Page 3993 - Week 10 - Thursday, 28 August 2008
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Olympics, I am waiting for the ACT international handball group to open up. I think that is the most fantastic sport. If there is a group and they are looking for your patron, I am your girl.
Before I conclude, I want to pay tribute to my colleagues. To Pratty, who really is pratty—what else could you call him but Pratty?—and to Jacqui and Brendan, thank you for your support over the last four years. It has been interesting and different from time to time, but it has been a real pleasure to work with you.
To Zed, I think it was a pretty good move to help you in your campaign during the last election and to see you come in here and make such a difference and such an impact. The Canberra Liberals are on the verge of making a real difference in the election campaign that we have ahead of us. The election campaign will be challenging. I wish my colleagues luck. I hope that others will be satisfied with the outcome. But can I say, fellas, keep it clean.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (7.29): As I moved the motion, I seek leave, if I may, to speak at this point in the adjournment debate.
Leave granted.
MR CORBELL: I thank members. Mr Speaker, may I begin by placing on the record that in the last few years, as manager of government business, I have begun to think that some people feel I am Dr No in this place or the person that the Liberal Party love to hate. In response, I simply want to say that, as manager of government business, it has been my job to do some of the dirty work in this place. But I would like to remind members that I was only doing my job.
I would like also to extend my thanks and congratulations to outgoing members for the contributions they have made. They have all made outstanding speeches this evening, and I wish them all the best.
I particularly want to place on the record my thanks to you, Mr Speaker. You have been an outstanding contributor to the Labor cause in this place. It would be remiss of me not to relate at least one Wayne Berry story before the closure of this Assembly. For me the pre-eminent Wayne Berry moment was during the famous “painting the grass green affair” at Bruce Stadium. Wayne, in his usual inimitable style, decided that there was a much better way to outline to Kate Carnell just how stupid an idea it was to try and grow grass from Queensland in Canberra in winter.
I remember Wayne coming down to the chamber with a plastic bag. It had a plant in it, and the plant was dead. It was one of those wonderful indoor tropical plants. Someone—I think a friend of a Wayne’s—had left it outside on a night. It had been raining. Then I think the frost had come and the plant died. Wayne, in his normal style of course, during question time, in an attempt to make a point at the appropriate, perfectly timed moment, lifted the pot plant above his desk, waved it at the Chief Minister and said, “Chief Minister, this is what happens when you bring tropical plants to the Canberra winter.”
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