Page 5748 - Week 15 - Thursday, 10 December 2009
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I also wish to thank my own personal staff, who have put in an outstanding year of effort. In holding both the Speaker’s role and some portfolio roles, I do push them rather hard. But I would like to thank Helen Oakey, Richard Griggs, Anna Landon, Andrew Collins, Tom Warne-Smith and Tom Burmester, and Anne Marks, who volunteers in my office from time to time.
Because 2009 is the 20th anniversary of self-government, it is an opportunity to reflect on the start of self-government in 1989. As I pondered that year, it gave me cause to wonder what members of this place were up to in 1989. A little bit of research has revealed a few interesting insights.
Mr Coe, I believe, was organising a petition at his kindergarten to have a large portrait of the Queen installed in his school hall, while simultaneously organising a recorder group to play God Save the Queen at the school fete.
Ms Burch was sitting at her desk in her job at that time looking at a large pile of reports she had not quite got around to reading, and contemplating whether she should take a speed reading course.
Mr Barr was the school captain at Lyneham—and that is a statement of fact. He was eagerly awaiting going to university so that he could join Young Labor and get involved in student politics. And, of course, it was a highlight for Mr Barr because that was the year that the film Heathers was released.
For our Deputy Clerk, Max Kiermaier, it was another tough year in which St Kilda failed to win a premiership.
Mr Stanhope in 1989 could still run. He had not picked up his Achilles injury and he was very fit at the time. People wondered whether he would ever stop running, much as they do today.
Mr Doszpot could still play soccer in those days, his beloved sport. And, on a somewhat serious note, I imagine it was the year in which Mr Doszpot was truly celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Mr Hanson, of course, was a young military man learning the fine art of head kicking and accumulating drinking stories to entertain his colleagues in later years.
Mrs Dunne: What goes on in the party room stays in the party room.
MR SPEAKER: That is all I have to say on that matter.
In 1989 both Mr Hargreaves and Mrs Dunne were in the public service, and I can only imagine what that interdepartmental committee was like with those two on it.
Mr Seselja was at high school and I have an image of him awkwardly attending blue light discos and being excited by the release of the Nintendo, which was first commissioned in 1989.
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