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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-11-26 Daily Xml
Contents
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Motions

Valedictories

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. K.J. Maher:

That this council acknowledges the contributions made by retiring members.

(Continued from 25 November 2025.)

The PRESIDENT (17:38): Honourable members, with your indulgence, I would like to thank the Deputy Premier for the opportunity to make what will actually be my valedictory speech. Members would know that I have made the decision not to run for a fourth term in the South Australian Legislative Council.

As a proud son of Whyalla, I have always tried to put the people of my hometown and regional South Australia generally at the front of my mind in all of my decision-making. Whyalla gave me a start and the opportunity to start my own local business. It took a lot of hard work and tough times, just like Whyalla itself, but ultimately gave financial security to my wife, Donna, and my family.

That spirit of entrepreneurship led me to the Liberal Party, and I see myself in the tradition of Robert Menzies: I stand, and always have, for family, freedom, fairness and free enterprise. That may sound old-fashioned, but I maintain that those Liberal values apply equally well today. Whether you are farming, working in business, creating a startup at the cutting edge of the IT industry, self-reliance, hard work, honesty and common decency are values that still offer a pathway to a better Australia. Teddy, you are going to have to be quiet there or I will have to get the Black Rod to come and speak to you, okay—good boy!

I have not been the most media-focused MP, but I have worked closely behind the scenes with many sectors of industry, bringing them closer to the Liberal Party and ensuring that Liberal Party policy is informed by private sector knowledge and expertise. In truth, my networks have been based upon friendships as much as anything, and I will never be able to fully explain how spending time with good friends in the retail, real estate, property, sport and hospitality sectors, to name a few, have helped inform and provide guidance for the deliberations in the corridors of parliament and in the government of South Australia.

In particular, I would like to thank some people who have given me guidance and certainly friendship along the way. People like Trina and David Basheer—David being the President of the AHA—his deputy Matt, along with Charmaine Binns, have been wonderful advocates for their industry and extremely professional in the way they have gone about things and certainly have been very good friends to my wife and me.

I also thank Bob Holton and Tony Newman, both former chairs of the South Australian Jockey Club. They are quite an odd pair in that they are great friends and I am a great friend of theirs, Bob having been probably a Liberal supporter most of his life and Tony Newman very proudly a Labor supporter for most of his life, but we have a great relationship. They have certainly provided me with terrific guidance in regard to the racing industry. It has been no secret that I have probably championed that industry in the corridors of this place, occasionally with some success.

Also, I acknowledge some of my favourite community groups, like the Payneham RSL, ably led by their president Mark Lawson. Mark Lawson is an extremely colourful character, a very generous man. He has served his country, Great Britain, with distinction, but serves the veteran community very selflessly, and I admire him greatly and his family.

I also acknowledge the Croatian community. Again, it is no secret that I have had long ties with the Croatian community before my time in parliament, going back to Whyalla days. I became a member of parliament, and one of the first things in a party meeting was that somebody said, 'We need somebody to go out to the Croatian community.' I put my hand up and it was like being at home. I love that community; I love the people. There are families like the Tudorovic family, the Kilic family, the Smoljan family, the Tomich family, to name a few, but they really have looked after me like a son and I am very grateful.

I will make a few comments on the institution of parliament. Even though I was elected as a representative of one of the two major parties, I have taken my responsibilities and duties as President of the Legislative Council incredibly seriously. I am conscious that I am a custodian of traditions that go back hundreds of years. Our democracy has endured because those traditions have enabled, empowered and protected citizens. I worked hard to approach the task as President in a fair and impartial manner. I am sure that members will make their own assessment, but I really worked hard to do that. I encourage my successors to maintain and defend those traditions.

I have had the privilege of serving in this place with 53 other MLCs and 114 members of the other place over, today, 1,186 sitting days—1,187 will be my last. I am happy to have had a good run, to have made an honest, thoughtful and occasionally passionate contribution.

