Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure—a moment to dry my eyes!—to rise not as Leader of the Nationals but as a female leader in this place who has served in cabinet with the fabulous senator for New South Wales Marise Payne. We sat in leadership meetings—a great privilege—where you have to decide and discuss incredibly serious and important matters for our nation. Marise, I had all these notes. I was going to go through so many firsts. Among those of us who have had the great privilege as well as the weight of being firsts, you have just rocked it, and you rocked it for me the first day I met you, when there weren't as many women in this place as there are now, when there was only one woman in our cabinet. The difference you have made by pursuing, in a very determined, single-minded way—which only a redhead can do, I can say as the mother of a redhead!—a force of nature. You stand up and say: 'No, this shall not pass. You shall not pass. You are not going to do this.' And from your forceful strength of character, in so many small conversations and big conversations, change has happened—big change has happened—that is going to impact this place right now and impact those of us who've had the great honour of serving you and watching you and being led by you as well as the generations of now-young women and unborn women who are going to serve their nation in the decades to come, just as you have.

I want to say thank you for the laughs. I want to say thank you for the tears and the honesty and the integrity that you have brought to this place, to your role, to every forum I have sat on and been a decision-maker with you. I do love that you are a mad cat, as my eldest is. I love that I can always find you and usually Stuart, but not always—hopefully more now than previously—together at my fabulous Spring Racing Carnival in Melbourne, at your favourite spot, looking over the straight. I wish you all the best with your foals and your ponies—not so much with the cats; I'm not a cat person, but I do understand that there are others in the chamber who will mention the cats.

I want to thank you for being a powerful advocate, for being brave and courageous when it wasn't cool or easy. It wasn't easy. Because of your leadership, it's easier for me and it will be easier again for the next generation. Go well, and don't be a stranger.