Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I too join in to unambiguously wish Senator Arbib all the very best. We were in Senate school together just 3½ years ago. I know he came to this place with a fearsome reputation, but I found him a bit of a pussycat really to deal with. He was always incredibly decent to deal with. He kept his word with me. He worked with me very constructively on a whole range of issues. It says something about the man that during a debate a year or two ago I was berating the government for not doing enough for asbestos victims and not understanding the suffering of asbestos victims. Senator Arbib was the minister with carriage of the bill and he got up and said, 'I do know a little bit about asbestos, because my father died of an asbestos related disease.' He said it quietly and with enormous dignity. He could have made a real point to dress me down, but he did not. That says something about his dignity.

I pay tribute to his work on homelessness, Indigenous employment and education. There is no question about his genuineness in the work he has done. These will be his lasting legacies. I am sure that what he has put in place will build momentum. On an issue dear to my heart, the impact of gambling on match-fixing and corruption in sport, I think the best testament, the best credit, comes from sports administrators who say that in the last few months Senator Arbib has gone a long way in dealing with issues of match-fixing. They have been extremely impressed with Senator Arbib as Minister for Sport in dealing with this pernicious issue of match-fixing. I pay tribute to him on that and I hope that his successor will deal with those reforms.

I finish by repeating something I said in the media a year ago. It may cause some rancour amongst some of my colleagues, but I meant it when I said it a year ago and I mean it now. I said I had heard about how Senator Arbib was a hard political operator, and I suppose he is one of the hard men of politics, but he is also like a one-man Greek chorus. He is a person who has had to tell the hard, unpalatable truths and I think he has been unfairly maligned because of this. I wondered aloud back then and I wonder now: if the Liberal Party had a Mark Arbib, who knows this may have been the second term of a Costello government. I wish Mark Arbib all the very best.