“I WILL never forget where I came from.”
These were the remarks of retiring Northern Victoria MP Mark Gepp when he first entered Parliament in 2018. Four years later, those sentiments were cemented when he highlighted the Big Housing Build as his greatest achievement in politics.
“My earliest memories of our life in the housing commission flats in Flemington include Mum calling from a window from a couple of floors up for my big sister Julie and me to finish playing with the other kids from the flats and come inside for tea,” the Labor Party member said in his inaugural speech.
“I did not understand then and I do not understand now how a child’s education or participation in their community should be limited because there is not enough money in their mother’s bank account.”
He went on to say he didn’t tell this story of a poor upbringing from a sense of “bitterness or resentment”, but from the perspective that “these are the life experiences which formed me and helped me know what matters”.
“I want you to know, people of northern Victoria and my colleagues in the Labor Party, that every day when I get out of bed I will be focused on addressing inequality and removing the barriers that stand in the way of the opportunity for us all to be our best,” Mr Gepp said.
And after four years of novelty cheques, handshakes, photo opportunities, announcements, dinners, scones at kitchen tables, roastings, sweat and tears, in the Upper House, the proud trade unionist has come full circle.
“It will not surprise anyone here, I do not think, that out of everything that I have had the privilege of seeing in this place and being a part of nothing will top the Big Housing Build— nothing. I am not sure if I have told anyone in this place before, but I actually have a pretty deep connection with public housing,” Mr Gepp said in his valedictory speech on September 21.
“For me, as I alluded to in my inaugural, having affordable and secure housing is the most basic of human rights. Everything else is white noise. If you do not have decent housing, you have got nothing.”
Mr Gepp went on to joke about the geographic size of the Northern Victoria electorate.
“Sh**, it is big,” he said. “It is 100,000 square kilometres. It is massive. I feel very, very sorry for Jaclyn, for Tim, for Tania and for Wendy. We should have eight MPs in that electorate; it is that big. It is massive.
“You would turn up somewhere – it could be in the middle of nowhere, and believe me the middle of nowhere exists in certain parts of Northern Victoria – and you would have some bloke sidle up to you and say, ‘Mate. You’re brave. We haven’t seen a Labor member here for God knows how long’, and you would just want to make sure that the car was placed in a space where you could get out quickly.
“Look, they were fantastic, everybody that I came across in Northern Victoria. No, they did not vote for me, I understand that, but they did say it respectfully and they did do it with a lot of humour—and 141,000 of them actually did vote for me, so there you go.”
Mr Gepp finished by highlighting his memorial projects, including the Echuca Cancer and Wellness Centre, Crossenvale Community House, Shepparton Legacy, I Wish I’d Asked and Ardmona Primary School.
