House debates
Monday, 10 November 2008
Statements by Members
United States Presidential Election
6:39 pm
Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source
I welcome the historic and momentous election last week of Senator Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America. I have been a fan of Barack Obama since I first heard him speak at the Democratic convention in 2004, while I was working at the United Nations in New York. This election result is a victory for reason, for calm and dignified leadership and for hope in the face of serious national and global challenges. I also pay tribute to the noble and gracious words of Senator John McCain in his concession speech. In honour of the occasion I would like to read a poem from Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, from The Cure at Troy:
Human beings suffer,
they torture one another,
they get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
can fully right a wrong
inflicted or endured.
The innocent in gaols
beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker’s father
stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
faints at the funeral home.
History says, Don’t hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.
Call the miracle self-healing:
The utter self-revealing
double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky
That means someone is hearingthe outcry and the birth-cryof new life at its term.
URL: https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2008-11-10.115.2
Referer: None
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)
Number: 2
Message: include(/srv/www/production/releases/20260517060354/twfy/www/includes/easyparliament/../easyparliament/templates/$format/$template.php): Failed to open stream: No such file or directory
File: /srv/www/production/releases/20260517060354/twfy/www/includes/easyparliament/commentlist.php
Line: 107
Source:
105 */
106 public function render($data, $format = 'html', $template = 'comments') {
107 include __DIR__ . '/../easyparliament/templates/$format/$template.php';
108 }
109
Sorry, an error has occurred
We've been notified by email and will try to fix the problem soon!
URL: https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2008-11-10.115.2
Referer: None
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)
Number: 2
Message: include(): Failed opening '/srv/www/production/releases/20260517060354/twfy/www/includes/easyparliament/../easyparliament/templates/$format/$template.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/share/php')
File: /srv/www/production/releases/20260517060354/twfy/www/includes/easyparliament/commentlist.php
Line: 107
Source:
105 */
106 public function render($data, $format = 'html', $template = 'comments') {
107 include __DIR__ . '/../easyparliament/templates/$format/$template.php';
108 }
109
Sorry, an error has occurred
We've been notified by email and will try to fix the problem soon!