I want to thank everybody who came to Helen's aid, especially Ricky the barber, the first responders and the staff at the Alfred. Everyone is doing their best right now to help us put all of this back together. I send my love to Phil and the family on behalf of my electorate and everyone who's reached out to me personally and everyone who has reached out to all members right across this place at the moment. Helen is pretty special. She sometimes walks to work with some of my staff, and she mentioned to them one day that, in the Federation Chamber, she can always tell when I get bored of whatever it is I'm reading and just go off script. So, Helen, if you ever see this, I have no notes. We are completely off script now.

Kindness—if you can choose to be anything in this world, you should choose to be kind. I try to be kind. It is the great strength. It's a true virtue.

Like a lot of first term MPs, when I first came to this place, I was intimidated. It's big and it's powerful. But in the Federation Chamber the bells rung in the middle of my speech. Helen let me know that it was going to be okay. She walked down with me for the vote. She walked me back up. She told me: 'You'll get to finish your speech. I was so hoping you'd get there, that you could just get through the end.' And that was the kindness. As I got to know her more and a few committees and just in passing, it was her defining characteristic. It's the thing that has been pointed out by so many people across this House. That's who she is. It isn't an affectation. It isn't something that she put on for show. At her absolute core, she is kind and decent to everyone that she came across. That was reflected in her first words as relayed to us today. They were about other people, not about herself.

I know that the crossbench talk about, 'What would Helen do', the matriarch of the crossbench. She would display kindness. She lives by that virtue. It's something that we should all aspire to in all aspects of our lives, not just when we're here, not just when we're interacting with other parliamentarians or the community, but everywhere. It costs nothing to be kind. You never know what kind of day someone's having. You never know what troubles are impacting their lives. You don't know what a simple act of kindness, a simple smile or a simple act of grace will mean to them. I'm reminded throughout this process of all of these little acts of kindness, all these little acts of grace, that Helen has shown every single person in this House, the time that she has taken and the universal approval that she has.

There's a lesson in that not just for parliamentarians, but for right across the country, right across the world. We can take the time to be that kindness and be that change. It doesn't have to be combative. It doesn't have to be disrespectful. It can be, 'I don't agree with you, but I can still respect you.' I think that when we all came here that's what we wanted to be, and it's Helen who shows us that every day. I look forward to her coming back through those doors, resuming her space where that orange parrot currently resides, celebrating that moment with her and showing the nation that we will never give in to the hate and that we will always embrace the kindness. Helen can be that avatar for us. As Phil has asked—and I think everyone in here owes it to the example set and to the request made—we should all be better.