Page 307 - Week 01 - Thursday, 9 December 2004
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Ayes 8 |
Noes 7 | ||
Mr Berry |
Mr Hargreaves |
Mrs Burke |
Mr Seselja |
Mr Corbell |
Ms MacDonald |
Mrs Dunne |
Mr Smyth |
Ms Gallagher |
Ms Porter |
Dr Foskey |
Mr Stefaniak |
Mr Gentleman |
Mr Stanhope |
Mr Mulcahy |
Question so resolved in the affirmative.
Adjournment
Motion (by Mr Corbell) proposed:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Peter Meyer
MS MacDONALD (Brindabella) (5.55): Friendship is a thing most necessary to life, since without friends no-one would choose to live, though possessed of all other advantages: so said Aristotle. We all have friends. Some are friends for life and some we fall out with and no longer count in our circle. Some friends we speak to on a daily basis or a weekly basis; others once or twice a year as our daily lives preclude us from more frequent contact. Some friends float in and out of our life a bit like the wind—sometimes obviously present in your life, sometimes not; they are off elsewhere in another place. But they are never totally absent from our thoughts.
Peter Daniel Meyer was such a friend. Peter and my brother David became friends while attending high school together. They remained friends after their school days finished. Peter always struck me as being a square peg trying to fit into a round hole—someone who struggled to fit into this often less than sympathetic society.
At the age of 23, Peter was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a terribly cruel illness. It distorts a person’s reality and makes them fearful of those they once trusted. Peter’s mother, Rosalind Sharbanee Meyer, says the following in her book A Window into Schizophrenia—my brown bear:
People with schizophrenia rarely have friends. They are loners. Isolated in their world of voices and paranoia.
For those who did not know Peter, he always seemed like an oddball, a misfit, even a freak. He had these big, Mick Jagger-like lips and, when I first met him, because his vision was fairly poor he had glasses that looked like they were made out of the bottom of coca-cola bottles.
To those of us who got to know Peter, he was nothing short of brilliant. He was, in spite of his great intellectual capacity, extremely humble. He was a wonderful human being who filled our lives. Peter’s close friend Tony Nesbitt describes Peter in the following way:
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