Page 4956 - Week 15 - Thursday, 15 December 2005

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For Vicki Dunne, the doll would be that of Peter Mark Roget of Thesaurus fame, to help her as she seems to have been running out of superlatives in trying to damn the government, damn Simon Corbell and damn the Chief Minister; but with a pull-string there will be a new supply. Bill Stefaniak will get a petty criminal; it comes with a cage and an endless supply of keys, so each day he can lock him up and throw away the key.

John Hargreaves gets the Aussie cliche doll: you pull a string and you get “a rat up a drainpipe”, “like a ferret on heat”, “a head like a Mongolian trotting duck” or something similar. Jacqui Burke gets a constituent doll. This is a very clever doll; it can call her office regularly and therefore she can make true claims of constituent calls on a regular basis.

Mr Richard Mulcahy gets a Peter Costello job, with a coat made of very heavy material so it can withstand repeated tugging. Mary Porter gets a volunteer doll with its price tag because we need to know at all times the value of volunteers. Deb Foskey gets no doll at all, but she gets a dolls house—from the private stock; it would not come from public stock. Mr Mick Gentleman would get a gelignite Jack Murray doll, the famed rally driver who blasted his own path whenever necessary.

Steve Pratt gets a PC Plod doll, life size, to take up the post at the bottom of his driveway and to ever be deferential and respectful for a man of his station. Karin MacDonald gets what she was expecting, I think—a baby Jesus doll, because she is the Jew girl. But I have decided to give her a Mark Latham doll, because she might do to him what he thinks has already been done to him. Finally, Zed Seselja gets a Zed Seselja doll. This is a life-size doll that can be propped up in a committee room so he will not be missed so often. On a serious note for Katy Gallagher, our thoughts are with her, and I hope that she has in the near future a real, live, healthy doll of her own.

May I just take the last few minutes to thank all of the support staff that we have in the Assembly for what we often take for granted. I also thank my staff, my very clever staff; I rank them as a fantastic team. They have been together for some time; they work together well. They have got utterly no respect whatsoever for me, but they have done a sterling job over the years and I truly do appreciate what they have done.

Valedictory

MR SMYTH (Brindabella—Leader of the Opposition) (5.02): I, too, thank all involved with the year for the work they do for all of us, and on behalf of the opposition give our thanks to all the people we have had to deal with, have dealt with and helped over the course of the year, whether they be interest groups, lobby groups, people coming looking for something, but particularly the constituents, who, after all, are why we are here.

I thought I would mention that it has been a fertile year in the Assembly. Jane from the committee secretariat delivered baby Harry a couple of weeks back. The Clerk, of course through his wife, delivered baby Matilda, and our own Minister Katy is expecting, as the Treasurer has just said, her own lifelong doll some time in the next couple of weeks, and we all wish Katy well.


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