PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION

Senator HANSON-YOUNG (South Australia—Manager of Australian Greens Business in the Senate) (18:09): Peter, I don't even know where to start, mate. Thank you so much for your contribution not only to this place but, of course, to the people of Tasmania and, more importantly, to our environment and to Mother Nature. No-one could ever doubt your commitment to wanting to fight for a better world—one where our kids are safe, our air is clean, our oceans are clean and healthy, our air is clean and healthy and our soil is clean and good for food.

The bare basics of what we need for humanity are what you've fought for, and you've always done that. You're someone who wears your heart on your sleeve, and I think that that, at times, means that debates in this place have sometimes been really difficult, but it is what has made you a great politician. It's what has made you a great advocate for the issues that we all care deeply about, a great advocate for our party and a great advocate for the people of Tasmania, because you have a very deep conviction of what you believe is right, and it doesn't really matter who's in the way.

You can be a bloody bulldozer—you really can—and you push and you push and you push, and you do not care whether that upsets people or whether people are in the way. If it's the right thing to do, you will get there. But let me say, as Larissa and others have said already, that, in being a bulldozer, actually, you have such heart and humanity at the base of that, and I think that is what makes you a particularly special person in this place, because, when you talk, we know that you believe it, and we know that you will be straight about the losses, the gains and who it's for.

I don't know anyone who's been able to make the issue of waste as interesting and as important as you have. I remember you saying to me once, 'Recycling's not very sexy, but I'm going to try and get some media attention on this or try and push this.' You have never dropped that. You have fought for that.

When it comes to the bigger fights that we have in the environment movement and the changes we need to make, I think it's very easy to get stuck in the policy detail and the wonk of it all, and you actually find ways of talking about why this matters to people—whether it's the ocean, whether it's waste, whether it's the air we breathe, whether it's how you feel when you walk through a forest.

This is actually about how we are connected to Mother Nature, and you bring that in spades. We've had our barneys over the years, but we've also had some great wins together. Sometimes it's you and me against the rest of them.

That's been my favourite. Pete, you're going to have some wonderful adventures. This is not it.

It'll be a new life and a new world, but you're doing it with all of the experience of the last 14 years, and I really look forward to seeing where you go next. I have a feeling that it won't be the last time we see you in this building. I think you'll be knocking on our doors and telling us whether you think we're doing the right thing, or not, pretty bluntly and pretty clearly.

So I look forward to the outside advice just as much as I looked forward to the inside advice. Thank you.