Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I want to briefly add to the remarks made by other senators. Steve Fielding has been an absolutely extraordinary endowment to this parliament. At times Steve and I are soul mates, mainly on ethical issues, and at other times we are in serious disagreement. Steve, there are many things they can say about you, but boring will never be one of them. Your speech tonight took people through all of the emotions, from joy to hilarity to poignancy. What can we say about a person who has been seen in the news pushing a shopping trolley, dressed up as Santa and dressed up as a bottle? It is your peculiar way of doing things, but it was for effect and I have no doubt you had your heart in every moment of it.

I would also like to commend your wife, Sue, who is in the gallery. The wives and partners of parliamentarians seem to do a vastly better job of finding the camaraderie that we should possibly find more easily amongst ourselves. I commend Sue and Steve and wish you all the best in your future. It was right that you were elected to the Senate. You have had that great honour, and I have no doubt that sometime in the future we will see you again. Until such time, I wish you and Sue all the very best.

I move to Annette and Bob. Bob, Annette's partner, is one of the great pillars of the partners' group. I am sure we will all be sad to see Annette go, but the partners will be very sad to see Bob go. I remember a trip to Sarajevo, I think, and a certain cultural peculiarity whereby all the men sat at one table and all the women sat at a lower table, at our feet. Annette was not having a bar of that, but Bob was quite happy because he was sitting with us. Both Bob and Annette made it to the high table. It was always fun to get on a plane and find Bob. He did not mind having a champers before he got on the plane and he did not mind having one after he got off, so he is a great bloke to go flying with.

We wish you all the best. It was great to have a scientist here and someone of Annette's discipline. During my time on the Economics Committee, when we were doing our very best to make life as hard as we possibly could for the Labor Party—that was our job—your job was to stop us and you were generally successful, so I am glad you are going!

Steve Hutchins and I have an unusual link: we are both descendants of Irish orphans who came to this nation. There is a memorial near St Mary's church marking my forebear Mary Troy, both of whose parents starved to death in a hedge during the Irish famine. Steve is also a very strong part of that community. On that score, we have a link that will continue long after Steve leaves this place.

In the National Party we have always admired Steve. We always thought that, if you threw all the Labor parliamentarians up in the air and they all came down and made their way to certain corners of the chamber, Steve would be a fair bet to end up with the National Party—though maybe our agrarian socialism would scare him away!

Steve, it has also been great to have a chance on the odd occasion to go down to the Grail—where you were almost attached to the hip with Bisho. It was great to catch up with you. We always thought he was a very reasonable, honest and straight-up-and-down person. Now that you are leaving here I think you can give us your honest opinion on such things as global warming, and we look forward to that op-ed appearing in the Australian. I will do everything in my power to get you to write it.

Like Forshaw, faith, family and the Labor Party were epitomised by people such as you, Steve. I think that is honestly where the Labor Party had its greatest strength, and you will be sadly missed around here, mate.