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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Thursday, 26 August 2004) . . Page.. 4460 ..

thank my wife, Samira, and my kids, Yasmina and Hayden, who are all great people—as all of our families are. They understand the pressures that we work under.

I have been pleased to be associated with a range of constituency and Assembly achievements, and I just hope that I have been able to make some sort of a difference as part of a team and individually. I particularly want to wish Bill, and his wife Beverley, all the best. Bill, I have quite enjoyed the debates we have had on those portfolios, and I have learnt a lot from you as a minister. We have different approaches, but there has often been a lot of common ground. So, Bill, thanks for that.

Good luck to you, Kerrie, and your family—although I do not wish you any luck in the Senate race! But, indeed, truly, good luck, and thanks for everything here as well. Greg Cornwell, you are a stalwart. Greg has often been the anchor point in the party room because he just has a hell of a lot of experience. I wish both him and Margaret, his long-suffering wife, a lot of luck, warmth and good experiences.

Where do you start with the staff? There is Janice, who has had to go galloping around when I have asked her to do the impossible on legislation. There are Peter, Rod, Reg, Lewis, Margaret, Lucinda, Peter again, Barry and many others. There is Tom and there is Max and there are all of our support staff, who keep us honest, making sure that our admin pieces do not fall between the cracks. We would be lost without them. Thank you, all.

I would like to thank my staff in the life of this Assembly: Sandy, Melissa, Tina, David, Amy, Karen, Tracey and Gemma—the irascible, colourful Tracey and the solid Gemma, who are long-suffering and very supportive staff of mine. I also thank Dinah Bryant, James Lennane, Keith, Tim and Ian upstairs in your office, Brendan, for their general corporate support.

I thank my education committee colleagues, Karin and Ros and, of course, Kerry McGlinn. It has been a good committee to work on, and I reckon we have achieved a lot. I have quite enjoyed that. I thank my MLA colleagues on this side of the house for their forbearance and for their suffering and tolerance of my long, detailed reports and for understanding my strong sense of the ridiculous.

Finally, I would like to wish every one of you in this house, and all your staff, all the best for October 16. In the life of this Assembly, I have quite enjoyed very much working for you all.

Valedictory

MS MacDONALD (12.50 am): Mr Smyth and a couple of others have saved me the trouble of naming people individually, but I would like to thank the chamber support staff, under the guidance of Tom Duncan and, prior to him, Mark McRae, for making the place run smoothly and always reminding you, Mr Speaker, of what it is that we are up to next, making sure—as was the case tonight—that something that did or did not get agreed to got put in the right place when it had been missed out last week.

I appreciate the work the people in the education office do. They bring a lot of people into this place and send a lot of information out to inform about this place. That is

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