Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I remember at the end of last year, as I left the building at the end of 2025, on the way out I said goodbye to Luch. Like everybody else in this chamber, when we said goodbye at the end of last year, I thought we were saying goodbye for a couple of months. I never thought that my passing reference and good wishes for the holiday season and Christmas would be the last time that I would see him. I remember, as the previous speaker did, when I was first elected. It was in 2016. It was one of those experiences. You're brought into the House of Representatives. You get shown by the Speaker the parading of the chamber. The enormity of the flowing eucalypt walls is overpowering. When I was talking to people, this fellow started chatting away to me and I asked politely, 'What's your job?' And he introduced himself: 'I'm Luch. I'm the guy who kind of runs the show.' From that moment on, he was not just charming, endearing and warm throughout my entire parliamentary service—iteration 1 and iteration 2—but a permanent fixture of this place.

This institution will endure well beyond any of us. We are a temporary beings that come and go. We have the great privilege of representing electorates. The building itself, since 1988, has been a symbol of and a testament to our democracy. It's a symbol of what makes this country great.

But sitting beneath the surface of the physical structure are the people who work in this building every day, who bring it to life. Luch was one of those people who bridged the divide between the perpetual and the temporary in this building, and who celebrated our great democracy. He was as much a part of the institution, and his commitment to the democracy that we all love and participate in was not just a temporary thing: it was enduring.

To pass away at only 59 years of age really is one of the most devastating things, I'm sure, for him and his family because he gave his life over to service of our great Commonwealth and its democracy. He represented the best of the Public Service and particularly the Parliamentary Service. He was diligent, he was discreet, he was loyal and he was respectful. I never met a member in this place who ever had anything bad to say about him, only that he was ever anything other than entirely willing to support and assist with a complete blindness to party allegiances, responsibilities. As the old saying goes, no-one would ever know how he voted because he was there, he was always willing and he was always able to assist. So, in one sense, he lived his life through this building and through the success and the contributions of the members, and that's why there's so much emotion from so many members in response to his tragic passing at such a young age.

I was on Annabel Crabb's documentary The House, which stepped through how parliament itself works. In one sense, Luch was the embodiment of the parliament itself and how it, at least in spirit, wanted to operate—cooperative, engaging and focused squarely on the best interests of the people of Australia, lived out through the parliamentarians who have the great privilege of serving here. So I fully understand why everybody is so emphatic and warm in their acknowledgement of Luch and his legacy to this place.

I can't even imagine the devastation that his family must feel for his early passing, and we can only express on behalf of all members the most incredible outpouring of grief and support for them at this very difficult time. But they should also take comfort that a life well lived in service of others is one of the greatest contributions that anybody can make. And he did that perhaps not in the way that many members in this House do—through their performative dimensions—but with a quiet and enduring resilience to support others to do their best to serve the community as part of the achievement of this great Commonwealth. That's why his life and legacy are such an achievement and why so many of us are so impassioned to acknowledge his life and legacy. We just want to wish his family all the best. May he rest in peace, because his legacy most resolutely endures.

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