Page 925 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 May 2020
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Before joining the Greens here in the ACT, she was a member of the Nuclear Disarmament Party. As a Greens candidate in 1998 she spoke about the need for plantation timber, for pine, rather than native hardwoods. She ran for the Assembly in 2001 and in 2004. She was the fourth person elected to the Assembly in the electorate of Molonglo. She championed the role of non-executive members to scrutinise and represent.
In her maiden speech she said:
We need a committee structure that is not simply a rubber stamp, and statutory oversight mechanisms with the power and authority to investigate and make recommendations on things that are not working. Majority government should not be permitted to mean that any less care is taken over important decisions; nor should it mean that the bureaucracy is able to be less accountable for its actions in carrying out government policy.
In her final speech in the Assembly, four years later, she said:
But I hope that people here remember me as a human being; as a person and not just a politician ...
While I think that everything is political, I am not sure that I want to be a politician. I came here as an activist ... However, all of that I did, because I wanted to make a difference ... I wanted people to realise that you could actually care about something and know about it as well. That is my journey.
Her political activism continued in a formal role until recently, as a candidate for the Greens in the Victorian state seat of Gippsland East in 2018. Not surprisingly, climate change was a key issue that she championed.
As an example of her gentleness and sincerity, an email that Dr Foskey sent in her final week in the Assembly in 2008 was sent to me by Mrs Dunne. Dr Foskey wrote:
To thank you, I would like you to drop into the departure lounge for the Foskey team. The Assembly is, apart from the sitting weeks, a friendly cooperative place due largely to the people who staff it.
She was a generous person and the idea of hosting “Deb’s departure lounge” is just one example of it. As Mr Steve Pratt said of her in 2008,
She is a gentle, thinking woman.
The Canberra Liberals pay tribute to Dr Foskey. We honour and recognise her conviction and her passion. My thoughts are with the Greens, her friends and her daughters, Samara and Eleni, at this sad time.
MR RATTENBURY (Kurrajong) (10.13): On behalf of the ACT Greens, I join my Assembly colleagues in expressing condolences for Dr Deb Foskey, former ACT Greens member for Molonglo from 2004 to 2008, who died last Friday morning, on 1 May. This is indeed sad news for the ACT Greens, the Victorian Greens and the
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