Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, thank you for those warm congratulations. It means a lot coming from such a long-serving and respected member of this place. It is great to follow my good friend, the member for Swan, in talking about sport and the Olympics, and so forth. He forgot to mention that he was an outstanding sportsman himself and his son is following in those footsteps. It is just a pity that his son chooses the wrong football teams to play for! There is a far better team for him to be playing for in South Australia, and that is Sturt. He should do it, and we should get him across there as soon as we can. That is another matter, of course. While I am also on my feet and the member for Chifley is in the chamber, and we are talking about families, I should congratulate the member for Chifley on his recent addition—his first child. It is a big step in a young man's life and a big change for your life. A huge change for your life. I congratulate you very much. I am sure everything is going well. Well done!

While we are in this friendly and jovial spirit it is a great opportunity to speak on the efforts of Olympians. As the member for Swan so rightly pointed out, people do not get to the Olympics by chance. It is always terrific to watch the best of anything at the highest level. We will see it in a couple of weeks time with the AFL grand final. It is a great day because you see the best athletes at the highest level under the most pressure. It is an extraordinary thing for Olympians: all the work that goes in over four years to get to that spot, to get that opportunity, and having to execute their skills at the highest level under the highest pressure. They are extraordinary individuals, each of them. The way they carry themselves does us very proud. I know there was some criticism, I thought unfairly, of the swimmers during the Olympics. Ultimately, they are competing with the world's best. Sure, we would have been happier had we won some more gold medals, however, I know each of them put their best into the Olympics. You could tell quite obviously the disappointment on some of their faces when they did not achieve what they had spent so much time trying to achieve. I think some people were overly critical of the way that that was handled. Expecting them to give the best media appearance straight after a massive disappointment is, I think, expecting far too much. That is particularly the case coming from us, a bunch of politicians who do not always get our media right, even though we practice and prepare for it. I think it is wrong to judge someone who has just jumped out of a swimming pool and been confronted with TV cameras when they are feeling pretty low about what has just occurred. I think it is unfortunate that that commentary went on. But we should not delve too much into that; we should celebrate the achievements of those—particularly those from our electorates—who got the opportunity to represent Australia.

We had a couple of exceptional people—all of them were exceptional—but we had the first brother and sister Australian Olympic track cyclists, Annette and Alexander Edmondson from Stirling. They did so well. In fact, they achieved a bronze medal. We congratulate them very much on their unbelievable achievement. Chris Morgan of Greenhill in the rowing also achieved a bronze medal. That is two bronze medals for the Adelaide Hills, which is terrific. Harrison Peacock, who came from Mt Barker originally—where I live—but now lives in Adelaide, is pursuing his volleyball, which has a such a strong history at Heathfield High School. I particularly congratulate Harrison on representing Australia at the Olympics in the Australian volleyball team. Volleyball is not a sport I ever had much of an opportunity to play, given that I am not anywhere near tall enough to play that sport.

Also, we had the Paralympics quickly following the Olympics. Again, we had Michael Roeger from Langhorne Creek who, I think, has been to the Paralympics before. Michael has a terribly unfortunate story. He got food poisoning on the day of his run and was not able to compete in the end, which was really disappointing for him. In fact, he ended up in hospital afterwards. He was quite unwell. He is a terrific young guy and a fine young athlete. I know the Langhorne Creek footy club, which plays in its own grand final this Saturday—I wish them well against Yankalilla—had organised people to do down to the footy club to watch Michael. It was very unfortunate for Michael, but he has had a great deal of support from his community. They are very proud of Michael and his efforts. We are very proud of Michael and his efforts. We are proud of all of them for how well they represented our country in London and for the effort that they all have put in over such a long period of time.

We should not forget that many of them would now be beginning their preparations for Brazil in four years time. It is an extraordinary effort and an extraordinary commitment that these young people make. We congratulate them on it and look forward to Brazil in four years time. I think both the member for Chifley and I will be greyer and older, but we look forward very much to standing in this place in four years time and hopefully celebrating even more gold medals, but certainly celebrating their effort and achievement and their desire to do the best that they can and represent our great country on the international stage.

See this speech in context