John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight, I would like to recognise and express my gratitude to two friends and two mentors. Firstly, I would like to talk about Josh Bihary, who for the last six years has been my senior adviser—and I will tell you how we got started. On the day before we came here for the very first time and I knew very little about this place, Josh got married. The honeymoon had to wait and Josh travelled the next day and commenced his training of this wayward child in the art of politics. I would come up with ideas; Josh would get the job to deliver them. We saw kids being left out of activities in playgrounds and we came up with the idea of introducing table tennis so kids of different ethnic backgrounds could play with each other and engage. We went to Hyundai with business plans that they accepted, we got table tennis tables put in all 40 schools in the electorate and kids engage in this great sport. We brought the Bennelong Cup here just last week, where eight countries played at the highest level of table tennis. We saw problems in small businesses, where big companies were squeezing them out, and we invented this thing called the Bennelong Village Businesses campaign. We got discounts on advertising, we letter-dropped and we promoted small business. We saw a problem with people with disability not being able to find work. We came up with an idea called Bennelong Gardens and we got the land for them to establish commercial market gardens on and give themselves employment and that independence.

When we were writing the maiden speech, we came across the fact that we had never had a plan of spatial settlement and that we had effected this incredible imbalance of settlement. We have been working on that one ever since. We have come up with the concepts of retrofitting infrastructure and effecting decentralisation through high-speed rail. Many people laugh at high-speed rail, but this can be funded through value capture. Five years ago, when we started talking about value capture, nobody knew what value capture was. Now you will not see one day where a newspaper does not refer to value capture and the power of value capture to retrofit infrastructure into our cities. Infrastructure should be associated with land planning and the combination is dynamic because it uplifts the value of land that you can then capture the value from and create a sustainable funding model.

With Josh's integrity and friendship, you would not meet a more honest, decent and hardworking man. Now his marriage has a greater chance of going much longer, until that awful moment when death might part us! They have two beautiful children and I apologise to Karen!

This week, I have the great pleasure of having Jenny Hoad staying in my house. On Friday, we will play tennis. That is not that unusual, except Jenny is 84 years of age. I am so pleased to have Jenny, who is Lew Hoad's widow, stay with me. Today is Lew Hoad's birthday. Lew Hoad, in many people's minds, is the greatest tennis player that ever lived. Pancho Gonzales, who was the world champion eight times, said he had no say in the outcome of matches when he played Lew—and then he would say some expletives about what he thought of Lew and what he would do to him on a tennis court. Rod Laver, who was the greatest player of all in many people's minds and won the grand slam twice, said he had no say in the outcome of matches when he played Lew and he thought Lew was the greatest player of all time. When Rod won the grand slam in 1962 and turned professional, Lew had all but retired. Lew went into training for six weeks and the tennis twins Ken Rosewall, the world professional champion, and Lew played a series of 13 matches each against Rod Laver, the man who had just won the grand slam. Ken dominated Rod and won 11 out of those 13 matches. Lew dominated Rod to a greater extent and won all 13 matches—and continued to dominate Rod every time they played.

When I was a young boy of 10 years old, Lew gave us a tennis camp. He taught me rhythm, evaluating shots and the essence of professional or percentage tennis. He would come out to our house and look in on how I was going on the way to waterski at the Narrabeen lakes. He was always friendly and engaging whenever I ran into him at Wimbledon or the French Open. He remained a friend. Tragically, leukaemia took him at the age of 60. We have agreed to do a 100-kilometre walk around Bennelong, as we did for motor neurone disease last year, to raise awareness of the great Lew Hoad and raise awareness of and raise money for leukaemia.