Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about one of the most incredible people that I think this place has ever seen despite only being here for three years. I don't know anybody who has made the kind of mark on this place in such a short time as Katie did in the short time that she was here. But I am actually going to make a fearless prediction that, even though Katie is no longer with us, her legacy will continue to be felt in this place because there were so many things that she did that I think we should all draw lessons from. She actually came here with a true belief in her heart that all she wanted to do was to make this world better for other people. So I'm glad to have had the opportunity to have known Katie for the three years that she was in this parliament and then to have known her for the time that she wasn't in this parliament and then to have had the privilege of working with her last year in the hope of getting her back into this parliament, all of us completely and utterly unaware of the challenge that Katie was facing. But right the way through that the campaign you just wouldn't have known because her commitment to her community and her commitment and her desire to deliver for the people that she wanted to deliver for, which was pretty much every Australian, absolutely never wavered the whole way through.

But I think, as Senator Sharma just mentioned, those of us who had the privilege of being able to go to Katie's funeral left there with a sense that we are really only knew one part of Katie. From almost the minute that Katie was able to make a contribution to the world she started doing it. We heard from her school principal about how even as a young person when she was at school she was already out there. She was a leader from the minute she was born. She did not become a leader; she was always a leader. She led her school community. She was the head of her debating team, which clearly served her in good stead in some of the debates we have in this place. She led that school, but she never left the school. She stayed with that school. Her children went to that school. She remained on the school board and continued to contribute to that part of her life that first started her on her leadership journey.

Then after, obviously, many years of studying, she became a paediatrician. But that wasn't enough for Katie. That wasn't enough. She then needed to continue to develop herself to be able to give to the children that she saw needed her help. She went into research—I was quite blown away—publishing more than 450 times. I won't say an exact number because I'd probably get it wrong, but something like 472 times Katie was published in peer-reviewed papers in her field of expertise, which included making sure people understood about the allergies that we as a society are now starting to see. That is such an important part of her research work that now lives on as her legacy for everything that she did. Apparently she is constantly referred to in policy papers around the world, not just here in Australia, for her contribution in her research effort.

Once again, that wasn't enough for Katie. She needed to do more. So she took the next step in her career, to come in here and continue her public life by representing her community of Higgins. It wasn't just the community of Higgins that Katie represented; it was the whole of Australia. There was never any issue that Katie wasn't prepared to prosecute. There were many times, when I was the minister for social services, that there would be a call from Katie to say that she had a group of people that she believed needed to have an audience with somebody from the government because their story was compelling, and she was prepared to tirelessly advocate for them. I'm sure the reason that Katie always had such a beautifully slim figure is that she never stopped for a minute. She probably forgot to eat because she was too busy prosecuting the issues of the people that she cared for.

I think that probably the greatest loss to this parliament was when Katie was not re-elected to come back into this place. I think all of us would proudly leave this place, even if we'd been here for a long time, if we left the legacy that Katie managed to leave in just the three short years that she was in this place.

Most particularly, our hearts go out to her family. Watching Katie's beautiful children give their contribution about their mother at the funeral and then listening to Malcolm tell their love story—which is the kind of thing that you could write a movie about—in his contribution at the funeral, we realise just how incredibly her family must be feeling the pain of losing Katie. Our hearts go out to them. Vale, Katie Allen.