Page 2280 - Week 07 - Thursday, 27 August 2020
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Of course, you cannot get through eight years in this Assembly without experiencing some funny and strange moments. One of my favourite visions of Caroline is of her late-night tour of the rowdy nightclubs of Brisbane as part of a select committee on live music, along with her fellow live music committee members Alistair Coe and Mary Porter.
Mr Coe: What happens in the valley stays in the valley.
MR RATTENBURY: It is an imposing clubbing trio if ever I have seen one.
A busy woman and a fast typist, Caroline has occasionally been plagued by some amusing typos. There was the lunch break when she apparently went to Florida rather than our annual spring flower show. Perhaps the most famous is the tweet Caroline posted as she returned from an animal rights rally, when she tweeted that the Greens will “never support anal cruelty”. It is true, and it was retweeted so quickly that there was no chance to change it. It may still be her most popular tweet.
She lives her life the way she wants others to live: simply and sustainably. As part of meeting goals that contribute to the future of our planet, she catches buses to the Assembly each day and is strongly committed to a plant-based diet and bringing her own lunch each day to save packaging. One of Caroline’s penchants is always to make her own lunch. It is vegetarian and sustainable and it is the same every day: microwaved broccoli and tofu. That means there is a daily smell of cooking broccoli wafting through the office, often lingering for the afternoon’s meeting and occasionally permeating the whole floor. For many Greens staff the smell of broccoli will forever evoke memories of their favourite MLA.
These are just some of the quirks that make us love Caroline even more—a unique member who will leave her idiosyncratic legacy in the Assembly’s annals, or anals, of history.
Today marks the end of a chapter, ending a productive run of two separate four-year stints representing the residents of the Murrumbidgee and former Molonglo electorates. She has not yet fully decided on her next step, but we are in no doubt that it will involve an ongoing commitment to her lifelong environmental and social justice vision.
She has managed to keep in simultaneous view both the wider landscape of the Greens’ vision and the day-to-day detail that brings this vision into being. We will miss her unwavering commitment to the Greens and to making Canberra a better place for many years to come.
Caroline, you have done the Greens and our community proud. It has been a privilege to work beside you as we continue to work hard to deliver a better future for all Canberrans. I wish you well in your retirement and I hope that the COVID situation allows you to actually enjoy some well-earned family time soon enough.
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