Page 6024 - Week 14 - Thursday, 8 December 2011
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the end of sitting weeks. Sometimes I know we go home to family and it is very hard for family to understand the hurly-burly of the week. I want to thank them.
I also want to thank the good folk of Brindabella. They are an absolutely fabulous community. It is very good to see that some members of this place are coming home to roost; it will be an interesting 12 months for that. Brindabella is probably the best electorate. I wake up every morning and see the mountains as I go shopping, and around the place you see the vista of the Brindabellas in the background. It is truly a special place.
For everyone here—the Greens—it is always interesting. I am not fussed if you wear hot-dog clothes or hessian. I am not fussed. It is always an interesting debate. The fact is that we can come here and have a debate and there is the argy-bargy that goes on here. I find it interesting as we come to an adjournment at the end of the year that we can be so savage to each other during the year but we come with all kindness and light at a particular point of the year. It is worth reflecting on that in itself.
With that said, I wish everybody well. Have a very safe and happy Christmas and new year. Always keep a mind out for those that are less fortunate, but hold your family and your friends close, because there is nothing more important than your family and friends.
Valedictory
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (6.15): Mr Speaker, thank you. I start on a sad note. My dear friends John and Pam McAllister, who are also my neighbours, have been like parents to my wife and me and grandparents to my children while our own parents are interstate. Today was the day of John’s mother’s funeral, May, who died just recently, and I would have dearly loved to have been there. My wife was able to attend, but it is the nature of this place that it does take us away from other commitments that sometimes we would rather attend. So I would like to share my thoughts with John and Pam and remember May McAllister, who had her funeral today.
On a more happy note, I would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas, and I would like to start with my office staff. Jess appears to have gone, but there is Brigitte. The work that Brigitte does in my office is remarkable. She is a remarkable young woman. I know that the Greens struggle sometimes to work out how someone like Brigitte who is so well dressed and so nice and so effective and so efficient would work for a bastard like Jeremy Hanson. I know that it is a constant amazement to them and gives her another reason to tut-tut and roll her eyes whenever I am around, but I know that she has not yet worked it out. There may be a conspiracy involved. But thanks also to Jess and also to Jack, who volunteered in my office this year.
The analogy I use when I talk about the Canberra Liberals is that we all have different strengths and weaknesses, but the key is that we are all in the same rowing boat, rowing in the same direction together as a team, and that makes all the difference. The Canberra Liberals have not always been like that, nor have other political parties. But we are all rowing in the same direction, and the effort that each of us puts in is making
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