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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 10 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3754 ..

MS GALLAGHER (continuing):

Bill agreed to in principle.

Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.

Bill agreed to.

Adjournment

That the Assembly do now adjourn.

Mr Tom Duncan

MR SMYTH (Leader of the Opposition) (6.00): Mr Speaker, I rise to speak this evening on the momentous occasion of the accession of one Thomas Duncan to the position of clerk of the house of the ACT. The pleasing thing about this is that, except for his first five years, Mr Duncan is well and truly a home-grown Canberran. It is great to see that Australia truly is the land of opportunity and that an immigrant from America can come to the ACT and end up as clerk of the house.

I have to admit that I have known Mr Duncan for many years and I might be audacious and claim that I have probably known him longer than anybody else in the place. Although I would not say Mr Duncan was following in my footsteps, he was a year below me at Marist College at Pearce and I am sure the school will be very pleased that a graduate of the college has done so well.

Right from the start, Mr Duncan was destined for great things. He received his tertiary education at the Australian National University. Having left school, he graduated as a bachelor of economics in 1983 and in 1987 he received a bachelor of letters degree in political science at the Australian National University.

He was not idle because, during that time as well, from about 1981, he was also working in the Department of Defence, of all places. He started as the ministerials office clerk class 1. He has come a long way since then. Since then, he has been an estimates officer, also in the army, an estimates officer in the Department of Defence and, in 1985, he moved to become a parliamentary officer class 5 in the Department of the House of Representatives resource management office. He looked after the senior officers.

All of Tom's training led him along a career path that brought him to this place, because after that he was a committee secretary for the Standing Committee on Expenditure, the votes officer for the bills and papers office, and a subcommittee secretary for the Joint Committee on Public Accounts. He was then the parliamentary officer, research and projects, as we would all know, in the office of the clerk at the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, a position to which he went on secondment from this place.

On behalf of the Liberal Party, Mr Duncan, I wish to say that it is a delight to see that somebody who has a deep grounding in the ACT and a firm grounding in the workings

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