My staff, the minute this occurred, gave me a picture of Helen and I, arm in arm. She's got my hat on and I've got a pair of sunglasses on. She is always smiling and laughing. It's a beautiful photograph and one that I will always keep. When she came in this place she didn't just want a job. If you just want a job, you go and get a party endorsement. She wanted to do something for her country. I'm not denigrating people with party affiliations, but an Independent is only coming in here because she wants something to happen. She wants it to be different. No Independent had ever got re-elected in this place until Ted Mack and Peter Andren came along. They were the first to ever get re-elected. Now we always seem to get re-elected. She not only was representative of that change but probably more than anyone else led that change. She could have gone for a party endorsement and probably would have got it, but she didn't want to go that way. She wanted to follow her mentor and represent the people of her electorate.

I hate to say it, but, as a published historian, change seems to have only ever come out of pain, suffering and persecution. There's no doubt that Christianity rose out of persecution. Many more died than were adherents to the Christianity cause in the year 500 AD. Once again, we're watching here a crusader and a fight against evil. The people that fought at the Battle of Lepanto—Helen is no different to those people. She did something new and different and, as it turns out, courageous and risked her life. Unfortunately and sadly, there's no doubt about that now, if you may have questioned it previously.

If you represent a party—and I represented a party for 30 of my 50-odd years in parliament—it's entirely different to representing the people in your electorate. Just everything about this incident—I've got to say that, personally, all that I experienced was an atavistic rage. I suppose I was lucky I wasn't there, because I know what I'd have done to the perpetrator of this. Bill Hayden used a word—it's a crude word—'pissant'. They're little pissants. They're just nobody, and they will always be nobody. This person would be a very good example. Mate, if you think it's going to make you somebody, you're dead wrong. You'll always be what you are.

We're commemorating today the great leader who will fight for good, who is prepared to take the risks and suffer the consequences. What she has suffered, I hope, will be an inspiration to every single person in this parliament to stand up for their people. If there are dangers out there, well, so be it. Fight for good. It's not ever an easy fight.

I want to add one other dimension to this. Helen does not come from a city. She was small-town person like me. You get very close. Everyone knows what everyone's doing in a small town. You have a special relationship when you represent a country electorate. City electorates are much more amorphous. I would like to put on record my own first thought when this occurred. I just had a rage that people were going to get out there and give exculpatory explanations for the behaviour of this little pissant nobody. If my rage is directed there—I would see her sitting behind me every time I left this chamber. I would say, 'Helen, can you look after things, please?' And she would laugh and say: 'It's all under control, Bob. It's all under control.' It's just fun people having a good time and fighting the good fight, I suppose. My memories will centre around that smiling person who said: 'Yes, that's right, Bob. We've got it all under control.' I believe profoundly that Helen will be back in this place, fighting the fight.

I say this to Helen: We need you, Helen. We need you. Come back to us. God bless you, Helen. I aspire to be a Christian. I'm not a Christian, but I aspire to be a Christian. If God intervenes in these things, she'll be right.