Page 3672 - Week 08 - Friday, 24 August 2012
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organisation, if you understand what I mean. We have to remember that “amateur” is not a pejorative term; “amateur” comes from the words “to love”. They do this work because they love what they do. I thank them and I pay tribute to them, and I thank you all for your friendship.
MR DOSZPOT (Brindabella) (7.21): Mr Speaker, I thank my constituents in the electorate of Brindabella for the support I have received in being elected as a member for Brindabella for the ACT Assembly in 2008. But my thanks and memories of Tuggeranong and the Tuggeranong community also go back over the past 20 years—the friends Maureen and I made through school committees, sporting associations, neighbours and the people we would bump into shopping at the Calwell shopping centre each weekend. So it was obviously a very emotional decision for us to leave the area as we downsized and moved to the inner south.
I thank community groups like the Tuggeranong Community Council; Calwell Neighbourhood Watch; Brindabella Blues football club; Tuggeranong Vikings; our parish of Corpus Christi in Gowrie and Father John Armstrong; the Gartside Street traders; our O’Connor Street neighbours, especially Ian and Susan and Barry and Mary; the Calwell shopping centre, which became quite a community hub through Con Tsoulias and Nick Tsoulias who initiated a doves of peace ceremony in the quadrangle before the shops to coincide with every Olympic Games since 2004; the Maddies netball club and Louise Bilston; Calwell primary and high schools, St Mary McKillop College, Lanyon high, Erindale College; St Francis of Assisi primary school; the Towart family; the Hillier family; Trinity College; former president Rosemary Lissimore and David Lissimore who served Tuggeranong Community Council for so long as well as Darryl Johnston, the current president, Albert Orszaczky, Eric Traise, Dug Holmes, Colin and Janice Petrie, and Alison Ryan; Communities@Work with Maureen Cane and Lyn Harwood; Anne’s Legacy members, Dianne Cutting, Sandra Orszaczky and Lyn Bauer-Williams; and the many other individuals and community groups that I represented as shadow minister for education, disability, sport and multicultural affairs. It has been a privilege to have served them over the past four years.
I thank them all for their friendship and support, and Maureen and I are going to miss them all as I embark on a new chapter as a candidate for Molonglo in the coming ACT Assembly election. But I also say to them that this is not goodbye, as I hope to be elected as a member for Molonglo in the new ACT Seselja Liberal government. As a minister in such a government, I would continue to serve all of Canberra—Brindabella, Molonglo and Ginninderra.
The last four years have gone remarkably quickly, and I have enjoyed every minute of it. There are many people I would like to thank for their support: Sue White, Merlin Kong, Kate Davis; all my Liberal parliamentary colleagues—Zed, Brendan, Jeremy, Vicki and Alistair; Steve Doyle, Ian Hagan, Tio Faulkner, Hannah Passfield, Juliet Toohey, Keith Old, Tim McGhie, Bridgette Morton, Clinton White, Haidee, Emily, Maria, Jess and George.
As chair of the Standing Committee on Health, Community and Social Services I thank all members, but particularly the deputy chair, Ms Amanda Bresnan, and the
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