“I remember one day after a devastating loss [of yet another pregnancy], my mum gently said to me, ‘maybe you’re meant to be a mum for all children’,” she said in her first speech to parliament.
The ache at the time was too fresh and too sharp for her mother’s words to penetrate. “But her words stayed with me and slowly, as the fog of grief lifted, I opened my heart and myself to a new path,” Witty said.
“I stepped into the world of foster care, not out of ease, but out of a deep need to turn my pain into something positive.”
A secret whispered to her by one of the children she fostered, a boy she called Matt, changed everything, she said. She did not reveal what Matt had told her.
But ever since that day, Witty said every decision she is asked while representing the seat of Melbourne would be framed within the question of “what would Matt need so that he and the hundreds of children like him can grow up to be the best person they can be.”
France also spoke of the physical hardships that have shaped her outlook and politics, including the car accident in which she lost her leg in 2011.
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“I had six surgeries in four years, suffered severe post-traumatic stress disorder, struggled to get out of the house, didn’t drive for nearly three years and had severe phantom pain,” she said. She has now recovered after groundbreaking and risky surgery.
But France said the difficulties she faced were not so different to the tribulations of her voters.
“My journey to this place is not a sad story, nor is it a happy one, it is a human story,” she said. “Most of the people I represent in the electorate of Dickson share a life of ups, downs, success, hardship, loss and happiness.”
She thanked the many people she credited with helping her on her journey, many of whom were in the gallery to support her.
France detailed her family’s Labor history, from her grandmother Mary Lawlor, who dressed down a priest in front of his congregation for urging them not to vote for Gough Whitlam, to her father, who ran for the state seat of Southport four times before winning it for Labor in 2001.
“And in 1975 Mary went all the way to the High Court of Australia to challenge unfair electoral boundaries and end the gerrymander system,” France said. “Fighting for fair is in my blood.”
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