Adjournment Debate

Valedictories

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform) (15:55): How nice it is to be here in the second week of December 2015, in the House of Assembly, thinking about the festive season, and also reflecting on the speed at which matters progressed here and there. Can I say to members of the House of Assembly how delighted I am with the expeditious way in which they have over the course of the year dealt with matters, even though occasionally the member for Bragg has, I think it is fair to say, said more than was absolutely necessary to make her point, occasionally exceeding her quota by some hundreds of per cent. Nevertheless, aside from her, this place is not populated by the prolix.

For the benefit of the Leader of the Opposition, I am just making the point that, leaving aside the member for Bragg, this year the contributions in this place have been brief and to the point, which is a merciful deliverance from the alternative, which I think the Leader of the Opposition and I have both had the privilege of observing in some detail in the last couple of days, and it is to be commended.

Can I say that, on behalf of the government, I have spent a great deal of time in this place during the course of this year and I want to thank all members of the opposition for, as I said, the generally constructive way in which they have engaged in things, and I think the people of South Australia observing this particular chamber of the parliament would be very impressed and would think to themselves, 'Those people appear to be on about actually doing something for the state: those people appear to be more interested in talking about things of important significance for the state's development than talking about raffles at fairs, whether horses are recognised, and various other things.' I do not want to be too particular lest somebody understand exactly what I am talking about, and that would never do. Can I say that I appreciate all the members of this place, even from the objective observer's point of view, having been by and large constructive and offering useful suggestions as to how we might do our jobs well.

I do make the point again, however, that, if there is one member who could improve slightly, it is the member for Bragg who should try to work next year on what I would call the 25 per cent rule, and that is say 25 per cent about everything compared with 2015 and try to make it at least 25 per cent more relevant, and you are going to be absolutely hitting high notes. You will be the Placido Domingo of the state parliament if you can achieve that. I offer that to the member for Bragg for nothing just as a thought. Anyway, can I say thank you to all the members of parliament. Obviously—

Mr Gardner: This from someone who's taken five minutes to get to the thankyous.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Yes. Can I say thank you to all of the government members who have been so helpful during the course of the year, and my ministerial colleagues. Can I say to the Leader of the Opposition (and I say this with sincerity) that there are matters in which his constructive engagement with the government has been very helpful for the people of South Australia. Unfortunately, in respect of one very important matter presently, even those talents do not appear to be—

Mr Marshall interjecting:

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I am not doing that. I am just saying: in respect of an unnamed matter, even his talents to bring hands across the water do not appear to reach certain people who appear to be determined to do their own thing. Anyway, let us not tarnish today with sad stories. I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his cooperative assistance in relation to many significant matters, not least of which has been the return to work bill and other things, although that was last year.

I thank all the parliamentary staff—people who work in this place and have spent a lot of time making sure that the place functions. I thank Hansard for the work that you do. Hansard, when not recording my words, often has to record a lot of dross. It is to be commended that, even in those moments when sometimes it is difficult to follow, sometimes the punctuation is not very good and sometimes the grammar is not very good, they still manage to get it all down and these gems are preserved for future generations to be able to wend their way through the pages, flicking through the pages of the contributions here. I say to Hansard: thank you; your job is a thankless one, a difficult one, but future generations will thank you, because they will be able to see what happened here in its full glory.

I thank parliamentary counsel and, again, Richard Dennis. They really have done an enormous amount of work in supporting the parliament. Given my particular responsibilities, because I seem to have a lot of legislation, they have certainly been of great assistance to me and I would like to offer my personal thanks to them.

I also say thanks to my personal staff, past and present. Some of them leave me and they move to other places from which they make my life difficult, but the good thing is that they are completely consistent, because they used to make my life difficult when they were with me. Others who are now working for me are doing an excellent job—and I would commend them to those who might be paying attention to this. I would like to thank all my staff, past and present, particularly Kim Eldridge, who moved on to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions this year after having done a great job as my chief of staff, and Kate Baldock. Although we refer to her affectionately now as 'the quitter', she is leaving at the end of this year to follow her husband, who has an exciting career opportunity in Singapore. I say to Kate: thank you very much for the great work you have done in supporting our office; you will be greatly missed. To all of my other staff: thank you very much for all of your hard work.

