Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to say thank you to you, Senator Rice, and I use your title while you are still a senator. It has been an honour and a privilege to work with you. I thank you for your visibility with your wife Penny. That meant a lot to me. You have held people absolutely to account in this place for the kinds of values that you hold strongly and hold dear, many of which I share, although sometimes our respective political movements differ in their execution. It has been a good thing I think to be able to step through that accountability on issues, whether that's for the environment, for social and economic justice, poverty, renters' rights or environmental issues. I love how you took credit for the Greens just now for stopping logging in native forests in Western Australia. Actually we should talk about that further because it hasn't actually stopped. There is logging and there is mining—anyway, we'll talk about that another day.

I know other Labor senators wanted to say a few things, and I think Senator Smith is hoping to make it back in time to do so. For my own part, I really just want to say that I will miss you, I thank you and that I hope that my wife Bek and I bump into you and Anne at some kind of lesbian forest retreat or something, which you will be much more familiar with than I am but I know I will enjoy equally as much. Thank you.