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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 5 Hansard (8 May) . . Page.. 1819 ..

MS GALLAGHER (Minister for Education, Youth and Family Services, Minister for Women and Minister for Industrial Relations): I rise to speak to this motion just briefly. I have had the privilege of working with Mark only for the past 18 months. I would like to acknowledge the support he has given to me as a new member of this place and all the work that he put in to make sure that when we did stand to our feet we looked like we knew what we were doing. Increasingly, I am learning more about what we are doing, but I did not when I started and I appreciate your guidance then, Mark.

I would also like to acknowledge the role the you have played in the maturing of self-government in the ACT. Other speakers have alluded to that. The role that you have played has been perhaps the most significant of all the players in self-government in the ACT since 1989. I thank you for your guidance and measured support and for never panicking, even when there was perhaps only 30 seconds to go before somebody had to say something they did not know that they had to say. I wish you and your wife well in your retirement and thanks again for all your help to me over the past 18 months.

MRS CROSS: If Mr McRae had not been serving this community in the exemplary way in which he has served it, I think that he would have made an ideal diplomat for any country, any mission, in the most difficult of circumstances and the most easy of circumstances. The character that I have seen in this gentleman in this place is, I believe, what has made this place a successful local parliament.

When I first started I was sitting in another place and quite often I would look across the chamber at all the new members and we would smile at each other and try to encourage each other. I would look over at Ms MacDonald, Ms Gallagher and Ms Dundas and say, "Are you okay? Good luck with your speech."But we all knew that at the end of the day we would have to go to Mr McRae to seek his advice.

It was nice having more women in this place because we could rely on each other. Even though we were a little bit nervous and apprehensive, we were all there to support each other. But at the end of the day we all relied on Mr McRae and the other clerks. He has displayed exemplary professionalism to me. He has displayed great dignity in the way he carried out his role and has made me feel, even when I have not known something very well, that I knew it, but perhaps there was another way of doing it, as Ms Dundas highlighted earlier.

I think that one of your great gifts is your diplomacy and another of your great gifts is your protectiveness of this place in wanting to see things work well, preserving the integrity of this parliament, preserving the integrity of the parliamentary system which we follow and ensuring that we all carry out our duties in the most professional way and as professionally as possible by not compromising the standards of this parliament. I think that the fact that this place works in a seamless, professional way is testament to your impeccable approach.

I think that you are the king of nuance. I think that you are able to convey many messages from a distance with the flick of an eyebrow, the movement of the glasses, the turn of the head. We can interpret many things from you just by looking at you, because we know what we should and should not do, and you do so in such a nice way that we do

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