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Nicola Roxon

Biography:

I am Federal Labor's Shadow Attorney-General and the Member for Gellibrand, in Melbourne's inner west. Prior to my election to Parliament in 1998 I worked as an industrial lawyer, an Associate to Justice Gaudron on the High Court and a trade unionist. I was Melbourne University's top law graduate in 1990.

Statement: Two key challenges for Australia in the coming 15 years are

(1) Maintaining living standards:

How do Australians maintain their high living standards of the past when a rapidly changing economy has led to so many upheavals in the employment market? The dramatic reduction in mass employment (manufacturing being the most obvious example), the end of traditional career paths, and the huge increase in the casualisation of employment, have all led to the loss of stable, full-time incomes for many families - removing secure incomes that, in the past, would have covered all a family's basic needs.

At the same time government and community commitment to public services is dropping (especially in health, education and public infrastructure), increasing demand on a shrinking family budget. 

What, then, is the best way to maintain living standards and access to services for all? What will be the role of government in this changing economic landscape? Will government be a mere spectator or an active participant in either wealth development or provision of public services that ensure the family income can reach further? 

(2) Providing decent life opportunities for everyone:

I'm not convinced we can continue to be a country of opportunity unless we look again at our education system. Every measure continues to show that your postcode is a clearer indicator of your future than anything else. I don't want to live in a country where this continues to be the case.

No matter what your background, I want Australian primary and secondary schools to be places that offer to change a person's destiny - to give every child an opportunity to develop irrespective of where they live, their parents' education or income.

So the big questions for me are how do we strive to be a successful, competitive, constantly developing modern country - without excluding most of the community from our successes? How do we get the high achievers to achieve without leaving the others behind? I want to work on how we stop the fracturing of the community along socio-economic lines, ethnic lines, postcode divides and gender divides.

Australia's opportunities: its geography and its people

Australia has many incredible opportunities that should make us attractive in the coming decades. 

We are part of Asia, but offer the political stability of a western democracy. We have a multi-lingual, multi-faith, well travelled population. Surely this gives us an unique opportunity in a globalised world if only we could harness and market these skills properly? I think more can be done to target the niche industries that such a geographic and population mix can serve.