To my ministerial colleagues, thank you for all of your good humour and tolerance. To everybody who has been named and anybody I should have named but have not—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Your mum.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: My mother—yes, definitely, my mother. Can I say to all people who I have named and those who I should have named but have not, I wish you all a very safe and happy Christmas. I hope you are able to spend time with the people who mean most to you and that you have an enjoyable and rewarding festive season. I hope we all come back here happy and well to be very productive in the new year, and that a new spirit of productivity descends on people, other than people in this room, because we already have that spirit of productivity. If we could only go from red, which means stop, to green, which means go, that would be a great thing.

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (16:03): It has been a great honour to serve as the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition throughout 2015. It has been a very interesting year. I love this time of the year when we get to Christmas. It is the season of goodwill, and my speech today will be filled with goodwill, unlike the Acting Premier, who seems to have his speech filled with advice for other members of this parliament. I could fill many Hansard hours with advice for the government, but I will not do this. I will focus my efforts on the season of goodwill which is in front of us. My favourite time of the season is the time when I take my children off to church. I put one on each side and I sing the carols as loudly as possible. I embarrass them as much as possible at every opportunity in this season, and I look forward to doing that in a couple of weeks' time.

I would like to reflect on this year and I would like to begin by thanking my parliamentary colleagues on this side of the house and, in particular, the deputy leader, who has pretty much been the subject of the Acting Premier's speech this afternoon. The member for Bragg is an outstanding deputy and works extremely hard. I would also like to specifically single out the whip for the Liberal Party, the member for Morialta. He is an extraordinarily talented person; he is a great whip and a great shadow minister, and he really has been great counsel to me in my time as the leader.

To all my parliamentary colleagues, thank you very much. This has been a year where we have worked extraordinarily hard, and I am very grateful for the efforts that people have put in in what is typically a fairly difficult time in the electoral cycle, when we are not quite at the halfway mark. I would also like to acknowledge my colleagues in the other place, in particular the Hon. David Ridgway, the leader, and the Hon. Michelle Lensink, the deputy leader—and, of course, the proud mother of baby Mitchell. I had the great delight of meeting him at my house on Sunday, and I extend my very best wishes to Michelle and Scott on the safe and happy arrival of their son Mitchell.

To those opposite, I also extend my best wishes for this part of the season. As the Deputy Premier has made clear, we have tried to work in the best interests of the people of South Australia throughout the year. There have been some highlights and there have been some less than satisfactory moments but, as the Deputy Premier pointed out in his speech, there is always an opportunity for improvement. I am sure we can do that, and I do thank him for his attitude towards working with the opposition in the best interests of the people of South Australia. I would also like to extend the Liberal Party's best wishes and seasonal greetings to the Independent members and members of other parties in the Legislative Council.

I would like to turn my attention slightly here to the staff who support me and our entire team with distinction, in particular my chief of staff, James Stevens, who supports me here in parliament, and his entire team. They work 24/7. The resources of opposition are tiny, they are absolutely tiny. In the federal parliament they sort of have this equation of 5:1 where, if the government puts on five ministerial staff the opposition automatically gets one. A lot of people think that is completely unfair; 5:1, that is outrageous. If that were the case I would have 60 staff in Adelaide, because we know that the number supporting government ministers is around 300. I would have 60 staff, but I do not have even a quarter of that number. So it is with much gratitude that I express my best wishes to all the people in the leader's office for Christmas.

I would also like to acknowledge the people who work in the Dunstan electorate office, whom I sadly neglect on a pretty regular basis. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the sterling effort of Ashton Hurn who has run that office and who leaves me tomorrow. She has an outstanding career in front of her. Whether she chooses to serve in the parliament or not I am not sure, but she has an incredible political brain, an incredible work ethic and an incredible sense of personal integrity. I really look forward to watching her career unfold.

To all of the opposition, electoral and parliamentary staff, thank you very much. Thank you very much to our president, Steve Murray, who works so diligently on a volunteer basis for our party, and to our newly appointed state director, Sascha Meldrum. We are delighted with her appointment; she has already hit the ground running and been such an incredible support to our parliamentary team, and leads a very hardworking and able team at the Liberal headquarters.

Most of all today I would like to acknowledge and thank the people who work here in Parliament House. It is a great honour and privilege to have this as our work environment . When I come into this chamber, which opened in 1889, it fills me with a great sense of awe. As I said, it is an outstanding privilege to serve here but it does not just happen without a huge amount of work, and today I would like to acknowledge all the people who make our lives as politicians so much easier.

