Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the parliament draws to a close, I want to make some reflections, some Christmas valedictories. I know it always strikes us as a little bit strange that at the end of a parliamentary session in November we do Christmas valedictories. I do not want to give the impression to anyone that we are leaving this place and going on holidays. It always frustrates us when members of the public think that. People will be returning to their electorates for a full round of work, including those very special end-of-year school events that we all look forward to.

This has been a year with many different facets. It has been a year when some have enjoyed triumph on the sporting fields. Whether it has been the Maroons, the Broncos, the Roar, the Reds, the Firebirds, it has been a good year for Queensland. Tassie bagged the Sheffield Shield. A good grand final for the Cats was a good grand final for everyone who does not barrack for Collingwood—and that is quite a lot of them!

It was a year of Australian achievements. Brian Schmidt was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. Ben Roberts-Smith was awarded the Victoria Cross for valour. We saw an athletics world championship award Athlete of the Year to Sally Pearson. We saw Cadel Evans take the Tour de France. We saw Sam Stosur win the US Open women's singles tennis finals. That was a remarkable event.

At the same time as these triumphs we also saw much tragedy. Here in our own nation we had the summer of floods, natural disasters and the cyclone that hit so many Australian families so hard. We saw the earthquake in New Zealand and then the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. We have seen the best of times and the worst of times in that sense, but even as we have seen the worst of times we have seen the best in our people. We certainly saw the best in Australians as they pulled together during those days of our natural disasters, as well as going to the help of others in within our region.

Some remarkable Australians died this year: Paul Lockyer, John Bean and Gary Ticehurst in that dreadful helicopter accident; Rob Chalmers, a legend inside Canberra; Nancy Wake, a legend around the world; Claude Choules, the last combat veteran of the Great War; Margaret Olley and Lionel Rose, two of our greatest in the fields of arts and sport. In this place we remembered friends and members of the House who left us this year: David Jull, Clyde Holding, Ralph Hunt. On too many dreadful occasions we had condolences for those we had lost in Afghanistan. We remember them; we spoke about them on Monday during the debate on Afghanistan and I am sure as we move to the festive season, our thoughts are going to be with our magnificent ADF personnel and the civilians who work alongside them, who will spend the Christmas season not at home with family and friends, but in those very rugged surrounds of Afghanistan.

As this year winds down I do want to say a big thank you to so many people who make this place work. Let me start with the Leader of the Opposition. I am not sure that saying he helps make this place work was quite the right intro, but when I was shadow minister for health I did publicly announce that my wish was to make him Leader of the Opposition and to ensure that he did the job for a long, long, long time. I have succeeded in the first part of delivering on that Gillard promise and I am dedicating 2012 and 2013 to delivering on the rest of it, making sure that he is there for a long, long, long time. To Mr Speaker of today and of course to former Speaker Harry Jenkins, to the Deputy Speaker, to the Speaker's panel: we are sorry for everything we put you through. I cannot really say we are going to try to do better, though we will work as hard as we can to honour our Speaker's panel. To Henry Thomson, my department's parliamentary liaison officer, and his team, thank you. To the Clerk and Deputy Clerk, to the Serjeant-at-Arms and to the attendants, thank you. They make us look good and someone really needs to; the clerks help all of us—members of the opposition and members of the government alike—get it right time after time. To the Parliamentary Library, Hansard staff, Table Office staff, Parliamentary Relations Office and the guides who take people through on tours, thank you for everything that you do. To the cooks, the switchboard operators, the computer personnel, security, gardeners and everybody who keeps things ticking over, they have done a magnificent job this year not only in their daily work but in hosting huge-profile visits like those of the Queen and President Obama. A big thank you to them and to the cleaning staff, often unseen and unthanked, but not in my office. I would like to say to Anna and Lucia: thank you for everything you do and thank you to all of the cleaning staff in Parliament House.

To Aussies, I do not get there personally much any more, but I recognise the cardboard cup when it comes and I clutch for it with a certain sense of relief. To those who do the child care, to the travel agents, to the Comcar drivers, where would we be without them? To the Broadcasting staff, thank you for everything that you do. To the parliamentary press gallery, I am not sure thanks is the right word, but I will be shouting them a drink tonight so we will have time for some reflections then. To the secretary of my department, Dr Watt, Watty, and to the great Australian Public Service, thank you for what you do. On behalf of the Labor Party, thank you to George Wright and the ALP national organisation. To all of our volunteers and members, thank you for keeping the faith.