I am very pleased to leave on my own terms and, for the record, my decision not to renominate was mine alone. When I say mine alone, my wife was very helpful in that decision and, as per usual, she is right, and I am very grateful for her wise counsel. No-one tapped me on the shoulder and no deal has been made. Unlike many other MPs at the end of their time in parliament, my kneecaps are intact. I still have a lot to give and I will spend the coming months spending time with my wonderful family and seeking advice on my future from my friends, colleagues and my networks in business and government.

I would just like to put on the record some of the friends who have strongly supported Donna and I along the way: Morry and Mel Bailes; my good friend George Boubouras from Melbourne, who helps me with all things superannuation. As your Chair of the Parliamentary Superannuation Board, he has been extremely helpful. My old friend Harry Perks, Richard Hayman, Neil Briggs and Natasha Bertram from Perks Property have certainly assisted me with commercial decision-making and my thought processes in this place.

A very special mention to a very talented young barrister, a guy by the name of Sam Joyce, who is more like family than somebody who I have interacted with in regard to the law. His understanding and his shepherding of my wife and I through a difficult period will never, ever be able to be repaid, and I am eternally grateful.

Some old stagers in the Liberal Party who are just lovely people: John and Di Harvey; John and Lyn Nitschke; an old fellow by the name of Jim Buckoke; Cory and Sinead Bernardi have been with me through thick and thin—and when I say me, I mean my wife and I, through thick and thin—they are very strong supporters; Cosie and Maria Costa; and my young friends Reilly and Chloe O'Brien, who at different times have added a fair bit of fun and have been pretty solid friends.

I am extremely grateful to have worked with some terrific people. I have had a lot of staff over the journey and they have invariably gone on to bigger and better things. I have always been a person who acknowledges that if someone can elevate themselves to another level I should never stand in the way, and I have really been thrilled to see a number of people continue on in their career paths, one of whom is the Hon. Mrs Henderson, who worked with me for a short period of time. I still look over at her like she should be in high school and there she is with a baby, bringing the little fella into this chamber, which gives me immense pride.

Currently, an old stager, an old friend, Graham Taylor, works with me and looks after me. He is a highly qualified accountant and I think he looks at me with quite a bit of amusement as to how I finished up in this particular role, but he has been a solid support. Other than being a Port supporter, we agree on most things. I overlooked the fact that he has been a lifelong Port man when he joined me, but sometimes you have to look past some people's frailties, don't you?

A young lad by the name of Isak Brusch is a grapegrower from McLaren Vale. He is a terrific young fellow, he is interested in politics and I am pleased that he has been able to join me for a short period of time.

I want to say work wife, but he is not my work wife, he is my work husband: Adam Golding. He and I spend more time together in a car than my wife and I do, and he is wonderful in that he is quite a shy man, but he gives me such full and frank advice, often unsolicited, and sometimes I just sit there and cop a pounding as to the way the world should work and the way it is not working, but I have really enjoyed our friendship and his unwavering support.

I want to touch a little bit on some of the things that have happened in my time—I am not trying to blow my own tyres up at all—some of the things that I have seen that have made me incredibly proud. I touched on it before, but the legislation for Whyalla was one of the proudest moments of my time in parliament, the way the 69 members of parliament all locked in and supported the people of Whyalla. If there was ever an opportunity for someone to play politics or grandstand or big-note themselves, it was at that time, and nobody did. Everybody dug in for my hometown. It was so important.

To see those people suffering because of false promises that had been made time and time again was disheartening, and it really made me proud when the government took action, supported by the opposition and everybody else in this place, to make sure that Whyalla had a future. Whyalla does have a future, because this country needs the ability to make the steel that Whyalla produces. We have to have that sovereign capacity, and I am pleased that all sides of politics have been really quite supportive. So again, I thank every member of parliament who participated at that time.

I spent a lot of time on committees. Committee work can be gruelling but it can also be really fulfilling. There is the opportunity to work with other members of parliament you perhaps would not normally work with in cooperation, and you bounce ideas off each other, often travel with each other to different parts of the state, and sometimes interstate, to broaden knowledge, but also you are trying to get outcomes for people.

