Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to join with the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and others in this condolence motion for Jeannie Ferris. Jeannie Ferris was, of course, a senator for South Australia and we were immensely proud of her as part of our Liberal Party team over here in Canberra. Others have talked of her background in New Zealand. I did not know her in those days but came to know her somewhat through the work she did in the eighties and nineties as a political staffer with Ian McLachlan; Di Laidlaw, who was a state minister and is a very close friend of mine; Dale Baker; and Rob Kerin. Jeannie was very active around the Liberal Party through all of that period and she won preselection as a Liberal Party candidate for the Senate in 1995. I am glad to say I strongly supported her for that position because I judged then, and evidence has borne it out, that she would make a very fine senator for South Australia and, indeed, for Australia as a whole. She was elected in 1996. The Deputy Prime Minister talked about the complexity of her election. As it turned out, she was a New Zealand citizen and so it had to be redone. Anyway, her appointment was reaffirmed by the South Australian parliament and we were delighted with that.

I came to know her very well in more recent years because for something like the last 10 years Senators Ferguson and Minchin and I lived in her house in Bank Street, Canberra. She lived in a flat at the top of the house and we had a bachelor environment, to say the least, on the ground floor. I will not go into a broad description of that, but Jeannie—

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