In particular, I would like to acknowledge the Clerk of our house, Rick Crump; the Deputy Clerk, David Pegram; and to all of the House of Assembly chamber attendants. Thank you very much. To Jan Davis, the Legislative Council Clerk; Chris Schwartz, the Legislative Council Deputy Clerk and Black Rod; and to all the Legislative Council chamber attendants. I would also like to single out and thank David Woolman, the building services manager, and his assistant, Liz Lynch, who do an outstanding job maintaining and building on the fabric which is this great building. They could do a little bit more on my floor but nevertheless that is a project maybe for next year.

To all the committee staff, to all the table staff and also to the amazing library staff, led by Dr John Weste. I would also like to acknowledge Anna Graves who was this year appointed director of the research services group and thank her and her group for their support of all of us who are politicians in this building. Also I would like to particularly acknowledge the contribution that Sally Dawson has made to the library services group. She retires as the director of this group next week after being with us in this building for 28 years.

Not only is Sally Dawson retiring this year but, as the Acting Premier has reminded us, Richard Dennis will be retiring. He goes back even further that Sally Dawson. He started here in 1982. He can remember when David Tonkin was the premier of South Australia. I, myself, was in year 10 at school. In fact, I was in year 7 at school when Mr Tonkin became the premier of South Australia. Richard Dennis can remember him extraordinarily well. Richard, of course, is our Parliamentary Counsel. He is a particularly hardworking, diligent, thoughtful and charming person. He has served this house with distinction and in 2010 I was very privileged to be present at Government House when he was presented with his Public Service Medal for his outstanding contribution to parliamentary services. We wish him all the very best for the future.

I would also like to acknowledge Dr Jenni Newton-Farrelly, a fellow old scholar of Immanuel College plus ultra, our incredibly talented electoral specialist who has recently clocked up 30 years of service to the people of South Australia in this building.

To Creon Grantham, the catering staff and the Blue Room staff, and in particular to Basil who makes the best coffee. They are all very good, of course, but Basil has it exactly right. To Philip Spencer and to the entire Hansard team, I do not know how you do what you do, but thank you very much for everything you do to make us sound lucid.

To the Procedures Office, the cleaning staff, the switchboard team, maintenance team and our dedicated security personnel, to Kent Nelson and the finance team, and last but not least to Lorraine Tonglee and all of the team at PNSG who do such a great job at keeping me online.

I would like now to make a few comments which are on the sad side for us on this side of the house about Nick Ruygrok. I would like to take this opportunity to reflect upon this very tragic event that has rocked the entire South Australian Liberal Party over the last 24 hours. Yesterday morning, news filtered through that Nick was tragically killed while riding his bike in Sydney. Nick began his career here in South Australia as a trainee under the parliamentary trainees program with the member for Adelaide, Rachel Sanderson.

Nick served in the role for a year with such distinction that he was promoted to adviser once his traineeship had ended. I know that Nick worked with utter dedication during the 2014 election on the Adelaide campaign, and he was a great resource for the member for Adelaide, and indeed for the entire Liberal Party team, during his two years working here. Nick had recently moved to Sydney to pursue his career with the New South Wales Attorney-General. He had just bought a house and he had just become engaged to his high school sweetheart, Verity. It is with deep sadness that I pass along my condolences to Nick's family, his fiancée, and all his friends and colleagues. Vale Nick Ruygrok.

I would also like to thank my children for their incredible support to me this year. Charlie has finished year 12 this year and he is off to live in England next year, so it is up to Georgie to look after me for the remainder of the year. They are great kids and I particularly value their support and that of my sisters, Jenny Richardson and Kerrin Barreau, who have had to do a huge amount of work. The work of opposition never ceases. I am sure the government would say the same thing, but the work of opposition, with very finite resources, can only be done with a huge amount of support from those around us and so, to my family, I say thank you very much.

I am looking forward to 2016. There are a lot of challenges which face South Australia, very significant challenges—unemployment, low growth and a range of stalled programs around export growth in this state, just to name a few. But I am very optimistic about our future. I think South Australia is a great state. I feel that our early history in this state is a fantastic foundation of religious freedom, equality, enterprise and democracy, and that is a great foundation for us to build a future for the great state of South Australia.

I, on behalf of the Liberal Party, commit myself in 2016 to work as diligently as I possibly can to advance the cause of South Australia because I believe in South Australia and I believe in its future. It is now my final duty of the year to wish everybody all the very best for a wonderful Christmas season, and I look forward to seeing them back in this place in 2016.