There is one thing I want to touch on, and certainly want to remind people of who are continuing in this place—and hopefully those who want to continue can. I served for a long time on the Aboriginal Lands Parliamentary Standing Committee, which I thought was a very, very good committee. One of the standout things we did was when we became aware of an NGO out of Alice Springs that was providing kidney dialysis for remote communities in the NT and the eastern part of WA.

South Australia was experiencing the issue where people from the APY lands who needed kidney dialysis would be provided with kidney dialysis in Adelaide or Port Augusta—there was no shortage of trying to give them the correct treatment—but anybody who has any understanding of Aboriginal people would know they have a connection with their country and often people would discharge themselves because they wanted to go back to country. I respect that, but what would invariably happen is that they would become very unwell and then the Royal Flying Doctor would have to go and retrieve them. It was really quite an expensive exercise to bring them back to continue treatment.

Then here was this Aboriginal Lands Parliamentary Standing Committee that the Hon. Tammy Franks was on and the Hon. Tung Ngo and some of my colleagues from the other place. We went to the Purple House in Alice Springs and we could see the good work that was happening—but it was not happening in South Australia. We went, 'Well, how can we make this happen? How can we solve a problem?' What was really frustrating were the barriers that were put in front of the suggestion that we were going to do that. At the time it was by SA Country Health.

We had Tammy, who was tenacious in making sure we pursued this, and we had the inside running of the Hon. Tung Ngo, who had been an adviser and had worked for the Hon. Jack Snelling in Health. So every time a bureaucrat would say, 'No, you can't,' we would all get stuck into Tung say, 'Come on, Tung. Help us make this happen.'

It would have been funny if it were not so serious. Every time we pushed and pushed for this dialysis there would be a reason why we could not do it: 'There's no funding for a facility,' actually, the federal government were prepared to fund it; 'The water supply might not be of a quality that we should have,' actually, with the water supply in every other community Purple House have managed to overcome it; 'The electricity might be unreliable, we can't do it,' actually, it has been done everywhere else around South Australia so it can be done; 'We won't be able to get the nurses we need with experience,' actually, Purple House will provide the nurses, so it is not something to worry about.

Time and time again we got push back, push back, push back, but it was happening across the border, and it was happening across the border into Western Australia. So we persisted, we persisted and we persisted and the facility came to fruition, and it was because our Aboriginal Lands Standing Committee pushed and pushed and pushed back against bureaucracy. You can get things done; you just cannot give up with some of that stuff.

One of the more emotional times for me in this place was when something was brought to my attention. A good friend of my wife's came to our house in Norwood on a Saturday. We had no idea, but they explained to us what had happened in their life: they had been molested as a child. You would not believe it—a high functioning, great member of the community. It brought to our attention that we had a flaw in our system, that people who had committed atrocities against children that were historical were actually getting very lenient sentences, even suspended sentences, because they were 'really nice people now'. The things those people had done to children, and the lives that they had destroyed, were horrendous and horrific, and yet we had allowed this almost acceptance to creep into the way the judicial system looked at perpetrators.

I raised the issue with our team in the party room. Things were not going too quickly on this issue. David Penberthy got involved and Sean Fewster got involved. All of a sudden there was a little bit more urgency. I know that everybody supported the changes that were required.

I do not know if you remember, but there were two guys who were called the 'two masked men' and they virtually hunted down and embarrassed a guy who had done horrendous things to them both. We made sure that an appropriate sentence was handed down—as they all are now, apparently. The guy had the temerity to appeal to say that the sentence was too hard. The appeal was dismissed in a heartbeat, and it was probably one of the better things I have seen happen in our judicial system. That was another time I was really proud of the way the parliament reacted to something that had just slipped through and was kind of accepted but which was really unacceptable.

