Page 1316 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 5 April 2005
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With these words, Mr Speaker, on behalf of the opposition, on behalf of the ACT Liberal Party, I would offer my condolences to the families and the friends, to the shipmates and the defence force colleagues of these nine Australians and wish them well in their difficult times.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo): The Greens offer our condolences to the families and friends of the nine people who died when the Sea King helicopter went down near Aman Draya on the west coast of Nias on 2 April. We also wish a full recovery for the two injured service members.
As the personal stories of these people emerge, we see that we have lost special people, dear to their families and committed to doing good work in the world. We have seen and heard over the last few days the partner and family of Paul Kimlin, one of the Canberra people involved, determined to present a true picture of Paul to the world. Clearly, Lieutenant Matthew Davey was known to many, often without those people knowing it, through his role as a registrar in emergency at Canberra Hospital. With him, we have lost skills that are sorely needed in this city. Yet his compassion and desire to help extended from the people of Canberra to the victims of the tsunami and then the earthquake and, thanks to Mr Smyth, I now realise that his desire to help actually extended much further than that.
In the light of their deaths, it is sad that these people had no opportunity to visit their families as they went from the disaster in Aceh to the one in Nias. I commend and respect the courage of their colleagues on the HMAS Kanimbla, who have stated that the best way that they can remember their mates is to continue the work to which they were so committed. And indeed today we also need to acknowledge the 2,500 people who died in the earthquake.
Mr Speaker, it is particularly sad when people die doing good things for people in need on our behalf and I hope that, in the fullness of time, this fact will provide the families of these nine people with some consolation.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Minister for Health and Minister for Planning): Mr Speaker, I join with other members of the Assembly in expressing my condolences for the tragic and untimely deaths of the service personnel in the naval helicopter accident in Indonesia. In rising this morning, I pay particular tribute to the work and the life of Dr Matthew Davey, who was an intern in the intensive care unit at the Canberra Hospital.
Dr Davey died tragically and all too young. He died, as members have outlined this morning, doing one of the many parts of his life that he valued so highly. Dr Davey served as a lieutenant in the specialist reserve for the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps, in the Canberra Area Medical Unit of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, a the Specialist Reserve and, when he died, he was serving as a lieutenant in the regional reserve of the Royal Australian Navy.
Dr Davey, in the time I have had since news of his tragic death came through on Sunday, strikes me as an incredibly talented and amazing young man—a young man who was making a contribution to his community in so many different ways and who had earned
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