Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Senator Marise Payne's valedictory. Like Senator Brockman, I can remember when I first met Marise. I don't expect her to remember this, but I was here for an event before I was in parliament, and it was for the launch of a blueprint for Indigenous employment that I had developed with Generation One. You were the shadow minister for Indigenous employment and development—I think that was it at the time—and I had the great pleasure of being seated next to you on a table at a breakfast up in the Mural Hall. I'm not going to make any partisan political statement here tonight, but there was a certain minister who gave a speech—the Labor government was then in charge—and their response to this blueprint that we had delivered, which was to provide economic empowerment for Indigenous people, was met with typical responses that weren't embracing of this program and the idea that we would create employment opportunities for Aboriginal people across the country. I was seated next to you, and we had a little chat, and I was deeply inspired by your encouragement to run with this program that we were wanting to see established across the country. At the time, we were working with Tony Abbott as the opposition leader to get a commitment, and you provided significant encouragement to me to persist with it. At that stage, I had not really considered a career in politics. While I was very interested, having engaged with this place through the work I was doing, I hadn't really considered a career in politics. I had helped out with the Liberal Party at various elections but I wasn't even a member at that stage. I had helped Ken Wyatt hand out how-to-vote cards at numerous elections, but I hadn't considered it. Your encouragement of me to persist with it, and the engagement that I had, actually had a role to play in me making the decision that I was going to come here. I was inspired by you and others I was engaged with at the time that you really can make a difference through good policy, and that if you can enact that then you can really make a difference. The difference that I saw and heard through that brief, 10-minute conversation that we had meant I got to see the difference between the other side and this side in terms of that economic empowerment and how that is really going to make a difference.

Many years later, I find myself here in the Senate. While we haven't had an enormous amount of intersection in relation to policy in my time here, and the committees I have worked on haven't involved you either as a minister or in opposition, one of the things I have always admired about you is your absolute determination and the way that you can pursue the things that you are passionate about in a very graceful way, in a way that is not condescending. There are times when we may have been on opposite sides of the chamber for various conscience votes or other things, but I've never felt judgement. I've never felt any sense from you that you were looking down your nose. At times I feel like a rookie in this place compared to you, but I have always felt so empowered and encouraged by you, Marise.

I want to take the opportunity tonight to say: thank you very much indeed.. You are someone that I greatly admire and someone that I look up to. I very much appreciate you and I wish you and Stuart the absolute very best for your future and whatever it might hold. I thank you not only for myself but also for the contribution you have made to this parliament and, indeed, the nation.