Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the passionate and heartfelt contribution from the member for Jagajaga. I accept that she and others on the opposition benches have had a traumatic week. I do acknowledge how hard it must have been for them, particularly for the member for Brand and the member for Jagajaga, and I sympathise with them. This is a rugged, brutal business and people go through a lot of personal pain. It is a pity that it has to be that way but so far no-one has come up with a better alternative.

Could I say in response that we all take our duties very seriously here. I would not like there to be the slightest hint that one side is more concerned about the underprivileged than the other. We express our concerns differently and certainly we have different views about the sorts of policies which will best help those who are doing it tough, but I would not like, even at this time of goodwill, any suggestion to be made unchallenged that one side of the parliament is more concerned about those who are doing it tough than the other.

It is impossible to adequately thank all who have contributed to us in this place. Suffice to say that we are all the product of the hard work, the commitment and the love of so many other human beings. I would like to acknowledge that in my own case and apologise for the fact that very few of them ever get the thanks that they really deserve.

I wish simply in these few remarks to thank those who I ought to thank in my capacity as Leader of the House. May I begin by saying that I suppose one of the nice things about this time of the year is that all of us do for a few moments accept that members opposite are human beings with strengths as well as weaknesses, and I do hope that that spirit survives well into the new year, although I rather doubt that it will.

Mr Speaker, you have an incredibly difficult job. Members on this side of the House want you to be our supporter. Members on the other side of the House are convinced that you are our supporter. In fact, your job is to be fair and impartial. I think you discharge that difficult responsibility pretty well and I thank you for your efforts.

I think that the real pillars of this parliament are the clerks, who love our traditions and honour them in ways that we do not always. I really appreciate their hard work, their insights and their commitment, and I state that this place would be infinitely the less but for their work. They are the guardians of our traditions and they discharge that role extremely well.

I thank the Parliamentary Liaison Office, led by Tony Levy, for helping the business of the parliament to be discharged so relatively smoothly this year. I particularly acknowledge Nathan Winn, who will be moving on at the end of the year. To the Table Office: thank you for your hard work. I thank my distinguished colleague Peter McGauran, who is a remarkably cheerful, genial and helpful presence in this place. I thank the government whips, starting with the member for Macquarie. Thanks for everything you do to keep the large egos of this place in check and constructively contributing; and I thank their staff, who have to do a lot of very hard work.

I pay tribute to the member for Lalor, who has been promoted. I think she has been justifiably promoted. She is a significant political talent. I have always got on with her extremely well in her capacity as Manager of Opposition Business. She, like others here, has the public image of a very steely politician. She is a tough politician but she is also a constructive and cooperative colleague where that is necessary; and on those few occasions when we have interacted socially I have found her to be a genial companion.

We come to the end of a long and hard political year. May God bless us all, may God bless our country and may the holiday season refresh and renew our energies so that we can all be our best selves in 2007. Finally, none of us could be here but for the forbearance of our families. Families are the unseen, unacknowledged victims of political life. I thank my wife and my kids for putting up with an absent father and husband, and for the fact that the burdens of politics make me far less a family man than I should be.

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