Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise today deeply saddened at the loss of my bench buddy. I cried today in your speech. I have cried in this chamber only a couple of times, and Marise has been with me for all of them. Once, it was crying with laughter, and the reason was that Marise, sitting in front of Johnno and I, who were sitting behind, had given an impassioned speech about Islamic terrorism, but instead of referring to the Scott Ryan as Mr President, referred to him as Mr Terrorist. Johnno and I lost it, behind her, and the tears of laughter came.

Another time was pretty early on in my time here, when we passed same-sex marriage. I was a rookie senator at that stage, and I made some decisions that I knew would have potential consequences for the longevity of my own career here by doing that. I was pretty nervous about some of those decisions, and at the end of it, when that legislation passed, you grabbed me by the shoulders and said, 'You are brave.' It was so meaningful, because my hero had just told me I was brave. Of course, now I am blubbing again.

Isn't it extraordinary that this is the only senator in this place that was here during the last referendum! It's such a long career. She is the only senator who can say she served in this chamber through every term of government since the first term of the Howard government. She has been here for the debates that have defined our time, and the time before that, and the time before that. She has seen the passage of the GST, the creation of the NDIS, the National Redress Scheme, the Future Fund, same-sex marriage, WorkChoices, Fair Work, the millennium, 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bali, COVID, AUKUS, Ukraine. You've seen how this place has responded to droughts, to floods, to fires and to pandemics, how we've dealt with tragedies, how we've dealt with terrorism and how we've dealt with trauma. You've been here through all of that. You've seen how this chamber has coped with the rise of Twitter and, hopefully, the demise of Twitter too. You have even outlasted the Queen, although perhaps not quite as you might have hoped when you were here during that last referendum. You were our first female defence minister and our Minister for Foreign Affairs. You confronted a challenging geostrategic environment more complicated than our nation has seen since the last world war. When you leave us, you will take from all of us our respect, our admiration and our friendship, and, hopefully, you will leave us with an enormous legacy too: your judgement, your wisdom, your service and, yes, your bravery too.

You have changed lives here in ways that you probably will never know. Let me just give you the smallest of examples. I know other people want to speak, so I will be quick. In my first week in this place, when I walked into that very strange, rather spartan office for the first time, there was a bunch of flowers waiting for me with a card, wishing me luck for my maiden speech. And, sure enough, however many years later it is, last week, when our new senator, Senator Kovacic, did her maiden speech, I made sure that I sent flowers and a card, because I knew how much it meant to me when Marise did that for me.

Sarah Hanson-Young—Senator Hanson-Young, I should say—called you a trailblazer, and that you absolutely are. I wonder whether we are ever really ready for those women that blaze the trail, that widen the path behind them for the women who will come after. It is a very special skill, and it is an extraordinary honour to be one of those women behind you. I do know that future women and future Liberals will not understand the loss that they have been dealt by your retirement today. But I also know that, for those of us who have been the beneficiaries, I expect that we will always feel the loss that you leave with us here.

Senator Payne, thank you so much for your service to your country; to your state, New South Wales, to the Liberal Party; to its values and to its future and particularly for your service to us, your colleagues, who could never be grateful enough. They say you should never meet your heroes. Well, I am so glad that I met mine. Can I just say: allow me to misappropriate the words that you used on the launch of the USS Canberra. Thank you very much, Senator Marise Payne, for manning our ship and bringing her to life.