Page 3557 - Week 08 - Friday, 24 August 2012

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During my time as minister for various things, I had an exceptional group of staff. My chiefs of staff were Andrew Barr, Geoff Gosling and Mark Kulasingham. My media advisers, whose job it was to control the larrikin in me, were Liz Lopa, Caitlin Bessell and my very, very good friend, Kim Fischer, who has been in all of the highs and the lows with me. It was an impossible task, but they did a great job. My advisers and minders included Jennie Mardel, Stacey Pegg, Andrea Walker and Nelson Mendonca.

Mr Speaker, you will notice that I did not have a lot of staff over my time but I had the best. Professionalism, persistence and patience. Dealing with me was not a walk in the park, but they were magnificent, and Canberra owes them a lot.

I also owe a debt of gratitude to my Labor Party mates. I have spent all my political life in the Lanyon sub-branch of the party, and my colleagues there and in the Tuggeranong sub-branch have been great supporters. People like Mark and Lizzie O’Neill, Lindsay Burge, Vic Rebikoff, Marco Spaccavento, Karl Maftoum, Jon and Keith Crowley, Shaun and Bill Haidon, and Winston Hopman—to mention just a few. Other friends in the party who have been such a big part of my life include Chris Sant, Natasha Shahidullah, Ian De Landelles, Paul Whalan, Stephen Bounds, Eva Cawthorne and Charles Njora—also mentioning only a few.

My family, Mr Speaker, have always been in my corner. My brothers and sisters and their wives and husbands, Jim, Judy, Jill and Jeff, Meg, Dave, Dave and Rachel, their kids and their kids’ kids have always been there when Uncle Johnno has needed them and I love them all. There is not enough gin in this glass!

My late parents would have marvelled that I could have kept down a job as long as this. My father gave me a sense of the ridiculous. He was a liberal, of course, and thus an expert on the ridiculous. My mother gave me my compassion. That was and is a powerful mix. My daughters, Tracey and Amanda, their husbands John and Jason, my granddaughter Jessica, my grandsons Johnathon, Benjamen and Andrew are my joy and I am so blessed to have them.

There is, though, one person I need to put up in lights. She is responsible for there being no gin in this glass. She has seen me through the most amazing journey a man could go through. She was there before politics was even a thought. She was there when I ran the first time. She was there when I stuffed things up big time and she was there when I went that extra mile to do the things I believed in. We have been married for 30 years and I have spent half of it as a member of this place. We have grown up together. To my wife Jenny I owe my sanity, my sense of self-belief and my grounding. She has shared my laughter and my tears. Were it not for Jenny, I would have quit this place a long time ago, so you can all blame her.

Mr Speaker, I leave this place thankful that I was here, thankful to have had an opportunity to do some good things and thankful that I have been surrounded by so many good people. I would like to leave you with something that has guided me in my life. It is a quatrain from my favourite poet, Omar Khayyam, which reads:


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