Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the people of Nicholls I offer my condolences on the passing of Peta Murphy. I offer my condolences to her friends, her family and the whole parliament, but particularly to the Labor family for their loss. But it's really our loss as well, as a parliament and as a nation.

It's with some regret that I didn't get to know Peta Murphy as well as some people in this place have. But she was a person I admired greatly, and there are a few reasons for my admiration for Peta Murphy in particular. The first thing I noticed about her was her courage. It's been said before in this place: if any of us had had the same thing happen to us while sitting in this place, how would we have reacted? What would we have done? The member for Gippsland said that earlier. I don't know how I'd react. Peta Murphy had the courage to keep coming into this place, and being a conviction politician, as she was, she felt that her time spent in this life and in this place was so important that she kept turning up day after day in sitting weeks. As a new member of parliament, that's left an imprint on me. Thinking about the time we have in this place, it's not infinite, it is limited and you've got to make every day count for your constituents and for your beliefs—and that's something Peta Murphy did.

As I said, I didn't get to know Peta Murphy as well as I would have liked. I got to know her a bit through my friendship with the member for Gippsland, and his stories of them in New York together, and the great tribute the member for Gippsland gave about her last week—which, fortunately, she was here to listen to—and also his words today. The way that she behaved in this place impresses upon me that new politicians—and there's one over there who's a friend of mine, the member for Hawke. It's a very adversarial place, and we have our beliefs and we have differences and we can play it pretty hard in this place—and we should, because we're standing up for the people we believe in and the ideals we believe in, and sometimes they're not exactly aligned. The general public thinks that when we walk out of this place it continues on, and that maybe we're pushing and shoving in the hallways and that sort of thing. But the friendship particularly of the member for Gippsland and Peta Murphy is an indication that it doesn't have to be like that when good people are here. And it's not like that. That has not been my experience. It's a nice thing to say to the people in my constituency, when they see us having a crack at question time, 'No, it's not like that. We can have friendships across the aisle.' And so, if there's something that I will take out of the way that Peta Murphy conducted herself in this place, it will be to make sure that our generation of politicians—we'll call it the class of 2022; obviously, she was the class of 2019—continue that spirit, where we'll fight hard in this place—it's a willing, robust place—but the respect and the friendship outside will continue on. That's what will stay with me. I think she was just one of those people who exemplified that. Those words in her maiden speech saying, 'I want to leave democracy, and our Australian democracy, better than I found it'—I think how she conducted herself in that way, particularly, means that she did leave democracy better than she found it, and she has been an example for us.

It's a terrible thing, cancer. It's affected so many families in all of our constituencies. And a lot of people feel like they're going through it alone—how frightening it is, how scary it is. But people at home who are going through this, experiencing it, could look to this courageous woman who was going through it, saying, 'I'm still sitting in the parliament. I'm still talking about the fact that this is happening.' As the Prime Minister noted, Peta said, 'I'll be photographed at the tennis so people can see what this is doing to me. I've got the courage to do that so people can see and they don't feel alone, and they don't feel like they're the only people going through it.'

So, again, heartfelt condolences to all in this place but particularly to the Labor family on your loss of the sort of person that you want to be a politician—a conviction politician, someone with humour, someone with humility, someone who is a straight talker. She'll be greatly missed. Vale, Peta Murphy.

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