Stephen Bates – Greens MP for Brisbane
It has been the privilege of a lifetime to be your Member for Brisbane.
I want to thank everyone who put their trust in me three years ago, and those who did so yesterday.
While we maintained our vote here in Brisbane, the collapse of the Liberal vote has all flowed to the Labor Party. I wish Madonna Jarrett the best with the next three years.
For the past three years, I have fought every day for our community. It’s a massive learning curve going from working in retail to being the federal representative of 180,000 people, and I am so proud of the work my team and I did.
I am proud of what our Greens team negotiated in the parliament for over the past three years – extra funding to build public housing, preventing government funds going to coal and gas projects, the right to disconnect for workers, and much more.
Being an MP is what you make of it. Our office dedicated every resource to the benefit of our community. We hired social workers and community organisers to help residents as much as humanly possible, and I donated my salary to fund our community meals program, our community pantry and our community grants program for groups and frontline services. We changed lives – found temporary and permanent housing for so many Brisbane constituents, navigated the nightmare that is Centrelink and the NDIA to get people access to the pension and to the NDIS, and reunited families from war-torn countries.
There is no less need now than there was in the community in 2022 and I hope this critical work to support our community is undertaken by the new MP.
To the volunteers who I have had the privilege of working alongside the past three years, none of what we were able to do for the people of Brisbane would have been possible without you. This was never clearer than 8 weeks ago when we mobilised more than 150 volunteers to respond to Tropical Cyclone Alfred.
To my staff, you are simply the best. You all put your lives on hold to serve the people of Brisbane, you kept digging deeper to ensure our office was there for our community regardless of the issue. They were so lucky to have you.
It’s not easy to upend the political consensus and economic system that has been so entrenched for the past 200 years. For three years, we subverted what the expectation for a politician and political office is. That’s something to be proud of.
There is so much more work to do. I want an Australia where everyone has a safe roof over their head and everyone has a future free from climate change. I will keep fighting for these things alongside all of you and the Greens.
See you out there, Stephen.