I have to say that in this job you have to have a sense of humour. We do serious work in this place, and I love it when there is just a little bit of humour that creeps in. It actually takes the edge off everybody and it reminds us that we are all human. We might not agree on things, but we all come with the best intentions. We all have a work ethic. I really appreciate the bit of humour that comes in from time to time, especially in this role, because I can watch you all getting a little bit angry at times—and it is really nice to take the temperature down when we can.

Some of the funnier things—and I was reluctant to perhaps even talk about some of this stuff, because we do serious work and we work long hours, and the public, fed by the media, hate to think that at any point we are actually getting some enjoyment and some fulfilment out of this role. There have been a few funny things that have happened across my journey, and I will just give you a few little snippets.

The Hon. David Ridgway, who is the Agent General, and I were elected at the same time. We worked pretty hard together and travelled the state and did a lot of stuff. I was sitting next to him when he gave his maiden speech, and I was terrified as to how it was going to work out for me—this is nearly 24 years ago. David struggled with the phrase 'traditional lamb cuts', and I sat next to him terrified of what I was going to deliver in my maiden speech. This whole new thing was intimidating. Our good friends in Hansard very kindly heard 'traditional lamb cuts', so in history it was recorded as such, but it was a very awkward time for me, knowing that I was next and that if he could say that what was I going to say?

There was another time, when journos were asking members of the Legislative Council: what is the thing that you have been most proud of in your contribution? This must have been about 10 years ago. The Liberal Party had a policy to build an inner city covered stadium over what was then called Railway Oval; it is now Karen Rolton Oval. It is a beautiful facility. We were trying to come up with a bold idea: we wanted to bring football back into the city.

Everybody knows that in terms of our policy we were not successful. The government was returned. They worked with the South Australian Cricket Association. Adelaide Oval came into play, and it is fantastic. It is a fantastic facility. But I said I was really pleased to be part of the conversation where we actually finished up getting football back into the city, and that was interpreted by some, very early on, as me saying I was responsible for Adelaide Oval. I had made it quite clear: it was not my suggestion or position. We were against it. But that conversation had actually got the Rann government, with the Hon. Kevin Foley, heavily invested, and they got Adelaide Oval done, which is quite amazing.

So there were some members of the Labor Party who were really angry for about 15 minutes, thinking that I was trying to take credit for Adelaide Oval. Then it actually came to pass that, no, that is not what he said at all. But then the mickey was taken out of me for at least about a month. Everywhere I went it would be, 'Oh, the things that Terry did.' I remember Jayne Stinson when she was a journalist. There was media drinks or something that I went to, and the media were lining up to have selfies with me because they wanted to talk about things that Terry did. There was a two-page spread in The Advertiser—'Things that Terry did', like 'invented the Pyramids' or 'built the Pyramids'.

The Hon. K.J. Maher interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: It was a hashtag thing. At the end of the day you have to be able to laugh at yourself. I think I have always been able to laugh at myself. If people are happy, well, then I am happy. But it was one of the crazier times in my parliamentary career, and I was very lucky that people actually appreciated that.

I have really enjoyed the Hon. Tung Ngo giving speeches on the wrong bills in this place. It always sets the place alight. Sometimes I think he does it on purpose just to be controversial. My good friend the Hon. Russell Wortley I have known—I do not even think we were teenagers. I used to come to Pooraka all the time as a kid. Russell was in Pooraka. I am not sure how he claims he grew up in Port Adelaide, because Pooraka is a fair way from Port Adelaide, but I have always enjoyed the Hon. Russell Wortley's inability to control his mobile phone. In fact, he is the only person I have ever seen who projects his mobile phone to other places. When someone's phone goes off you know it is actually the Hon. Russell Wortley's fault.

The Hon. Robert Simms has teased me again today. We get on really well. We do not agree on much, but we get on really well. He has thrown up the possibility that he is going to talk about regional rail again tomorrow. I just cannot wait. The Hon. Nicola Centofanti: totally out of order with her supplementaries, breaks all the rules, knows that it is not right and then feigns indignation when they are ruled out of order. Like, really?

