Page 5085 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 28 November 2017
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Steve and I were looking forward to the next four years. We had moved our offices deliberately next door to each other. We had arranged that we were going to collaborate with our staff and our resources. It was going to be a good four years. I know that the staff in my office, Ian and Jess, and the staff in Steve’s office, Neil and Jodi, will particularly miss Steve. We all were very close. I think that you, Andrew, made that point very clear, as have others. There is very little blurring of the lines between whether you were an MLA or a staff member. We are all part of the same team, as you would know.
We were all devastated to hear Steve’s diagnosis, but it did leave me the opportunity to spend more time with Steve over the past few months. In that time my friendship has deepened and grown, as have my respect and admiration for Steve. Sometimes when you get to know people more you do not necessarily like them more, but in Steve’s case it was the opposite. The more you got to know Steve, the more you got to like him. We opened up about a few things and talked more freely. Men do not do that in normal circumstances, but these were not normal circumstances. I greatly appreciated getting to know, as you all know, what a wonderful person Steve Doszpot was and how he loved so many things but in particular his family, his faith and his football. It is fair to say we will miss him.
The last time I saw Steve was last Friday at Clare Holland House. The evening before, the Prime Minister had spoken at the Liberal Party’s AGM, and the words he said were recorded. I was able to go into Clare Holland House and I joined with Steve, Maureen, Amy and Adam and we got the technology working. Steve would have been very impressed. I had my speaker and the iPhone and we played the recording of the Prime Minister’s speech to Steve. You will recall that during Steve’s valedictory speech he told us about his father telling him always to thank Australia, and Steve did. He thanked Australia, he thanked the government and he thanked the Prime Minister and the government of Australia during his speech. How fitting it is, then, that this young Hungarian refugee who had been told by his father to thank Australia and thank the government, and had contributed, himself, so much to our community—that in the last hours of his life it was the Prime Minister of Australia who was thanking Steve.
In conclusion I will read that speech. What is missing at the end from my words and what Steve got to hear on the recording is the huge applause from the party faithful, who loudly applauded Steve and the contribution he had made not just to our party but to Canberra and to Australia. This is the address to the Canberra Liberals annual general meeting on 23 November 2017 by the Hon Malcolm Turnbull MP, Prime Minister of Australia:
There has been no greater champion of our party here in Canberra and no greater servant to the community in his work for our party than Steve Doszpot. I know Steve is unable to be with us here tonight but let us take a moment to reflect on his extraordinary contribution.
Like so many Australians, Steve is part of Australia’s great immigration success story. Born in Hungary, he fled to Australia with his family in 1956. Moved to
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