Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Is there something I don’t know about? Joe, you are loved and revered by many of us on this side of the House, which should cause pain and discomfort to those on your side of the House. We wish you as the Manager of Opposition Business and your very young family all the best for Christmas. It is a really important time when littlies are growing up. It is a real challenge for those in this House, not just the mums but the dads as well, to have their littlies in the most formative years of their lives separated for extended periods of time from their parents. This has a significant impact on the emotional fabric of family life. Therefore, this is a season to be grabbed with both hands to celebrate the enduring value and virtue of family. As I said recently in another context, all of us should remember that in this place we strut and fret our hour upon the stage and are heard no more but what is of enduring significance are our families, our friendships and our relationships. These are of great and eternal value.

To other members and senators on the opposition benches I extend also best greetings from Therese and our family and I hope that you with your families have a restful time over the break ahead. The arduous life which this parliament presents us all requires us all to take a breather and I hope that you are able to do so as well. If I could also turn my attention now to you, Mr Speaker, this has been your first year in the position. We on this side of the House hope that you, Harry, get a decent break as well. We know that this office presents particular challenges in terms of maintaining the sobriety of this House, particularly when you have someone as outrageous as Joe on the other side. Therefore, maintaining the dignity and decorum of the office of the Speaker, despite the outrageous challenges to your authority, which occasionally arise, has been well discharged by you and we thank you for the professionalism with which you have discharged the office of Speaker.

Thanks also to the Deputy Speaker, Anna Burke, for conducting the office with good humour and good temper. My thanks as well to Tony Levy and the Parliamentary Liaison Office for the excellent work that they have done. I would also like to record my thanks to the enormous efforts of the 3,000 or so people who work in this place. It must be one of the larger workplaces in the country with 3,000 or so people in this one place who look after everything that goes on here each day in ways mostly invisible to us all and who make it possible for us to get on with the business of being parliamentarians. So through you, Ian, the Clerk of the House of Representatives, I extend my thanks to your staff, the Serjeant-at-Arms and the attendants.

The Parliamentary Library—an institution I have cruelly exploited in years past, and I am sure those opposite are now cruelly exploiting as well—is a great institution. It has often been the habit of incumbent governments to look askance at the activities of the Parliamentary Library, particularly when they do good work for oppositions. Can I just say the wheel turns for us all. This is a great institution which well serves the parliament because the debate here is much better shaped and had if it is properly informed. They are a fine group of men and women who do a very professional job for politicians on all sides of the political spectrum.

To the Hansard staff, some of whom have the challenge of lending dignity, grammar and cogency to the arguments put forward from this dispatch box and from elsewhere in the parliament, all I can say is: well done. It is a challenge to render elegant that which has sometimes been rendered inelegantly. I would put on record my appreciation for their skill and their professionalism in lending to what we say in this place a higher form of art than would otherwise be the case. Not that I suggest that they ever change anything, but I appreciate the fact that grammar sometimes mysteriously appears and agreement and other things that we were taught in primary school suddenly are made manifest and clear when they may not have been as clear cut in the original delivery. My thanks to the Hansard staff, it is a great job that they do.

My thanks to the Table Office, the Parliamentary Relations Office, the HRG travel agents, the broadcasting staff, the IT support, the security guards, who have had some real challenges to deal with, the cleaning staff, the maintenance staff, the gardeners, the switchboard, the catering staff and our great Comcar drivers, who have to fit in with the fluctuating timetables of political life. Let us always remember that our Comcar drivers have families as well and it is a challenge for them to fit in with what we do here. My thanks to Comcar for the work that they have done for us in this year past because it has made our professional life more able to be done.

On the government side, I place on record my appreciation for my deputy, Julia Gillard. Julia has been a fantastic and loyal deputy during the course of this year and I cannot place more highly on record my appreciation for her work, both as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion. Apart from all that, she is a really good person. She is part of the glue of the HMAS Labor government and I really appreciate the work that she has done; it has been first class. I hope you have a decent break, Julia.

I also thank all members of the cabinet led by the Treasurer; Wayne has had a huge job on his hands this year. Whatever our partisan divides may be on the global financial crisis, I think those opposite would appreciate that the workload has simply gone up. It has been a tough old time simply dealing with the volume of that which is going on and dealing with matters which frankly have not been in the in-trays of Treasury for decades and decades and decades. This has been an extraordinary challenge for those of us who engage with those processes and the work on our side has been led by the Treasurer, Wayne Swan. I thank Wayne for his work and the excellent job that he has done in what has been a difficult year for the nation when it comes to the challenges delivered to us by the international economy.

To the other cabinet ministers, one and all, without naming them one by one I said on the public record a week or so ago how proud I am of each one of them, how proud I am of each one of the ministry and how proud I am of the parliamentary secretaries for the work that they have done as an executive. This has been an excellent team performance. For a new government coming in, a government which had been out of office for 12 years, I say sincerely and publicly here in the parliament how much I genuinely appreciate not just the collegiality of what has been done and the professionalism which has been displayed but also the extraordinary sense of team which has characterised the work of this government. I thank you one and all for it. The backbench is supposed to, ‘Hear, hear!’ at that point by the way!

I turn to other members of the Australian parliamentary Labor Party—the hear-hearing now ensues! As I said to them most recently in that most hallowed institution called the caucus, the work that they have done with their constituencies and their members of parliament right across the country is very much appreciated by me.

The work of a member of parliament—and those opposite I am sure would agree with the proposition that I am putting—is an extraordinary range of duties. We range from being legislators as members of parliament, through being expositors of government or opposition messages through the mass media, through being the providers of pastoral care in our local communities, to a whole range of other functions as well. If you were to try and describe the duty statement of a member of parliament it would be a very hard thing to write down. And if it is a duty discharged well, it is also part of the essential glue which binds our local communities together. So to each member of my own parliamentary team and particularly the new members among us who have been learning as they have gone on during this first year, I say to you, one and all, what a great job you have done—and, to the continuing members, what a great job you continue to do—in supporting your local communities, your local schools, your local P&Cs, your local P&Fs, your local churches and charities, your local community organisations and your local employer associations. It has all been excellent work and it is work which must continue. In a strange way, having local community leadership like this is essential to bring together the often disparate elements which make up our local communities into something which is more than that. I appreciate therefore the leadership shown by members of parliament in so doing.

The Leader of the House: Albo. Could I thank Albo for having mastered the black arts of parliamentary process and brought distinction, competence, wit and wisdom to his role. Albo has done a great job as Leader of the House and I certainly want to extend to him publicly my appreciation for the work that he has done. I think both he and Joe alone know—and those who have preceded them in these offices—how complex that position is in terms of ensuring that the business of the House is properly prosecuted. I would thank Albo for that and the fact that he is able to manage a very good working relationship with Joe in making sure that the business of parliament is properly conducted. So, Albo: well done.

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