Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) | Hansard source

At the heart of our democracy is the principle that ordinary people with enough passion for their ideas and enough commitment to their community can make a real impact on the floor of the Australian parliament, and Trish Crossin's life is a testament to that principle.

Arriving in the Northern Territory in Yirrkala on the Gove Peninsula in 1981, she became the first woman elected from the Northern Territory to the Australian parliament, and she made her mark in this place and in many other places across her life. A committed unionist, she was a significant figure in the early history of the NTEU, and she was the founding chair of the territory's Working Women's Centre. The current CEO of that centre, Abbey Kendall, has described how Trish operated, saying:

She was relentless. Trish was known for turning up, pushing hard and refusing to leave offices.

She did not accept vague assurances or half answers.

Certainly for her Labor colleagues who knew her through the Labor Party this is a very recognisable description because she brought that same energy to our party and to this parliament. In fact, Hansard records that her first speech had so riled up the Howard government senators that it descended into interjections across the chamber. She was a fierce advocate in the very best traditions of Labor women, and she was smart and tough and completely committed. She used her time here as a tireless advocate for education, First Nations communities, the environment and the advancement of women.

I couldn't date when I first met Trish, but it was many years before I came to this place. It was through our shared involvement in our national party organisation and through our shared interest in the advancement of women and women's issues in that organisation. The many people who worked with her in the Labor Party through that period will remember her as a person of deep conviction, with deep commitment to the party and deep commitment to her community. Every time I saw her in that period, during her period as a senator and after, she was full of energy, full of warmth, full of opinions and full of enthusiasm that never stopped. It was a mark of her commitment to advancing the interests that she believed in and the interests of the communities that she sought to represent.

My heart goes out to her family, to you, Mark, and to Paul, Melinda, Amanda and our beloved colleague Kate. We in the Labor Senate family know that her smarts and her courage and her sense of justice will live on.