I have to say to you, Deputy Premier, I do feel embarrassed taking my salary while knowing that you are always available and trying to help me adjudicate. Even though it is not your job, you are trying to do mine for me as well. It does not go unnoticed. In Monty Python it is 'a very naughty boy'. Usually you are a very naughty boy, and you know it. The Hon. Connie Bonaros telling us one more time 'just for the record': I am going to miss that going forward.

The Hon. C. Bonaros: Just for the record, so will I.

The PRESIDENT: Just for the record. The Hon. Clare Scriven's attempt to sing was a highlight. What you do not know is that the Clerk nearly snapped his neck turning around to me that quickly to tell me, 'You can't do that,' which is why we had to rule that out of order. My good friend the Hon. Frank Pangallo's version of a brief explanation—are you kidding me? 'Mr President, I would just like to make a brief explanation.' There is absolutely nothing brief about any of the Hon. Frank Pangallo's explanations. Any of you I have missed I am going to get you tomorrow night when we close, so do not feel like you are being left out.

As I said, I found my value, and my personal joy in parliament has been to build new relationships, to bring people together and to help others find common ground. I do not know what my next chapter will bring, but I am sure I will find some new way to put some of those characteristics to good use, hopefully, and I will do it with my wife's advice because she is much wiser than I am.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Yes, I am not shying away from that. This is the hard part. I was actually going to be a wimp and try to do this first, because you get this stuff out of the way where you might not hold yourself in the strongest way. I would like to acknowledge in the gallery, firstly, my children, Courtney and Riley. I am extremely proud of the people you have become.

To my daughter, you have been pretty much an angel most of the way through. You are a bit shy and a bit quiet, but leave people under no illusion as to what you are thinking at times, and sometimes you tell your father that he is so far out of line it is not funny. Riley, nobody has ever said that you have not had a bit of character. I am glad that you have really found your way and are doing something that you love.

You have a lovely partner, Keela, who you brought down from Queensland, all the way from Wickham in far north-west Western Australia. That is a long journey to get to Adelaide. We love having you as part of our family. I do not know what you think about us most of the time, but we are a bit crazy. We have a sign in both of our houses that says, 'We speak fluent sarcasm.' It is the lowest form of wit, so thank you for bearing with us. Fraser Ellis, my now son-in-law, has finally done the right thing and married my daughter. He has a sense of humour that we sometimes struggle with. He is very sharp on it. He has presented us with two beautiful grandchildren whom we love dearly.

Now it comes to my wife. She has spent most of her life, and certainly my political life, reminding people that she is a very honourable person because she is a nurse and everybody loves nurses and that I am a lowly politician and nobody likes us. Any time that we have had an argument, she reminds me, 'Just remember who is respected in the community and maybe who is not.' To my wife, I love you. It has been a challenging ride. Relationships are hard. I think they are incredibly hard for political people and political life, with the sacrifices that we make and the sacrifices that our partners and our wives make by being the parent who does everything because we are doing something else for other people in the community.

I know people in all walks of life make sacrifices, but I think they are particularly hard in our life because of the scrutiny and sometimes the public humiliation that we cop. I think most of the time it is very much unjustified and it is not fair on our families. To my wife, how you have managed to stick by me is beyond me, but I am very grateful. As I said, we are not normally gushy people, but this is the time I have to say it. Thank you and I love you. You have not necessarily wanted me to pursue this career but you have stood by me the whole way, so I am very grateful.

With that, honourable members, thanks for indulging me. Thanks for giving me the great privilege of my life to be your President. I am very, very grateful. I wish each and everyone of you every bit of happiness and success in whatever you choose to do. With that, I thank you and I will wave to Teddy. Hey boy.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: In moving that this matter be now adjourned, I do ask for you to make a ruling on presidents who break standing orders by referring to people in the gallery.

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Mr Hunter, I will go to my office when we get up and have a good hard look at myself, I promise.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.

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