ADJOURNMENT

Mr HAMILTON (Groom) (19:50): Yesterday would have been my father's 80th birthday, and we are almost a year exactly since he passed. I haven't spoken of his passing in this place before. I don't intend to too much tonight, but I would like to take the opportunity to reflect on the extraordinary amount of people in our health and aged-care system in Toowoomba who cared for him and who care for so many others in our community.

My father's experience taught me that health care is not one service or one institution, and over the course of a serious illness a patient and their family encounter an entire community of people—doctors, nurses, surgeons, pharmacists, aged-care workers, specialists, volunteers and carers. For dad, it was so great to have those people around him in his community in Toowoomba.

His GPs were Dr King and Dr Palakudy at Mary Street Family Practice. They've cared for my family for a number of years now, and there's something reassuring about having doctors who don't just have your records there in front of them but who know the person, who know the family around them. I'd particularly like to thank my old friend Dr Steven Broad, who was there the very first day we heard the c word—cancer.

It was a huge day. Dad's major operation was a pelvic exenteration. That's an enormous operation, but it ultimately gave him six extra years of life.

There's no adequate way for a family to say thank you for giving you that much time with someone you love. But those extra years came with huge additional care. Dad was able to remain in his home in South Toowoomba, supported through an aged-care package by the Churches of Christ.

I want to thank the carers there. When you're dealing with someone who has had major surgery, cancer, dementia, Parkinson's, it requires an immense amount of not just skill and patience but also humanity to do that job, and I thank them. His pharmacist was Sam Tanous on Margaret Street.

Sam's got this huge smile on his face, and the way he looks after people is amazing. He's got incredible warmth. And it's not just how he treated my family; it's how he treated everybody.

Indeed, across Australia, community pharmacists do far more than dispense medication. They know their customers. They answer questions.

They know when something's changed. They help families like mine navigate very difficult health needs. Sam and his family are a great part of our community.

As Dad's needs increased, he found himself a new home at BlueCare at Middle Ridge. Despite his numerous attempts—often quite successful—to escape from that facility, I want to thank the staff, who always treated him with kindness. He may have wanted to get away at times, but it became his home, and they treated him well.

I also want to thank the Toowoomba and South West Ostomy Association. I've visited their offices and seen firsthand the work they do and the number of people that they support locally. Most people in our community and around Australia don't realise how much hard work these volunteers do.

They quietly provide practical assistance, supplies, knowledge and reassurance to people whose lives have been changed by major surgery. Until your family needs organisations like these, you don't know how much we as a community rely upon them. When my family moved to Toowoomba, it was for two reasons: good schools and good hospitals.

My children are still benefiting from the good schools, and my father certainly benefited from the great hospitals and health care. Toowoomba is an extraordinary centre for health care around regional Australia. We do tend to think of health care in terms of those big things, but it's the entire network: the GPS, the pharmacists, the surgeons, the carers, the aged-care workers, the volunteers.

I also want to acknowledge people in my community who fought to improve our aged-care system, including my friend Kim Sutton. Kim's experience with her father going through aged care was very different to mine. We've spoken many times about what her father endured and the changes she believes need to occur in aged care, and I remain committed to working with her to see those changes through.

I'll be honest: sometimes I felt a degree of guilt in seeing that difference, but I know that's why we're working together as a parliament to improve the aged-care system. I want to thank all those people. They treated a sometimes difficult old man with patience, humour and kindness, and those six years mattered.

They mattered greatly, of course, to my father, and they mattered so much more to his family. A year after his passing, to all those people and to thousands across Toowoomba who quietly do this work for other families day in and day out, I simply want to say thank you. I will also take the opportunity to thank my great team in my office who, during this very tough period, provided so much help to me and to my family—Scott O'Connell, Jo Doyle, Ruth Doyle, Rose Pauli and, of course, the excellent Greta Duan.

They also treated a sometimes difficult old man with patience, humour and kindness, and I thank them too.