Page 2851 - Week 08 - Thursday, 11 August 2016
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that I think I may well be one of the very few people to have been elected to this place who has spent a considerable amount of time as a public servant. It is curious in this city, given how many people work in the public service, how many seek and have been elected to this place. Certainly an Assembly filled with public servants is not ideal, but having been a public servant—having written ministerials, having been involved in developing policy, having been involved in all the work that public servants do every day across this city—I hope that I have expressed to them how much I value the work that they do, the advice and the expertise that they show in everything that comes up to me each day.
Finally, I would like to thank my staff. There were my staff when I had the privilege of being a backbencher, working on committees—which I valued extremely highly; it is a very important part of what we do as parliamentarians to have worked on a range of different committees and to have had the opportunity to actually work with the opposition on many committees. It really is one of those experiences that give you the richness of this democratic institution. The work that the committees do is important. It will be more important in an enlarged Assembly, and it will achieve even more as the Assembly as a whole will achieve even more, giving better representation to the people of Canberra.
I thank the staff who started with me: Michael, who helped me establish my office; Monique, Claire and Charlotte; James and Terry, who also worked with me in my early days; and the two interns that I had, Freya and Amaris Bailey, whom it was a privilege to have in my office briefly last year. Then, in the transition to the ministerial office, there were Bernard, Marc and, more recently, Richard and Phillippe. I thank the Michaels for helping me out in brief periods as well; they have been, without doubt, extraordinary to me. We have been on quite a ride over the past six months in particular. It has been an enormous privilege. We have done some incredibly good work. We have all learnt and we all understand deeply how much of a privilege it is to serve in this capacity.
Finally, I would like to thank my family very much, from my parents, who keep me sane on the end of the phone from across the ditch, to my sister and her family and my friends who have collectively tried to keep us sane and give us something else to talk about when we briefly get a chance to socialise, which is less and less and is probably not on the cards over the next couple of months. In particular, I mention our three kids, Al, Esther and Eva, who, I think—a bit like Giulia’s kids and other kids in this place—know a lot more about politics. Simon said earlier that this place soaks into you. After just 18 months, I cannot imagine 20 years of it soaking into you, but somehow it soaks into our children as well. Coming from a family with a very rich political history, as long as they are engaged, curious and interested in this world and want to make a contribution to our community, I think we will have done well as parents.
A particular note to my husband, Pierre—who, I think, has seen the best and the very worst of politics—who made an enormous sacrifice this year for me and for my career. I thank him. I know that things will look brighter in the next couple of months and I want to acknowledge him. I hope only that over the next couple of months he can learn to broaden his repertoire in the kitchen. I think this is the one and only opportunity he may get for it, but I thank him from the bottom of my heart.
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