Page 6019 - Week 14 - Thursday, 8 December 2011
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members of the southern branch and the Long Gully branch, thanks for all the meetings that we go to. They are very enjoyable. Thank you for all the donations of whisky to my place—the whisky sub-branch that gets together occasionally. Long Gully is a good branch and the whisky is fine. Johnno, you might consider joining. We would probably reject your application.
To Zed, thank you very much for your leadership throughout the year. It is great to work in a team. To Jeremy, Vicki, Alistair and Steve, thanks for the way that we all work together. It is great to work as part of a team. I thank my office staff, Tim and Haidee. Tim has everything at his fingertips. The man has dozens of files that he has developed over a decade. If you want to know something, go and see Tim. If he does not know it, it is not worth knowing.
Mr Speaker and Mr Clerk, to yourselves and all your staff, whether they be the chamber staff, the committee staff or the corporate staff, I would like to thank them all for the great job that they do.
To the people of Brindabella, I say that Brindabella is a very special place. It is so special that even Mr Seselja wants to represent them and we welcome him to that task. It will be an exciting year next year. I am disappointed to hear that Ms Hunter thinks that going to the shopping centre starts next year. Going to the shopping centre starts the day after the last election. If you have not been doing that then you have not been representing your electorate and that is a bit of a shame.
For those that do not know, there are 46 weeks to go to the election. Come the first sitting week next year, we will be down to 38 weeks to the election. I have to say that I cannot wait, because I love a good election year. There is nothing better than getting out and meeting people, greeting, finding out what they want and having those discussions that really matter.
I think Zed made the point that we should remember the workers who will be working over the Christmas break. To those in the health system, to those particularly in the emergency system, we wish you well and we thank you for what you do. To the volunteers, particularly the RFS and the SES volunteers—certainly the rural fire services in Western Australia and South Australia have already had a bit of a workout; some of the rain we have had will put our season back probably to late January, early February, but there is plenty of fuel out there—and to those that have joined the brigade and do a good job, I say thanks very much for what you do.
This is also an opportunity to keep in mind those less well off who will not celebrate Christmas. There are some who cannot afford it. There are some who have no-one to celebrate Christmas with. If you have a bit of room in your house or at your Christmas table or if you have got an opportunity in the lead-up to Christmas, there are plenty of giving trees and plenty of charities who are looking for volunteers. There will be plenty of events on Christmas Day where people go out and think of the real spirit of Christmas, which of course is inclusion.
To those who are less well off, we have a thought for you as well. I am sure everybody here will do something to assist those. Let us make sure everybody out
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