To my own staff, my Chief of Staff, Ben Hubbard, and everybody who works alongside me, they are magnificent: thank you, thank you, thank you. To my electorate staff who keep those home fires burning for me, they are a wonderful team and I want to thank them too. To the Australian Federal Police I see so much of, thank you for keeping me safe and for your good humour as you do it.

Of course, I would like to say something to my colleagues on this side of the House, my parliamentary colleagues one and all. It has been a very big year. It has been a year in which we have worked with others of goodwill in this parliament to achieve remarkable results for our country, when we have not been afraid of the tough debates, when we have not been afraid of working with crossbenchers to help this nation seize the opportunities of the future. I want to thank my colleagues in this parliament for that. In my Labor team I particularly want to thank the Deputy Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the world's greatest treasurer according to Euromoney. Thank you very much for your contribution to the nation and your personal support for me. It is very much appreciated. We have been through some times together, but I would not have it any other way.

To the Leader of the House, Albo—you have to love a man who loves his job and Albo does, there is no doubt about that. He loves his job here, loves his job in cabinet and has found a love of country music as well—who'd have thought? To my ministry and parliamentary secretaries, thank you for playing your role in leading us to a future in this country for working Australians, a future of opportunity. To the Senate leadership, Senators Evans and Conroy, thank you. We have learned some tolerance in this place now knowing what you have gone through over many long years. To the team of whips, the Chief Government Whip and his team, thank you very much indeed for everything that you do.

I would like to very specifically say to the Labor team, as the year comes to an end, something I picked up from Ed Husic, the member for Greenway—

A government member: Chifley.

the member for Chifley—I am tired—when he did his maiden speech in this parliament. He said something that always struck me and so I am going to use these words to my Labor colleagues in conclusion. This is a saying in his original language translated into English: 'From my heart to yours, I can't thank you enough.' Thank you.

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am happy to join the Prime Minister in extending good wishes at this Christmas time to everyone who works in this parliament to support our day-to-day activities. The Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, will join us shortly and I am sure he will add to my remarks. As are all parliamentary years, it has been a long and trying year. There have been difficult moments, testy moments. We have perhaps had the noisiest parliament that we have had for a very long time. There are always surprises, and I guess today has been one of those.

We do depend upon a large number of people, thousands of people, to make this parliament work and work well. All of us are personally dependent upon our own staff and the people who work with us, and those who support us in our own communities both at a party organisational level and within our work as members of parliament. We pause today to say thank you to all of those. There are so many good things that they do for us and perhaps we do not always say thanks at the time, but they are appreciated and at the end of the year, as we start to enjoy the Christmas celebrations, this is the time to say thank you.

I thank the staff in this parliament, the clerks and all their team, the parliamentary staff, the library people—the Prime Minister has gone through a long list including Comcar drivers and the people who work in the travel office et cetera. I thank the IT people. Occasionally the system seems to work but not always; we are grateful when it does and we realise how dependent we are on their work when it does not. To all those and to those who look after us in the dining rooms and all other places, we certainly say thank you. I know there are often comments after these valedictories that somebody has been left out of the thankyous. That is why I have not attempted a long list. I know there are many, many, many people who make this parliament work and make it work well. We are grateful to them and their contribution even though they may not be mentioned by name.

From my own perspective, now that Leader of the Opposition is here and will make some more general comments on behalf of the opposition, I thank the Leader of the Opposition, Julie Bishop and our coalition colleagues and the whole shadow ministry team. They have been great to work with. We have dealt with a lot of policy issues and difficult organisational matters and it has always been done in a very good spirit. I especially thank the Leader of Opposition Business, Chris Pyne, who never lets us get our questions up and all that sort of thing, but nonetheless the day seems to be well managed and the objectives are achieved. I very much appreciate the support and assistance of my own parliamentary team and colleagues, and I acknowledge especially Nigel Scullion, my deputy, and Senators Joyce and Nash in the other place and those who contribute so much to make our organisation work well: Brad Henderson and the team in The Nationals Secretariat, and the wonderful and cooperative relationship we have with Brian Loughnane and the Liberal Party Secretariat. We do work very well as a team. We have very limited resources between us and we therefore need to get maximum value out of every person and every dollar that we have available.

In my own Canberra office, I have David Witrow and his team. In my electorate office I have been so fortunate that in my time in parliament, over 20 years now, I still have two of my original electorate staff and the 'newcomer' has already been there about 15 years. They are a wonderfully stable and supportive group and that means an enormous amount to me.

