Page 5080 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 28 November 2017
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
and to be given the freedom and responsibility to write speeches, questions, motions and policy positions. Steve was trusting of his staff and allowed us to get on with our work without interruption. He was generous with Christmas and birthday gifts and he always brought back a souvenir from his travels to share with the office.
He was the champion of lost causes and we would often have a difference of opinion about how long or how much … one could pursue an issue. Diesel line markings on sports grounds, the lack of seating and toilets at Woden sports field and the funds dedicated to beach volleyball are some that Shane Rattenbury and Andrew Barr would well remember—
all too fondly—
BUT it was that same persistence that got nurses retained in special schools; that kept funding for the Shepherd Centre; that got Education Minister Burch to call in Professor Shaddock to address the boy in the cage affair. He was abused soundly by Ms Burch for continuing to raise the issue but the subsequent report into the management of students with complex needs and challenging behaviours in the ACT school system is now a leading reference.
He was passionate about school librarians and at every school we visited he would ask if the school had a librarian. If they did it involved long conversations with said staff; if they didn’t, it involved hard lobbying.
He was very proud of his record of what he termed “Barr backdowns”.
Sue says she has lost count, but Steve was claiming somewhere in the vicinity of eight or nine. She says:
He fought hard for staff at CIT who had been subject to years of harassment and bullying by senior officers. He took it very personally when the Chief Minister’s investigator (Andrew Kefford) found not one of the 43 cases proven.
When he was multicultural affairs shadow he always tried to direct at least an opening line or paragraph in the native tongue of whatever audience he was addressing. He was very proud of that.
On a lighter note, his sense of direction was abysmal and so, together with his inability to arrive anywhere on time, always meant he was arriving late to just about every engagement. We—
in the office—
learned to compensate by doctoring the meeting times in his diary …
Neil Hermes, along with Jodi Bingley, has been a steadfast support for Steve in the past year. Neil has shared some words on Steve. He says:
Steve was a gentleman and he was always concerned for others. As a part of a refugee family he had strong sense of how lucky his life had been and felt he had
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video