Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Like a lot of colleagues, as I sought to prepare for this I read Peta Murphy's first speech. As I did so, the voice in my head was hers, loud and clear. There's a moment where she begins her thankyous. She talks about her friends who play squash, and there is a giggle that emanates from the rest of us. She continues for a moment and then she stops. She looks up with a grin, with a glint in her eye, departs from her prepared speech and asks why everyone laughs whenever she talks about squash. She then gives an impromptu history on Australian women's squash—Heather McKay and Vicki Cardwell, who was in the gallery on that day. Then, having chastised us all for laughing at her sport, she announces that she's going to start the section again, which is exactly what she does. Right there, in that moment, is her sense of humour—a bit wicked—her bright intelligence and her sense of fun and joy. As I read that part of her speech, I could remember the moment, and that moment played out in my head completely vividly, just as it was the first time. And it was hard not to cry, because the idea that Peta Murphy is no longer among us feels totally preposterous.

I didn't meet Peta until she came to this place, but Peta had been a staffer. She had worked as a lawyer in Victoria, as a criminal barrister—a pathway not too far distant from my own. The three bosses that she referred to in her first speech—Duncan Kerr, Rob Stary and Brendan O'Connor—are all people who are in my life. Indeed, my wife, Rachel, met Peta before I did when she attended a fundraiser for Peta amongst the Labor law community in Victoria. So when I first met Peta here, for me her reputation quite literally preceded her. That reputation was of a person who was thoroughly decent, who was very smart and who was going to make an impact in this place, and that reputation has been completely fulfilled in the presence she has given here. But no-one told me about the fun Peta. No-one told me about the emotionally intelligent Peta. No-one told me about the magnetic-personality Peta. So, I got to know that person all on my own.

In this building, relationships can be complex; they can be intense—and that's probably as it should be. It reflects the complexity of our society and it reflects the material we work and deal with. But, against that backdrop, to observe that every dealing I had with Peta Murphy was only good is genuinely remarkable. We can perhaps find a hint of that in her speech, when she said she aspired to be part of a generation of Australian politicians who worked to recover the public's faith in our democratic system and who strove to re-harness politics as that vehicle for enlarging opportunities and enlarging our national imagination. There was a philosophical underpinning to Peta Murphy's personality, and she belonged to that rare group of people, which perhaps we all aspire to, of whom it can be said that they were much loved. And she certainly was.

To spend a day with Peta, as I did on numerous occasions, was to experience the delight of having Bert or Ernie, her puppies, thrust into your arms to have a photo taken to be put on the picture wall of her electorate office, or to go and visit one of her local businesses, such as the Eeny Meeny Cafe, and see on the face of the owner an already great affection for their new federal member. To do that was to have a happy to day and to get in the car at the end of it and to drive home with a fundamentally optimistic outlook on life.

I can remember an occasion when Peta and I attended the Frankston Centenary Tennis Club's open day. We were in our business dress, but inevitably tennis racquets were thrust into our hands. Now, Peta was an accomplished sportsperson. I am not; my greatest aspiration in that moment was for racquet to connect with ball. But Peta played tennis strokes with an exquisite timing, which portrayed a complete understanding of how her body worked. By mistake, really, I hit a ball away from her, and instantaneously she reacted—quite competitively, I might say—to pursue the chase. But, not wearing tennis shoes, before long her really inappropriate footwear saw her take a tumble, and all of us took a deep breath. But then, in an instant, she was jumping up, a big smile on her face. Any sense of awkwardness completely evaporated in a cackle of laughter, which was totally infectious. In the hilarity of that moment, there she was: completely full of life—effervescent, distilled joy.

Peta's first speech was full of emotion. She talked about the battle that she had had with breast cancer and then, in a cruel twist, she revealed that in the couple of weeks beforehand the cancer had returned. I think in that moment all of us had our collective hearts in our mouths about whether one day, this day, would ensue. It would always be difficult, but as we got to know Peta, as we saw her qualities, it amplified the potential tragedy, because, absent the cancer, Peta was 50, and, given everything that she had already done, she could have expected a 20-year career here and she could have been anything. What we have is a shortened career, but, to use the phrase of another, we have been given a profile in courage—each and every day her indomitable spirit, each and every day her irrepressible joy.

Breast cancer is all too common. For all of us, we know people in our lives who have wrestled with it—a friend in Geelong, my chief of staff, my sister. Thankfully, there are many really wonderful and inspiring stories of survival, but sadly there are also too many stories like Peta's. Somehow, I feel that Victorian Labor women have been particularly affected, going right back to Pauline Toner, Lynne Kosky, Fiona Richardson and more recently Jane Garrett. That is a list about which Peta would have been acutely aware. But she said that she wanted to use the platform of this place to advocate on behalf of those who had suffered, and that vow she maintained right through until last week when she was here to participate in the launch by Breast Cancer Network Australia of their national report into the establishment of the national registry for metastatic cancer patients. That is an act of enormous bravery and courage—and a call to action, which, in Peta's words, would be to commit to the reform and funding that our health system needs and to do whatever is required to ensure that Australia trains, retains and invests in the healthcare professionals and researchers who make our system great.

I didn't know Peta Murphy as well as some of my colleagues. To them, to her family and particularly to Rod: you are all deeply in my thoughts. But for me I am just so grateful and so honoured that in the last 4½ years I had the enormous privilege of coming to know Peta Murphy. May she rest in peace.

See this speech in context