Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

She'd organised room for all of my colleagues to sit behind me for what was really tough. I didn't know it and wasn't asking her to, but that was the kind of measure of a person she was. She just knew what to say and what to do at the right point in time.

I did campaign with her. It was my pleasure to campaign with her during her unsuccessful 2016 campaign and again in the 2019 campaign. In 2016 she was up against a formidable opponent in Bruce Billson. He got up, just, in 2016, but she stood up again in 2019 and won through. She was a consummate professional. She walked into a room and everyone warmed to her. It was a great pleasure to work alongside her.

I had the pleasure of campaigning and working with her again in the last election. I recall I was down in her electorate in March earlier this year. We'd organised a forum in an aged-care facility. There were about 100 people lined up there, and I had underestimated the amount of time it was going to take for me to get from Melbourne to Frankston South—it was about 40 minutes longer than I had estimated. When I got there, I saw Peta on stage cracking jokes and entertaining a roomful of the elderly residents. She was holding the fort as if it was the most natural thing in the world. It was a measure of the person she was. She was warm, she was engaging and she always knew what to do in those difficult circumstances.

The job of an MP, as all of us know, is demanding and tiring. I can't begin to imagine how demanding and tiring it was for Peta when she was juggling those difficult public responsibilities with her own personal turmoil and health problems. Everybody would have forgiven her if she said, 'This is all too much,' and just pulled up stumps and finished. Everybody would have forgiven her. As a mark of who she was, she did none of that.

A number of colleagues have commented about the fact that she was here until Tuesday last week. Her last contribution in this parliament was asking a question in question time. Therein, she got in her car, went home and straight to hospital. I'm so happy that she got to spend her final hours with her beloved husband, Rod. Like all other speakers before me, I offer my condolences to her wonderful family, Rod, her sisters and mum and dad, and all who knew and loved her.

Because it is parliament I want to say something about the job not yet completed that Peta was working on. She threw her heart and soul into the parliamentary committee that was looking at online gambling, particularly the report that she published You win some, you lose more. I share a passion with that. If you just pick it up you will see the very forceful, blunt, un-ignorable truths that were grouped together in that report:

Australians outspend the citizens of every other country on online gambling. This is wreaking havoc in our communities.

…   …   …

The torrent of advertising is inescapable. It is manipulating an impressionable and vulnerable audience to gamble online.

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Australia would be diminished if sport was to be so captured by gambling revenue that providing an opportunity for betting came to be seen as its primary purpose.

I wholeheartedly endorse those words. I think it would be a great tribute to our friend if this parliament took seriously the job of reform in this area, to take that report and ensure that it doesn't just sit on the shelf—another parliamentary committee report. We see that as the joint mission of this parliament, to take forward the reforms that our wonderful friend and parliamentary colleague committed to writing as her last contribution to public life.

She was a great mate, a great colleague, a fantastic parliamentarian and just an outstanding human being. There are many in this place who were closer to her than I, and I don't try to pretend otherwise, but I admired her enormously. I'm going to miss her, and, from the tenor of other contributions in this place, I'm not alone. Vale, Peta Murphy, and love to all who loved you so much.

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