Page 2359 - Week 08 - Thursday, 6 June 2013
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You have restored this party. I am the beneficiary of that; all of us are. You expressed well the journey the Liberal Party has come on. In the first term in which you served, in the second, the two elections that you fought and in the time that you have served as my shadow Attorney-General, you have not once done anything but your best and given 100 per cent. You have been someone who has been much maligned, perhaps not as much as Tio, but you have copped your fair share. Probably the best way to explain that is in the words of Paul Gallen who, in explaining away his left and right jab on Nate Myles, said he did it because he respects him.
I think that is why you have been as maligned as you have been and why you have been attacked, so often unfairly. People do not do that unless you stand up for something. People will not attack you unless you are a worthy opponent. That is why you have been the subject of that vilification. It has been tough on you; it has been tough on your family; it has been tough on your friends. But it meant that you stood for something, so take that with you.
We will miss you. The qualities that you bring to this place are exceptional, and I would like to touch on some of them: firstly, your parliamentary performance, and everyone has just seen that in the speech that you gave here. Often these benches are empty, but we all get to see the quality of your speeches. Your ability to think on the floor to shape an argument as you go is the best in this place. There is no-one that can exceed you in terms of parliamentary performance, in terms of debate, in terms of winning an argument on the floor. If the votes in this place were shaped by arguments rather than just the numbers, you would have won a significant amount more.
Then there is your intellect. Everybody understands your intellect. You are a trained lawyer; your intellect shines through and it shines through into your judgement. It was very rare that you made a bad decision. Supporting Parramatta is probably the fundamental one amongst them, but other than that your decisions have been good ones, as has your capacity for hard work. You are a hard worker. That is one of the criticisms that is used against you—it is a myth; it is not true; it is a lie. You are one of the hardest working individuals that I know.
You touched on your values. You live by your values. They are family values, and as we see Ros and your beautiful family here in the chamber today with your friends and your supporters, we all understand how much your family means to you and how you are able to translate what that family means to you into how you have shaped the values of the Liberal Party in this place.
Liberal values are often mistaken as being hard nosed, business oriented and not emotive, I suppose. But another quality that is often not recognised are your social values and your sense of social justice. In the party room when we have had the debates you have always been shaped by the policy—what is best for Canberra and what is best for those people doing it tough in Canberra—and not just by the politics of an argument. Often that gets missed as it gets played out in here and in the media, but we have seen that and we understand that.
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