Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today in this parliament to pay tribute to the late Dulcie Turnbull, OAM. Sadly, Dulcie passed away on 14 October 2008 and she will be sadly missed by all that knew her, in particular of course her surviving husband and four children as well as the 11 grandchildren and a great-granddaughter. Dulcie Turnbull was a councillor with the Brisbane City Council. She was first elected to the ward of Toombul in 1976 and she retired from the Brisbane City Council in 1988, having served as part of Sallyanne Atkinson’s civic cabinet from 1985-88.

It is very hard for me to express more eloquently the contribution to life that Dulcie Turnbull made than the words that have been expressed by her husband, Noel Turnbull, the accredited Courier-Mail journalist in yesterday’s Courier-Mail. In there he discussed the contribution not only that she had made to life in and around her ward of Toombul, but to Brisbane more generally.

Over the last six or seven years, or even beyond that, I have had the great pleasure of working with Noel and Dulcie. They have been wonderful people who have contributed over a lifetime to the Liberal Party. They have been active members of the Samford branch, and before that they had been active in many ways in the Liberal Party. I pay tribute to the work Dulcie did during her full life.

Dulcie was a person who was able to offer sage advice but she was also a person who was able, with the benefit of her experience, to add a great deal to campaigning not just in the federal seat in the last three elections but also before that. Sadly, she was diagnosed early in 2005 with thyroid cancer and a secondary tumour in the spine, then early in 2007 with breast cancer. By February this year, as Noel writes, the cancer had moved to the brain. She had set herself targets, and family and friends marvelled at her resistance as she hosted many visitors and even managed to ride a horse at Easter. But her condition deteriorated recently.

Her children, David, Debra, Kaye and Peter, and not just their spouses but her grandchildren and great-granddaughter, as well as Noel, will deeply miss Dulcie. She was the matriarch of the family. She was a person for whom they felt a great deal of pride and respect, and rightly so. She was a person that should be remembered as having made a great contribution to our society in a number of ways. She was accomplished in small business. She will be sadly missed by all in the Liberal family, and, most importantly, our sympathies go out to her family at this time. (Time expired)