Page 896 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 29 March 2011

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heights of business, the public service and, indeed, this place. I am pleased to see the gender equity bit starting to be achieved in this place. But seeing women at the top of the tree in the public sector is not all that regular a thing to observe. We need to have people that we can put on pedestals so that we can say to our young women, “With a bit of hard work and a bit of guts, you can do it.” Tu Pham has given us that opportunity. We can look at her and say to young women: “There you go. There is your example; there is your role model.”

As a former Minister for Multicultural Affairs, it gives me enormous pleasure to see someone who is not an Anglo-Celt at the top of the tree, even though that is where I come from. I like to see us being able to say to the young women in our multicultural community who are studying: “You can get to the top of the tree. It doesn’t matter where you come from. Whether you come from overseas, whether you are Hungarian or Croatian—maybe not Irish—you can get to the top.” I think it is important that we recognise that we now have available someone we can point to in that regard, as indeed other members of this place can, and I thank Tu Pham very sincerely for that.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to conclude by saying that auditors-general have to have qualifications to do the job, they have to have experience to do the job and they have to have a lot of courage to do the job. Sometimes you have to say something, you have to point the finger and people are not going to like it, and it can be daunting. It can be quite difficult to carry. I think Tu Pham has carried that part of her responsibility with an enormous degree of class.

MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition), by leave: Most of it has been said but I do want to put on the record my words of congratulations to Tu Pham. I give my apologies for not being able to attend your farewell. I was keen to get there but was not able to make it on the day.

I want to say a few words about the fact that, for me, having been in this place since 2004, Tu Pham is of course the only ACT Auditor-General I have dealt with. That said, I think that, for whoever takes over, it will be a very hard act to follow.

I want to comment on what a great story it is. Tu Pham’s really is a great migrant story. It shows the wonderful ability of people to achieve in our nation, whatever their background, and I think that is a fantastic thing.

A couple of things have particularly impressed me about Tu Pham. One is her sense of decency and honour. When we met with Tu Pham, we could always trust that she was doing her job to the absolute best of her ability and that she was prepared to do it without fear or favour. She was not in it to be overly harsh on the government but at the same time she was not going to hold back where she felt that the government did not have its act together. She was very keen, as all good auditors should be, to point out where government could improve.

I think that one of the things that has marked the Auditor-General’s reports which I have read over the last seven or so years is that they always provide a constructive approach. There are often revelations in them which are quite damaging for a government and we see the reaction sometimes from government when some of those


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