George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I am shameless; that is true! So, Senator Crossin, I do not know why this was done. Perhaps the party that you have represented with some distinction for so long feels ashamed that, 42 years after Neville Bonner first took his seat in this chamber as a Queensland Liberal senator—the first Indigenous representative in this chamber—the Australian Labor Party has not given us an Indigenous representative in the Commonwealth parliament. And, I am bound to say, even when your designated successor takes her place, the Australian Labor Party will not have given us an Indigenous senator who was chosen through an orthodox preselection process. But whatever the reason, whatever the motive, you should never have been the victim, and all of your colleagues—certainly, all of your colleagues from the coalition—feel enormous sympathy for your position and, if I may say so, also respect the dignity with which you have borne such an unjust reversal of fortune.

Senator Crossin, you have been a person who everyone this chamber would acknowledge as an honest person, as a decent person, as a person who was passionate about the causes you believed in, as a person who was extraordinarily hardworking, and you have made of your years in this place a really, really substantial impact.

I try to understand politics, but there is one part of politics I have never been able to understand, and that is the inner workings of the Australian Labor Party. I have never been able to understand why, Senator Crossin, you were never a frontbencher, because certainly, among those of us on this side of the chamber, there are very few who would disagree with me that you are a lot more able than certain other Labor Party frontbenchers in this place that we have seen, including some of the current ones. But thus are the vicissitudes of political fortune.

If we set ourselves the test when we come here of, 'How would we hope to be remembered and what achievements and accomplishments would we wish to make to make the life our nation better?' you have fulfilled the tests and aspirations that you no doubt set yourself with flying colours, and you have earned the affection and respect of political friend and political opponent alike.