Page 309 - Week 01 - Thursday, 9 December 2004
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Mr Speaker, we would like to say thank you for a successful year. We know that sometimes we are a burden to you and, in the spirit of Christmas, we apologise if we are excessive sometimes. But from your experience here in the seat behind me, you will understand how it is to be in opposition. To the Clerk—to Tom—to Max and to all the staff, we would like to say thank you for the advice, the friendship and the responsiveness of the organisation that you run. To those that do not work in the Assembly, things are always done at a frantic pace. Nothing is ever needed done tomorrow; it is always needed yesterday. And the clerk and his staff have always come through for us.
To the attendants—particularly Lewis, who took up the reigns after Mark McCrae left—we would like to say thanks very much for the way you look after us in the chamber and out of the chamber. The service is always good. To all of you and your families we offer our thanks and we send greetings of merry Christmas because you guys are the glue that makes the place work, and without you we cannot do our job. Thank you to all the attendants.
To those in Corporate Services, down at the end of the dingy, dark corridor, who pay the pays and check the timesheets and look after our allowances and all the other bits and pieces that keep the place running, we say thank you. To Hansard, who listen patiently and decode and try and work out what it is that we have said, thank you for the way that you record us and look after us and the courtesy you extend to us.
To the staff in the library, to Siew Chin Scholar and all the staff up there, we would like to say thank you very much. The requests for reports, articles, clips, TV and radio that we thought we heard and that you somehow manage to find on vague and brief descriptions—thank you for your professionalism in that information and service provision. Thanks very much for the way you look after us, particularly when we have got overdue books—I promise to read at least two of them and have them back by next year.
Thank you to the committee staff—always thanks to the committee staff. You are often the unseen ones here in the Assembly in the work we do—the work that you get—through the support that you provide, the advice that you offer and the professional way that you finish all of the reports magically by 10.30 on that Thursday morning when they are due. We all marvel at, and would like to remember Judy Henderson, who is no longer with us here in the Assembly. We always think of you well.
We say thank you to the other people that make this thing work: the constituents, who give us the task of looking after them and give us their votes; and the advocate groups—from business through to community, through to sport, through to environmental. You have all got your barrows to push, and you push them well. May you never tire of that.
Thanks to the media. We have an interesting relationship with the media. We often do not think we get the coverage that we deserve and the other side gets better than we get, but we know you have a difficult job. I would like to say thank you, and I wish you all well. If we get tired here in this place, then you must get just as tired. To the members of the ALP and to the lone Green, best wishes on behalf of the opposition, the Liberal Party. I want to say thanks to our staff and to your staff for the way you look after us all. I think
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