Page 4764 - Week 15 - Thursday, 16 December 1993
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Mr Humphries: That is why they keep going to her drawer.
MR MOORE: We are referring to the jelly babies actually, and Mr Humphries there refers to people going to her drawer.
Mr Humphries: Her drawers?
MR MOORE: I used the singular. Grassby, a garrulous, graphic garbler who gambles with gags. Stevenson, a soothsayer of sophistry and soporific scorn. Szuty, a zealous, zelubrious zelebrity sweating on state spending with zest. For me, Moore, a member of the mumbling, metaphysical mob who maintains a moustache and mousse mashed mouth.
Mr Kaine: I bet Hansard will have a hell of a lot of hassles with that.
MR MOORE: No; I will provide them with a copy.
Valedictory
MR HUMPHRIES (4.56): Madam Speaker, it seems to me that the common aspiration of all politicians all over the world is fame. Sometimes notoriety is what they actually find, but fame is what they actually seek. The American, Oliver Wendell Holmes, described fame as follows:
A fitful tongue of leaping flame;
A giddy whirlwind's fickle gust
That lifts a pinch of mortal dust.
The ultimate level of fame, of course, is immortality. In Australia we do not mark immortality, as they do in other countries, by erecting a statue or using your name as an adjective. No, in this country you know that you have made the big time when they name a suburb after you. So, forget the Who's Who; it is the Gregory's or the UBD we really want to get into.
Mr Connolly: But not for a long time.
MR HUMPHRIES: Not for a long time. I take that point. Shudder though they may, many Canberrans may one day live in suburbs named after members in this very chamber tonight.
Mr Kaine: I want to be here when they name one after me.
MR HUMPHRIES: You probably will be, Mr Kaine. To assist those planners yet unborn whose job it will be to choose localities for our immortality, may I make a few suggestions.
I see the suburb of Follett as an ample and gracious place, an address reserved for the creme de la creme. It will be a suburb with many photographic opportunities. It will also be the site of Canberra's first Tim Tam factory. And what would be more appropriate than to rename Fyshwick Westende? That way people in Canberra, as in London, could say that they were going to the Westende to have a good time, or to work.
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