Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you! I thank the Clerk and the assistant clerks for their unfailing good advice. I thank the Table Office; the procedure office; Senate services; our committee secretariats, who work to impossible deadlines and have huge demands on them; the attendants around this place who are largely invisible but who are very patient with us and polite; and the broadcasters, who are often not noticed up at the back of the chamber—thank you for being here. I thank our security guards: we are pleased that it is not an exciting time for you to be handling security, but you are always very helpful and polite. Thank you to the staff who dish out the food in this place—staff at Aussies, staff in the staff cafeteria and the catering crew upstairs. I thank them for their work this year, as I do the people who keep this place beautifully clean. I thank the people in the back of the House—printers, photographers, people who dish out stationary and people from 2020 who help us with computers. Thank you to all the Comcar drivers who do their jobs so well. I thank the gardeners, who make this the most glorious work environment imaginable—I look out onto those courtyards and the beautiful work they do in keeping our gardens looking wonderful.

To the library—that research institute for whom nothing is too much trouble—I thank you for your work. I acknowledge the very long hours and the enormous pressure that we put our own staff under, and I thank you for your support and for being away from home, like us, but with perhaps not the same rewards. To my colleagues, I say that it has been a good year. Despite the fact that the government has the numbers in this place—not quite what we have been used to in the past—we have had some good runs on the board. I appreciate my colleagues’ teamwork and their support.

Finally, to other senators in this place, I say that it has been a good collegiate year, I think. We have got on well, despite our very big differences politically and in legislative terms. I have enjoyed the camaraderie and the professional way in which people in this place conduct their affairs.