Christmas is a very special time of the year. It is an occasion when families can get together. Members of parliament who spend so much time away from their families especially treasure the opportunity to be in the company of their families when politics can be switched off for a while. We love to have our family and friends around, and the celebrations and the decorations and the lights of Christmas make this a very special time for us all.

It is also a time, though, when we need to think of those less fortunate, those people who do not have family and friends with them, who have troubles to deal with. This is the disaster season for our country, and I pray that the two months or so that we will be away from this place are not like the two months last year when there were so many events particularly flooding in my own area and cyclones which caused so much damage. We want good rain and we want good seasonal conditions, but I hope that they will come in moderation and at the right time so that this will be a peaceful season especially for our disaster coordinators and those that we rely upon to provide assistance in those times.

I appeal to all Australians to travel safely on the road. There are so many extra vehicles at that time and people who perhaps do not drive so much on the road at other times, and we all need to be careful and observant to make sure that we get to our destinations safely.

Then there are all those people who have to work over Christmas, because we still need to keep the hospitals open and the aged-care facilities, and we need to make sure that we have available the basic services, even the shops these days that seem to be open for much of the Christmas period. We do appreciate the special effort that these people make.

In talking about people who are working, often in hazardous conditions, I also concur with the Prime Minister's remarks and acknowledge the role of the Australian troops who will be in Afghanistan this Christmas away from family and friends and facing the added danger of that conflict. During the last couple of weeks I have attended two of the funerals of Australians who were killed in the especially tragic recent events. You appreciate how much of a loss it is to our nation when these talented, athletic, skilful young Australians have their lives cut short. I guess my overarching thought after leaving both of those events was the view that we owe it to those people to finish the task in Afghanistan. We owe it to those who have given their lives to make sure that we continue at the task even over Christmas and make sure that we bring peace and stability to the world just as quickly as we can.

It has been an exciting year in the parliament, as it always is. There is a lot more ahead of us, no doubt, in the year ahead. I hope that all members will enjoy a wonderful Christmas season and a pleasant break, and will come back refreshed, ready to do business again. I hope that those who support us, and their families and friends, will also enjoy a pleasant Christmas holiday, when the real message of Christmas rings in their hearts, and that we all express our appreciation and goodwill to our fellow Australians to enjoy this season and to plan for the next year in the hope that it will be both safe and prosperous for us all.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I congratulate you on your new office and I look forward to working with you. It has been quite a year. It has been particularly a very different year in my home state of Queensland where, in January this year, most of the state was under water. We had the impact of the floods not just in South-East Queensland but far wider than that, right across the state. Then we had the impact of Cyclone Yasi in North Queensland and Far North Queensland. All this had a tremendous impact on our state.

What it really showed was a fantastic community spirit in Queensland and right around the country. We had the 'gumboot army' come out right across the state, people flying into the state from elsewhere to help their fellow Australians. I have never seen such a community mobilisation in response to a threat in my whole life in politics. It really warmed my heart to see the reaction on the ground of people helping fellow citizens who were in trouble. It was, therefore, a great reminder of how our nation has succeeded and a great demonstration of what we can do when we work together standing shoulder to shoulder. I guess we may need to see that same spirit come forward again, if you are looking at the forecasts that are coming from the Bureau of Meteorology at the moment. But I am very confident that we have learned from what has occurred this year and we will be able to handle those circumstances with all of the energy that we mustered to handle the circumstances right throughout this year.

It has also been a very interesting year in the national and international economy. The storm clouds are gathering again in the global economy but, because our economy is strong and because we have put in place arrangements over the last four years to further strengthen our economy and support jobs, we are in a far stronger position than any other developed economy to handle the worst that the world can throw at us. Something like 750,000 jobs have been created in Australia in the last four years, 100,000 of those in the last year alone. When you look at our economy, it is some six per cent bigger now than it was prior to the global financial crisis. There is virtually no other developed economy that can make a claim like that. Why is it important? It gives peace of mind to our citizens that we have a strong economy which can continue to deliver jobs, and of course incomes, whereby people can support their families. So we can look to the year ahead confident in the knowledge that the fundamentals in our economy are strong and we are in the best position to deal with the worst that the world can throw at us. I want to say a few things about the parliament because there was a degree of scepticism that the parliament would necessarily work well in the circumstances of minority government. What we have seen in the past year is not just a functioning parliament but a parliament functioning very well. Something in excess of 250 bills have passed through the parliament.

Debate interrupted.