Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

It is my great pleasure to rise and wish Senator Arbib and his family very well for his and their future. I will resist the temptation to provide commentary on Senator Arbib's analysis of the government's performance on matters of economic and fiscal policy—today is not the occasion for that—except to observe that, listening to his speech to us this afternoon, in which with great passion he advocated across a whole range of policy issues, it is really very hard to understand why it is that he is leaving.

I have always found Senator Arbib to be someone who argued strongly, passionately and with a great sense of humour for the things that he believed in. He has given us two reasons as to why he is leaving and, as somebody who also operates in the broader context of organisational politics, I have to say that if Senator Arbib has to leave to help healing within the Labor Party because of a decision he made which he felt was right at the time for the Labor Party and for the country then that is a very high price to pay.

All of us know, though, that the price that our families pay and the price paid by the people we leave behind when we come to this place is a very high price indeed. Given the extent to which he articulated his care for his family as the reason he found it too hard to stay, we all have a great amount of sympathy for that. Like Senator Arbib I find it very hard, and I am sure that all of us find it very hard on Sunday afternoons to leave our loved ones behind and come here to do what we think is the right thing for our country.

Senator Arbib and I found ourselves on opposite sides in two portfolio areas over the past three years, first in employment participation in the lead-up to the last election and now, for a somewhat shorter period, in the Assistant Treasurer portfolio. While we had some spirited debates on policy matters, particularly in the employment participation portfolio, our interactions were always very courteous, very professional and very friendly. It is true; he is truly a nice guy. When you look at the smiling face of this faceless man it is very hard to imagine that this is the hard man of Labor Party politics. It is very hard to imagine that he rose to be the tough, hard-nosed, most senior factional operator in the toughest Labor faction of them all, the New South Wales Labor Right, but there it is. As Senator Brandis said before, Senator Arbib has had a very distinguished and very senior career both in organisational politics and in our national parliament. It is hard to understand why somebody so young and with so much promise would leave so early, but having made the decision we wish him all the very best for his future. We wish him and his family all the best.