Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] In talking with Rach about this speech tonight, I repeatedly promised that I wouldn't say anything embarrassing or that would make her cry. I will endeavour to keep that promise. I have also taken the unusual step of writing most of this down—in the knowledge that, at some point during this contribution, I'm likely to start crying myself. But here we go.

Senator Rachel Siewert—or 'Rach', as anybody who has met you calls you at all times apart from committees and question time—you are one of the most impressive people I have ever met. I have been in awe of you since the first time we ever interacted in the Greens WA. You generously share your experience, your wisdom and your ability as an authentic and fearless campaigner with anybody and everybody who asks you. You are truly a master of Senate procedure. After you, nobody will ever come anywhere near having your knowledge of how the chamber works. We will do our best to fumble on in your absence. But I thank the stars that you will, I'm sure, after a break be at the end of the phone so we can ask you some questions. Your commitment to our green movement runs so deep that I swear, if you banged yourself, you would literally bleed green. Your commitment to consensus and our four pillars and your loyalty to ensuring that our members and their needs and the needs of community are centred as well as the environment are absolutely incredible. You are a true custodian of our movement. You are determined, driven and deeply passionate. You possess, from those things, incredible frustration and indignity in the face of injustice, and I think that feeling echoes the feeling of so many in our community and gives all around you the energy to continue the fight.

In thinking about how to summarise such an incredible career and the experience of working with you over the last 3½ years, the words 'determination, passion and deep commitment' spring straight to the front of my mind. A defining thread that weaves through every aspect of your work is a soul-deep commitment to centring the needs of the community who are so often shut out of this place. This commitment has shone through a number of committees inquiries that you've established, chaired and participated in. I am absolutely sure that, if the Guinness World Records folk ever decide to name and test the record for the person that has spent the most hours in committee, it will easily be you, so I suggest you take some time in your retirement to send them an email, because you'll surely get the record in the post. My goodness, the outcomes that you have achieved for the community in your time in parliament are an incredible testament to the values and the hard work that you bring. I want to name just a few of them because, if I named them all, we would be here until tomorrow morning and, as whip, you'd probably be texting me halfway through, telling me to shut up.

Your work leading the campaign to increase income support is absolutely defining. You have fought tooth and nail for your entire career not only to support people across the spectrum that need income support but also on the specific issue of increasing income support and ensuring that the robodebt scandal was called out and called up immediately. I think that you deserve the lion's share of the congratulations, alongside the community, for the work that you did in revealing the absolute scandal of robodebt. Others may well have come on board, but they swam in the wake of your courage and your fearlessness. Because of your dedication to that issue and the community that was affected, there is now an opportunity for justice and redress for the people that were affected. The same is true for your opposition to the cashless debit card and the absolutely vital work that you led for the community. You led from the front and were always fearless. As a disabled person and a member of the disability community, I feel a great sense of debt and gratitude to you for your work in the inquiry into violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of disabled people. That was in itself a historic investigation into those issues that resulted in a recommendation which ended up in the realisation of a royal commission. Just today we have seen another opportunity to strengthen that investigation, and you played an incredible role in making the case for and bringing together that investigation.

On the subject of older Australians, I will never forget the first time we had a detailed conversation about aged care. I think you spent somewhere around 30 minutes explaining to me the ACFI, the Aged Care Funding Instrument. I have never forgotten that acronym, what it means and the fact that nobody else seems to know what it is, how it works or why it's listed at the levels that it is. It was this window into this incredible cache of knowledge that you hold. And, in reflecting on this yesterday, I was triggered to think about how many times in the last three years the sentences, 'Oh, I'll ask Rach,' or, 'Rach will know', or, 'I bet Rach was around for that; I'll give her a buzz,' have gone through my head. And the anxiety induced by the reality that you are ending your time formally with us is tempered only by the knowledge that after a very good rest you will be at the end of the telephone or the end of an email if we need to know what a committee did in 2005 in relation to a detailed piece of legislation, because you will still know, I'm absolutely sure.

On the environment, and on marine parks particularly, there is nobody that I've ever seen speak with such passion and intelligence in relation to not only the need to protect our precious places in the marine environment but also the knowledge of how to actually get it done. And the work that you did in establishing that system of marine parks still stands, I think, as the model that we should now be working to get back to and to improve on. You've been a fearless champion for the natural precious places of our state of WA, and there is some good that has come from your commitment, particularly to places like James Price Point, the Kimberley generally and, indeed, to Ningaloo as well. Through the highs and lows of the last 16 years, you have always been there for us as a movement, prepared to advocate for community and our planet, always offering a way forward.

I would, in talking tonight about your incredible contribution, be remiss not to acknowledge the fabulous team that you have had over the years. To all of 'Team Rach', I'd like to thank you for your energy and your commitment to our movement. You've supported, led, managed, rescheduled, drafted and campaigned like the best of them, and I want to thank you for that, as Rachel has done too.

To Rach, my very good friend and dearest Senate colleague: I hope that your days are filled with as many peanut M&Ms as you can eat, ocean paddleboards and sunny days in the South West. You are truly one of the great, powerful women from the west of the Greens movement. I look forward to continuing to see you on the floor at every Green event, showing us all absolutely how it's done. If you haven't seen Chris and Rach hit the floor at an event, you haven't seen two people hit the floor.

As we continue our fight for people and planet, I want to thank you sincerely from the depths of my heart for your wisdom, for your encouragement and for setting an example of what it means to be a Green who advocates for our community and for our planet in this place and at all times. I will miss you, mate. I will miss you dearly, although, as I keep having to remind myself—and everyone around me, it seems—you're not actually dying, you're just going for a good rest that is damn well deserved, and then you'll be on to your next big thing.

On behalf of everyone in WA, I want to thank you for all that you have done, every moment of service and devotion and dedication, all of the weekends, all of the long weekends, all of the calls taken even though you were on holiday, all of the committee meetings chaired at four o'clock in the morning, all of the times that you've had to grit your teeth and suppress what you might have said because we hadn't turned up to the vote or we didn't know what we were doing. For your forbearance and your fearlessness, I thank you from the depths of my heart and wish you the very, very best in the next chapter of your incredible life [inaudible] our Greens movement.