Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I am glad that you are with him as well. He leads an excellent team. Like the Manager of Opposition Business and I, the whips also talk to each other on a daily basis to keep the business flowing and to make sure everybody gets a chance to represent their electorate. That is the purpose of a good whips team—to make sure the members who have been elected to this place get the chance to represent their electorates, to put their arguments, to make their speeches and to do what they can to be good members serving their electorates.

I would also like to thank your staff, Mr Speaker, led by Cate Clunies-Ross, a person I have known very well for a very long period of time. They are very competent and I think they have taken over the role very successfully.

I would also like to thank the Manager of Opposition Business, the member for Watson. The member for Watson and I have had quite a challenging year in some respects. We have been thrust together far too often over issues to do with entitlements and family travel. I must say that I think both of us were rather unfairly treated, but we have come through that process and held our families intact and made them understand that this is just the vagaries of politics. I hope that we have a less challenging year next year from a family point of view. I thank him for his good cheer, integrity and honesty in his dealings with me and with the government. It is a very important relationship, and it is a relationship that can only work on the basis of your word being your bond. I have to say that, whether it has been the member for Watson or the member for Grayndler—and I hope they would say the same of me—that has been the case.

I do not think I could finish without mentioning Don Randall and his tragic passing. As the member for Canning, he is the only member we have lost this year. Every now and then a member of parliament does pass away, and it is a very traumatic period for everyone in the parliament, not just the party from which that member comes. Don Randall was a personal friend and a colleague. I spoke on the condolence motion for him when he passed away, but I would like to say in closing that we miss him and we will continue to remember him in this place.

Finally, I would like to thank my family for their forbearance. As Tony Abbott is very fond of saying, we are volunteers for this business; they are conscripts. My children are getting older in the service. My twins are now 15. I have a 13-year-old and a seven-year-old. They have only ever known politics. They are very good and very sensible, and I am very proud of them and very lucky to have them.

I wish everybody season's greetings or a happy Christmas, as I know the Manager of Opposition Business will wish everybody. Happy Christmas!

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