Page 1537 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 31 March 2009
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Margaret Spalding’s reputation, integrity and honesty were beyond reproach. It was a privilege to know and work with Margaret Spalding. She is a shining example to us all. She was deeply loved and I shall miss her terribly.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella): Mr Speaker, I reckon Margaret Spalding would be pretty chuffed that we are sitting here today and talking about Koomarri, because she actually would not see today’s condolence motion as a means for us to express our sympathy to her family for her loss; she would think it was pretty cool that, for about 10 days now, Canberra as a city has been talking about the organisation that she loved. I think there were two sorts of people in the world for Margaret Spalding: those who are friends of Koomarri and those who are going to be friends of Koomarri. She did not see it in any other light.
I do not believe, in all my years in public life and in this place, that I have ever met somebody with such a single-minded determination to succeed on behalf of those that she worked with. And she worked with them. I think that Margaret’s greatest gift to this city, and perhaps to the world, is that she did not see those she worked with in the Koomarri family as people with a disability. She just saw them as people. Everywhere she went, I do not believe I ever saw, and I do not think anybody here could ever define a time when they saw, Margaret Spalding treat anybody differently. In that way, she was the most remarkable woman that you could ever meet. She had put aside whatever prejudice or influences that we have in our lives that make us see people differently. She just saw people.
I was very lucky: I got to go on a one-day tour of Koomarri. If you have never done the tour and they are on offer again at some stage, people should go and do it. Go and see the locations around this city of places that Koomarri, over time, has established. Margaret Spalding, working with people—because she would never take any credit herself—took them to a new height of activity. Whether it be the ironing business, the rag business, the folding, sorting and inserting business or whether it be the other sorts of care that they provided, wherever you went, as you went into that building or that room, as you went to that workbench, lights came on in people’s faces. It was simply joy at seeing another human being that made their day. And wherever you went, Margaret made somebody’s day.
She knew their names, she knew who their families were and she knew their circumstances. She was able to talk to you—certainly to me, and I am sure to everybody else—about their humanity, what made them special and what drove her to care for them in a way that very few people can do. I think that was her great gift. Putting everything else aside, she was a human being who simply cared for human beings.
Beyond that, she knew that she had an obligation—and an obligation she took incredibly seriously—to not think about today, the life of this budget, the electoral cycle, the economic cycle or whatever else. She was looking decades ahead when it came to the members of her Koomarri family. It is funny; it is one of the few organisations where people talk about “the family”—the “Koomarri family”—because that is what she created. She grew up in a big family with six kids, so she
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