Page 2305 - Week 07 - Thursday, 27 August 2020
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opportunity to make a difference to the members of your own community and to see that difference on the ground, one person, one family, one neighbourhood at a time.
I thank the voters of Kurrajong for electing me in 2016. It has been an absolute privilege to serve and I hope that they will see fit to return me to the Assembly. The electorate is certainly my home and I love representing it.
To all the public servants that I have worked with over the last four years, far too many to mention by name, thank you. We always talk about the frontline workers. Health obviously has been talked about a lot over the last few months. I then always talk about child protection and youth justice workers. But across the board our public servants have absolutely stepped up this year. That includes the DLOs that have worked in my office: Ella, Chadia, Chris, Angie, Alex and Karen.
I also acknowledge our non-government and community partners, those who push us to keep making our systems better right across the board, the consumers who provide their feedback and the carers as well. To the staff of the Legislative Assembly who enable us to do our jobs here, thank you so much.
To my own staff, Johnny, Ash, Caitlin, Tim and Ben, who I acknowledged last year and who have stayed with me all year, I have been incredibly lucky to have a stable staff. To Cath, who joined my office at the end of last year, thank you. “Come to the ACT government,” we said. “We have family friendly hours,” as she walked into bushfire smoke and pandemic. Thank you, Cath; you have been an absolute rock.
To Mel James and the team at party office, thank you. I thanked Mel very inarticulately last year as she left as my chief of staff. Now I thank her as the new party secretary. She stepped into a very difficult role this year and has handled it amazingly. Thank you to the Labor Party members and those across the labour movement, the unions who stand up for workers across our economy and community every day and who do not hesitate to hold us to account.
To my colleagues and former colleagues, Meegan, Joy, Yvette, Mick, Gordon, Chris, Suzanne, Beck, Michael, Tara and Deepak, thank you. Most of all, to the Chief Minister, who has had such faith in me and has supported me in the roles that he has given me, thank you very much. You are an amazing leader and I hope that you are returned as Chief Minister.
MR RATTENBURY (Kurrajong) (7.35): The end of term is a funny time, and it is a point of reflection. It feels like the term started both yesterday and a lifetime ago. At the end of term we tend to reflect on the things we did, the things that we did not get around to doing and the things that we might have done differently. I think that is an interesting moment as well, when one goes into an election campaign where you are trying to come back to this place. It is a point where we probably seek to renew ourselves a little bit and focus on what we want to do in the next term.
In the Greens we tend to talk about ourselves as being unapologetically ambitious. We have this broad, connected agenda. There is always more to do, and it makes us restless and impatient. Coming from an activist background—almost all of us, to a
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