Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

A few weeks ago, at a primary school in Brisbane, a grade 5 student asked me the question, 'Do you have to be good at stuff to be a politician?' My first reaction was to say, 'No'. I had to think about it for a minute. I said: 'You need to be good at reading. And you wouldn't want to be frightened of speaking in public, or your job would be a nightmare.' Then I got into the groove and went on to say the diversity of gender, age, experience and background is what makes parliament a good place and means that we make great laws. I would like to look at our three retiring senators from this side tonight and see it as a great celebration of the Liberal Party and the way it promotes diversity—the different paths and the different backgrounds of our three senators. I also will be very brief because there are others who want to say something. I would initially like to recognise the great and very principled contribution—not always contributions I have agreed with—that Senator Guy Barnett has made to this place. It may not be well known, but Senator Guy Barnett and I share the fact that a close relative of each of us has died of motor neurone disease. His advocacy in this area has been just as passionate and just as long-term and loyal as it has been in the area of diabetes. I am honoured that he has asked me if I would take on some of the advocacy for motor neurone disease in this place. They are big shoes to fill, but thank you for asking.

Senator Trood and I have spent time on the hustings—I think since 2001 we have shared Senate tickets and the like. It certainly is a way to get to know someone. I must associate myself with the remarks that Senator Joyce made about how initially in country areas sometimes people would wonder at the erudite Senator Trood. But the minute he started to speak to them, the minute he understood their issues, the minute they realised that he could reflect back to them their needs, the views changed. I remember one night in the Roma shire council rooms meeting the council came up with what I found a slightly out-of-the-square solution to their lack of population: the idea of taking in boilermaker apprentices from China for a short course. This struck me as really outside the square, but Senator Trood immediately picked up on the fact that education services are one of our great exports, saw the benefits and expounded them in a way that made them far more understandable to me. That certainly is a role he has played throughout his time here. Senator Trood, we will miss you and I certainly hope that we will see you back here in the near future.

Senator the Hon. Judith Troeth was the person I sat next to when I first came to the Senate. I filled a casual vacancy so I did not get to do the training courses that a lot of other people do. Thank you, Senator Troeth, for the 'get up now', 'sit down now', 'jump now', 'try and stretch that out a bit more' hints that you gave me. Thank you for your mentoring and for your advice around committees.

It has been pretty obvious from what has been said here today that Senator Troeth has paid a far, far greater role in women's issues and assisting and promoting rural women and rural women's leadership—the RU486 debate, which is still talked about wherever women get together and discuss behaving in a bipartisan way in politics, and her comments regarding the disproportionate underrepresentation of women in parliament. I would like to quote from something that she said in a paper that she wrote on this topic in June 2010. She said:

The residual disproportion of women in Parliament should not be seen as a women’s issue alone. It should be viewed as a challenge concerning every Australian as it goes to the heart of representative and responsible governance of this nation.

Certainly the existing mechanism for getting more Liberal women into parliament is not working. Clearly this is something we need to address.

Senator Troeth mentioned the need to jump-start the representation of women. I would support that view wholly and I would hope that the three retiring senators jump-start their future careers. Thank you.