Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Peta Murphy was an incredibly genuine, vibrant and dynamic person who inspired all who met her and worked with her, with her passion for the community, for public policy and for advocacy. Over the course of her life she fought for many issues, always driven by justice and fairness. I feel privileged to have known her before entering this place and as a co-member of the class of 2019.

Quite some years ago I used to live in Melbourne's inner north, not far from Peta and her husband, Rod. This was not long after the birth of my daughter, Carina. I remember occasionally running into Peta and Rod in the street at the local shops. Carina, who had only just started talking, was very eloquent and often very articulate in loudly explaining to my wife and I why she wanted to keep on moving and not stop and engage in banter with people in the street. I remember Peta being very adept at engaging with Carina. A number of members in this place have talked about how incredible Peta was in engaging with their young children, including with clown faces in the chamber. I don't feel that I have ever won an argument with my daughter. In Peta, I think that Carina had met one of the few people who were able to match her in quick-witted, verbal jousting, and often we stopped much past Carina's usual tolerance level so that we could talk to Peta and Rod in the street.

Later, Peta became a member of the class of '19, a group that I'm also a member of. Peta achieved this distinction having contested and won the difficult seat of Dunkley in a hard-fought campaign. As with so many other things that we remember about Peta today, she showed great guts and determination not only in winning Dunkley but in winning it on the second attempt. She was a marginal seat campaigner par excellence, but, for Peta, marginal seat campaigning wasn't a burden. I think it was the only way that she probably would have wanted to campaign.

At one point during the 2019 campaign, I remember seeing Peta's team out campaigning at the crack of dawn at the Frankston train station, all of them imbued with her infectious enthusiasm. I remember thinking at the time that the sitting member must have been in trouble, and that's how it turned out.

Following the 2019 election, one of the key members of my office when I was a state MP moved across to join Peta's office. Whenever I talked to him about the new office, it was clear to me that he was thoroughly enjoying the energy and camaraderie of the new team. If anything, I would listen to his stories of the amazing team Dunkley and wonder if he looked back on his time with me as a somewhat dull time. I also knew other members of her team, and they all had the same enthusiasm.

What was clear to me, whenever Peta regularly popped up on my Facebook feed, was that Peta was continuously immersed in her community as if she was perpetually in the final week of yet another hard fought campaign—not out of necessity but rather out of the joy that she had from representing her local community. She was always finding the time to be at another school or with another sporting group or another volunteer organisation, and doing so with unrivalled enthusiasm.

During our first term together, Peta and I were both on the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics with Andrew Leigh. Peta always brought curiosity, humour and humanity to a committee that didn't necessarily have all of those three in spades. I remember Peta questioning the Governor of the Reserve Bank on a range of topics that it was clear hadn't been raised in detail with him by the committee before, such as the political balance of think tanks which the RBA engaged with, gender balance within the organisation and the organisation's modelling of longer-term environmental risks. Peta also raised these and similar issues with the big four bank CEOs and many other stakeholders in the realm that the committee dealt with.

The fact that Peta had raised these issues had an immediate impact on a range of aspects of the banks and other organisations' operations. Peta brought a fresh, intelligent and creative perspective that added greatly to our examination of economic policy and our examination of a range of important institutions. This just reflected Peta's contribution across so many aspects of parliament.

As Chair of the Social Policy and Legal Affairs Committee, Peta made a significant and long-lasting contribution, a contribution that reflected a number of her longstanding policy interests. Peta had already made a huge contribution in broader area of health policy, both through the causes that she championed, such as a national register for those with metastatic cancer, and probably even more impactfully through the brave personal example that she set. She added to all of that the contributions she had already made in her role as chair, and, as so many in this debate have noted, the report her committee handed down in June of this year, You win some, you lose more, contains 31 very important recommendations related to the regulation of gambling. What is already clear is that Peta ensured that this committee, through these unanimously adopted recommendations, has already made a rigorous and forward-leaning contribution to an important debate on an extremely significant and complex social policy issue. She challenged the status quo through a report that typified her and her contribution to this place. This is just a part of the legacy that Peta leaves in this place, but it is emblematic, rigorous, thorough, brave and deals head-on with a vitally important issue involving disadvantage and vulnerability.

I pass on my heartfelt condolences to Peta's soulmate and husband, Rod, who has been a remarkable life partner for her and a source of unstinting support through her most difficult times, to her parents and sisters and her whole family, to the hardworking members of her office who loved her so much and to her many friends.

At the start of Peta's parliamentary career, she said that she would like to leave Australian politics and democracy in better shape than she found it. Through the determination she showed in her fight against cancer, through her unwavering commitment to her local community, through her tireless and impactful policy work and through the generous and inspiring role that she played in the lives of her family, her colleagues and her friends, she achieved this aspiration on a grand scale. May she rest in peace.

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