party asked why alcohol abuse, domestic, family and sexual violence were being “normalised” for young people in her home territory. 

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wants politics to work a different way. So does Labor Senator-elect Fatima Payman, who made history as the first Muslim woman to address Parliament. She wants young girls who decide to wear the hijab to do so “with pride”.

Perhaps it’s naivety. Or perhaps it’s hope. But these maiden speeches showed the change politics can deliver. And if it can, in the way the class of ’22 promises, Albanese will not be the only victor — we’ll all win.