Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has been a big year in 2025, and I want to thank the people of my electorate of Blaxland for putting their trust in me again. It's the privilege of my life to represent our community in this place. I take the opportunity to thank them for their support, and, in particular, I thank the hundreds and hundreds of people who volunteered on my election campaign. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. In particular, I want to thank my team led by Korena Flanagan, Chris Zogopoulos and Christine Kalivitis for all of their help over almost 18 years now. In the case of Chris, it's even longer. I would not be here without you.

This has been a year of wins. We've fixed the funding of public schools, cut student debt by 20 per cent and, in my local community after 12 months of hard work, we got Auburn Post Office back and reopened. But it's also been a year of losses in my community. We've lost some local Labor true believers, some dear friends of mine—Tony Re, a former school principal; Grant Lee, a former mayor of Bankstown; Uncle Rex Sorby, a great Indigenous elder; and Vanessa McNeill, a former Holroyd councillor. Local legend Laurie Ferguson, a former member of this place, has been really unwell and is still in hospital. Laurie, we're all here with you, Maureen and the whole family.

I wish everybody here a very, very merry Christmas. This is a time that we spend with the most important people in the world—our families, our kids and our mates. Every year, on the Sunday before Christmas, I get together with the fellas that I played cricket with for years. We call it clay day, for reasons that I don't have time to explain here. We catch up, reminisce, talk about the old days and remember just how important we are to each other. To quote that old Irish proverb, 'We live in the shade of each other.' When I get together with my mates, I live in their shade for sure. So I give them a quick shout-out—Gav, Macca, Corz, Squirmer, Welster, Wyber, Bevo, Blobby, Beachie, Rinny, Choppers, George, Tink, Bert and Herbie. Merry Christmas, boys.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Merry Christmas to you, Deputy Speaker Boyce, and merry Christmas to everyone in the parliament. I would also like to, of course, extend those wishes to everyone in my community of Mayo. Christmas is a beautiful time in Mayo; we really do celebrate Christmas in style. I'd like to just remind everyone in my community that, even though we've had a lot of wet weather, the bushfire season is upon us, and it's not too late to be bushfire ready. We do have the algal bloom in South Australia this summer, but that shouldn't detract us from spending time on our beaches. It's not on every beach and it's not there every day. Our Mayo beaches and beachside communities are wonderful places to spend the summer. So I really do encourage everyone to go down to Victor, to Yankalilla or to anywhere in between. Do go along to our beachside townships. They really need our support this summer.

I'd like to remind everyone in our community about road safety. Unfortunately, Mayo has a very high proportion of South Australia's crashes, so we need to make sure that we all slow down on the roads. And I think that that's a nationwide message: make sure that we all slow down on our roads so that we can be there for Christmas with our families.

Make sure when you're in Mayo this summer, particularly over Christmas, to try and shop locally whenever you can. It is so important for our community. So many of our small businesses really are doing it tough, and we need to do everything we can to support them.

I'd like to acknowledge everyone who's going to be working over the Christmas season—our emergency workers, our nurses, our firies and even those working in the service stations on Christmas Day, who never get acknowledged. Thank you for what you do for the rest of us, to make sure that our country keeps running. I would also like to acknowledge our farmers across Australia. There will be many farmers, particularly dairy farmers, who will be getting up and working on Christmas morning and working on Christmas night too. And they're not necessarily getting double time.

I'd like to close by acknowledging my team. I have an extraordinary team. Many of them have been with me for several years. I like to think that all of us in here can sail across the water like ducks or swans, but that's simply because we each have an extraordinary team of staff doing the hard work. Those legs are paddling very fast underneath us. So I'd really like to acknowledge my team—those who travel to Canberra and those in my electorate office—and I wish everyone a very safe and Merry Christmas.