Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I do not want or feel any need for affection from the Leader of the House, Chief Government Whip, but I certainly think that his bark is much worse than his bite. He has a difficult job and he does it as well as he possibly can—I will put it that way, Chief Government Whip. His staff give him great support. I see Jo in the adviser’s box. She really is the Leader of the House. Without her, the Leader of the House would be utterly bereft, without moorings and simply floating on the ocean. I thank his staff for making sure that he does not make too many mistakes in his attempts to manage the House.

I should also think my own staff, my long-suffering staff, led by my chief of staff, Adam Howard, who has been with for about six or seven years. He leads a great team in my office here in Canberra but also in my electorate. I will not name them all. They all do a marvellous job. I will name, however, my personal assistant, Kaye Gaskin, who has had to put up with a lot over the years, as all our PAs do. She does a fantastic job.

This is a different kind of parliament. It is obviously a hung parliament. The crossbenchers have injected a whole new paradigm—if I dare use that word—into our deliberations. It must be very difficult for them. They have come to this place with very little parliamentary experience—in fact, some of the new members have no parliamentary experience. Yet they have been expected to get on top of the sometimes arcane operations of this place in a very short space of time. I have been here for almost 18 years and I am still learning all the time.

I have been given the signal to wrap up by the Chief Government Whip—but I have much more to say, Chief Government Whip! I do not intend to keep the House for much longer. I want to thank Kevin Rudd, the member for Griffith. On a quite serious note, I believe that the bloodless coup in June was one of the most extraordinary things that have happened in Australian politics. For a Prime Minister to be removed from office in his first term by his own party and through forces outside the parliament was a very black day for Australian democracy. The opposition feels for the member for Griffith. I know that members of the Labor Party feel for the member for Griffith. I am sure that the pain of that experience will resonate for years in the Labor Party. Even though I wanted the member for Griffith to be defeated, I wanted him to be defeated by the Australian people not by the factional bosses of the Labor Party or the now less-than-faceless bosses of the union movement. Since Mr Howes has exposed himself as one of the faceless men, I do not think that we can any longer describe him as anything other than a very major force in the running of the Labor Party in this place.

In closing, there are three other people who I would like to acknowledge. Jason Wood, the former member for La Trobe in Victoria, who was sadly defeated, had much more of a contribution to make in this place. Wilson Tuckey, the former member for O’Connor, had already made a very large and very good contribution to this place. I miss Wilson Tuckey and his advice and demands—his advice was more like demands—about what we should do in this place. He had a very insightful understanding of the standing orders and the parliament and a very good political feel. I regarded him as a close personal friend. He taught me a lot about the standing orders. He taught me about the standing orders using the same set of standing orders with the yellow post-it notes that he used to display in question time. I do not think that he really read the post-it notes; he knew it already. He is a loss to the parliament.

Finally, I thank my wife, Carolyn, and all my children—Eleanor, Barnaby, Felix and Aurelia. We are quite a crowd when we all get together, which is not as often as we would like. They have to put up with a great deal, as do the families of all members of parliament.

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