Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – People often ask me what it’s like to work in this workplace and what it’s really like. Sometimes when I just want a short, snappy description, I describe it like a big dysfunctional family, where you have your whole variety of people ‑ some of the extreme views, and the beautiful ones – but I can genuinely say ‑ yep, that would be Mr Abetz, yes, you’ll take that ‑ but I can genuinely say, and I do say to people, what you see in here isn’t actually the way we work. I say, I can have a chat to Janie about that; I’ll have a talk to Eric about that. Yeah, I’ll go and speak to Felix about that constituent issue. Because the truth is we are all here to represent our communities. We have trenchant, strong views, and that’s why we’re here. We wouldn’t be if we didn’t have them but, at the end of the day, and especially coming up to Christmas, I’m reminded that we are kind of like a family to each other, and that must be a shock to people who just got elected. I wouldn’t be surprised about that, because it’s probably been a wild ride for you. You’ve seen it from the outside, now you’re on the inside and you’re part of this family of representatives of Tasmanians.
What I want to speak about now is the people in this place who hold us together, and they have had a shocking and surprising year, and they’ve been with us through all of the snap elections and the two budgets and the very, very late nights and the extra whole month of parliament that – we just haven’t done it like this before. It’s been a hell of a year and when the wheels have fallen off, the people in this building have been here with the sticky tape and the stapler and a bit of super glue and held us together. I want to personally acknowledge the Clerks: Laura – she will never crack a smile, Stephanie, Ben and Fiona. She is good, isn’t she? She’s so good, maybe just a little wrinkle.
The staff in the Clerk’s office, the Chamber Services and the committees: Colleen, Liz, Michael, Mary, Scott, Luke, Kristy, Alison, Kiah, Mark and Georgia. Those committees, we’ve really worked these people hard this year, back-to-back committees, and they’ve been the ones taking the minutes, keeping us together, drafting reports, and thank you so much for that. It’s critical work for parliament.
The concierge team, Piper and Emma, they pushed the boundaries and I love that, I think we all do. We love the fact that they’re real people and they have real conversations. There’s nothing stuffy and uptight about our concierge staff and people feel welcome in this building.
The parliamentary education team, Colette and Adrian, and they have expanded what Kimbra started. Kimbra has gone to the other place now. Thank you, Kimbra, for what you started, Colette, Adrian, for continuing that and cementing it. It is something truly special that we offer people who come to this Parliament House, to connect with our democracy.
The Legislature‑General staff, the Executive Director, Todd, corporate services, Kellie, and finance, of course, we’ve got Nicole, Adrian, Craig, Kate and Mehrdad. In IT, ICT ‑ gee, we love these people ‑ Michael, Chris, Ryan, Jason, Rob, Ryan, Dan and James, who hasn’t been helped out in a desperate moment by one of these people who just turn up? They just get in there and they deal with it and then they are gone, they don’t ask for thanks, they just wander off to the next job. Very grateful.
Catering is always perfect. Thank you, John, for carrying the flame that Mandy passed to you and you carry it proudly and do it beautifully. Jacqui, 14 years she’s been with us, we found out last night. She’s an amazing person to have in our lives.
Kent, Gordon, Jo, of course, are running the team downstairs, the soup, the pies, everything we need when we desperately need to have some extra energy, Christine, Renee, Janine, and Annie.
In people and culture, thank you, Robert and Rob, for what you do.
Facilities – it’s been a very big year for all the people in facilities, Simon, Ben, Gaye, Jenna, Shane, Anil and Pooja.
In the library and research team, Marijana, Sarah, Deb, Zalee, Louise, Sue, Cass, Jayne, Kate, Catriona and Jen. That’s a big team and they also do incredibly important work for us.
The Hansard team, who listen – unfortunately – to everything we say and they make us sound as good as they possibly can; subeditors: Kate, Loretta, Damian, Gabrielle, Janine, Ulrike, Sarah, Robert, Mike, Adam, Alex, Jenny and Sabine. The transcription staff: Lesley, Anne, Stella, Terry, Sarah, Gabrielle, Estelle, Lauren, Laura, Susan, Roey, Alex, Ronan, Gaye, Margaret, Jesse, Lilith, Henry and Kaye. The permanent staff: Helen, Harrison, Rick and Karen. Gee, that’s a lot of people trying to put our words down for perpetuity. We thank you so much for what you do.
Members – Hear, hear.
Dr WOODRUFF – The security staff. I have never been in the company of friendlier and just kind, really kind security staff. I am so proud that we have these people in our building keeping us safe. Ankit, Serpreet, Syed, David, Bir, Satnam, Kyriakos, George, Sadat, Syed, Abdul, Tonika, Mohammed, Simran, MD, Jubo and Zishan. I think you would agree that that is an enormous group of people who work in this building and when we name them all, we realise that they do work for us every single day and make the parliament function and we thank them.
I want to thank the Greens team who have been here with me over this last period since Christmas. There’s been a lot of change, and I love working with our expanded Greens parliamentary team: Vica, Tabatha, Helen, Cecily, and Cassy in the Legislative Council. I’d also like to thank the dedicated and passionate Greens staff team, some of whom, like Alice Giblin, have been with the Greens for well over a decade; our EAs, Niall and Erin, Sunny, Emma and Alice, Suze and Eve, Nick and Lauren, Jack and Hannah; our communications and campaigns champions: Sam, Dan, Rach, headed up by the savvy Steve; the powerhouse policy team that keep us armed with information and sharp in here: Ellen and Thomas, two very smart people. I want to thank Alex for their years of working with us and supporting our rapidly growing team and keeping our offices in order.
Finally, honourable Speaker, I want to thank you and commend you for the work you’ve done in changing the culture in the Chamber. We’ve talked a lot about culture and the new Greens Deputy Speaker – I really want to thank both Helen and yourself, Speaker, for helping us change our culture. We need to acknowledge that we now have in this parliament the best Standing Orders that there have ever been in the history of the parliament in Tasmania. We get an opportunity to have our say, and I think it’s fair. There’s an opportunity for everybody to speak, but more importantly, you’re there, Speaker and Deputy Speaker, to rule the roost and to put us in our place when required, so thank you.
We’ve also just adopted the new code of conduct for members, an alcohol statement, and established a commissioner. That is really good work for us, given everything else that’s happened this year. I feel we’re going into Christmas with a parliament that’s in probably the best democratic shape that it could be. We have a lot of big things that we’ve focused on, a lot of bills that we’ve argued over, and we’ll continue to bring our debates together. I feel grateful that we live in a functioning democracy. The Greens will commit to continuing to do everything we can to strengthen it. I think Tasmanians want that and they want to have trust in their politicians, and the way that we behave in here really does help everyone in Tasmania to be able to weather the hardship together.
With that in mind, I want to also add my thoughts over the Christmas period to the firefighters and the emergency service volunteers who will be protecting us and working with us to keep us safe. To all the nurses and doctors and other staff in hospitals and healthcare institutions, may you have some time with your families. I hope everyone here gets recharged over Christmas and has some time with their families. I certainly will be looking forward to that. Thank you.
Members – Hear, hear.
