Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, I couldn't resist—how good is Queensland! It's been a great year. It's very rare that you have a year like this, no matter what state you're from.

First of all, of course, we won the Origin against the odds, and the mighty Lions got up. Then the women's and the men's Broncos both got up on the weekend. Probably the most pleasing thing about all these results is that, in most cases, we weren't favoured to win—definitely not in the Origin. We didn't finish top of the ladder in the AFL or the NRL. In fact, the ladies beat the undefeated Roosters in the final, which was great, and it shows a lot of courage and guts to come back from that. The men's Broncos actually came back in three of the finals, which was absolutely tremendous.

Of course, a lot of us were nervous about Reece Walsh because a lot of the time we don't know what we're going to get when it comes to Reece. They call him 'rocks or diamonds' for a reason, but he played probably the best game of any individual in the grand final on Sunday night. I want to acknowledge that and say: 'Good on you, mate. You had a crack.' And good on you, Madge, for backing him up. Who knows? Maybe, just maybe, there's something in that water he drinks—Queenslander!

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