Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

As a senator for Victoria, I am humbled to rise and speak on this condolence motion to honour the extraordinary life and unparalleled service of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. As Queen of Australia, Head of the Commonwealth of Nations, Her Majesty was our Queen. The world may never see a monarch like her again.

Ascending the throne at the age of 25, the Queen served our nation for 70 years and 214 days—the longest of any British monarch—with remarkable dignity and grace, deep integrity and an unwavering commitment to duty. While Australians mourn the loss of Her Majesty, we honour her devotion to faith, family and country. On 2 June 1953, on the eve of her coronation, the Queen, in a radio broadcast, pledged:

Throughout all my life and with all my heart I shall strive to be worthy of your trust.

Her Majesty never wavered from this solemn promise.

The Queen enjoyed a very special connection with Australia, visiting our shores on 16 occasions between 1954 and 2011. Her 11 trips to Victoria included watching the footy at the MCG, attending the races at Flemington, opening the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games, and visiting numerous regional towns and cities, including Geelong.

Renowned for her sense of humour and her ability to relate to people from every walk of life, she won the hearts of millions of Australians wherever she travelled across our vast land. On her first visit, some seven million people turned out to acknowledge her passing through the streets, an incredible 70 per cent of the population.

One of the most famous photos of the Queen in Australia occurred in Geelong in 1988, when she was photographed by Darryn Lyons, who was then working for the Geelong Advertiser, throwing her head back in a gusto of laughter. 'The laughing Queen', as the photo was called, captured Her Majesty's wicked sense of humour. As the story goes, she was laughing at the antics of a dog called Spud, which was wearing a wristwatch on its paw. The then mayor of Geelong, Jim Fidge, asked the dog's owner, Peter Sharp, why the dog was wearing a watch. He answered, 'So Spud knows how to go around the sheep clockwise.' The mayor then responded, 'But it's a digital watch.' At that point, the Queen burst into laughter.

Such was the Queen's affection for Australia that, in 1966, the Queen and Prince Philip sent Prince Charles, as he was then, to school at Geelong Grammar's Timbertop campus near Macedon in Victoria. By all reports, Prince Charles adapted well to the arduous hikes in the mountains, the chopping of firewood to keep the boilers alight and a solid dose of Australian schoolboy humour. He has retained that very special connection with the great state I now represent in this place.

During the same visit in 1988, the Queen opened this building, the new Parliament House. As we heard yesterday at the national memorial service on the national day of mourning, the Queen acknowledged that her reign and the constitutional monarchy depended on the people she served. She said:

… a permanent home has been provided for Parliament, which is both the living expression of that Federation and the embodiment of the democratic principles of freedom, equality and justice.

Parliamentary democracy is a compelling ideal, but it is a fragile institution. It cannot be imposed and it is only too easily destroyed. It needs the positive dedication of the people as a whole, and of their elected representatives, to make it work.

On behalf of the people of Victoria, I convey my deepest condolences to King Charles III and the royal family who have lost a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.

In his first speech, King Charles III honoured his beloved mother and pledged to serve with the same unswerving devotion. He said:

Thank you for your love and devotion to our family and to the family of nations you have served so diligently all these years. May flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest.

Rest in eternal peace, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.