Page 2360 - Week 08 - Thursday, 6 June 2013
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I would like to thank you for your friendship and your support. We in this place, as you mentioned, are only as good as we are because of our staff, and you thanked our numerous staff. It would be unjust of me not to mention that you are also stealing staff from this place as you go. I would like to particularly mention Brigitte Morten. If she serves you half as well as she served me then you will be very well served. She was an instrumental part in why we were able to hold the government to account so effectively on health in the last term. She was instrumental in why I achieved the result I did in Molonglo, and you will be a great beneficiary of her hard work in your upcoming Senate campaign and when you become a senator.
Mate, good luck. The Assembly’s loss will be the Senate’s gain, and I applaud the fact that what you have done for your electorates both in Molonglo and Brindabella you will now be able to do for all of Canberra. Canberra will be the beneficiary of that now and not just the electorates you represented in this place. Good luck.
MADAM SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr Hanson. And thank you for undermining all my good work on standing order 42!
MR COE: (Ginninderra), by leave: Zed is one of only a handful of people in the history of ACT Hare-Clarke elections who have won three or more elections and improved in each. In 2004, as he said, he was an outsider and got half a quota and was the second best performing Liberal in Molonglo. Four years later he went on to get 1.5 quotas at 19 per cent in Molonglo, and in 2012 in Brindabella he got 29.2 per cent, which was the highest in the ACT, securing 1.8 quotas. Zed is going to leave this place as all of us would like to leave this place—that is, with the last election being the best.
I would like to put on the record that Zed has been a tremendous support to me personally, as a new member in 2008 and as an ongoing member since. I think we have all depended on Zed for a very measured and considered response either in this place, personally or in the party room. Indeed, your contribution in the party room is of course one of the greatest you can make in terms of shaping Liberal Party policy, and the role Zed has played in that space has been truly instrumental. To be opposition leader anywhere is a tough job, but here in the ACT it is arguably the toughest job anywhere, and Zed has done so very well.
Zed has been a great servant of the party. A few of us on this side of the chamber have served on the party’s management committee and Zed was the policy convener in 2003 through 2004. He ably contributed to the party in that role and then, once elected, he was a driving force with regard to fundraising and, as he touched on, bringing unity to the party. He helped to stabilise and modernise the ACT Liberal Party. He backed his staff and, in turn, his staff backed him.
Zed is all about the family and he is ably supported by Ros and his kids. Zed is very much living the liberal tradition—that is, working hard, strong values and creating more opportunities for the next generation.
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