These were among Dr David Gillespie’s final words to the Australian Parliament after almost twelve years as the Member for Lyne.

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Dr Gillespie announced his retirement last month with the Nationals to pre-select his potential replacement in coming weeks, ahead of next year’s Federal Election.

Among the contenders is the former state Member for Oxley, Melinda Pavey.

Dr Gillespie’s address can be found in full on his Facebook and Instagram pages.

In it, he thanks the people of Lyne, his wife Charlotte and their children Isabelle, Oliver and Alice, their extended family, his staff and his National Party colleagues.

He also refers to experiencing his own annus horribilis (Latin for a horrible year).

Following are selected passages.

Valedictory Speech

“For nearly twelve years I have given my best, but many of you who know me… realise that I haven’t been my best during this past term. I have had my annus horribilis and I was not able to perform at my peak.

“I’ll give you a quick run through: vaccine side-effects followed by a serious bike accident – fractured ribs, sternum, vertebra, amnesia for a day or two – pneumonia then pleurisy, kidney damage, and then the ignominy of injuring myself playing cricket. I now have the experience of driving a four-wheel buggy.

“It’s a bittersweet moment for me to be leaving now as I have really enjoyed my time as an MP in this House, and I will enjoy it to the day this parliament rises.

“But serving here in parliament as a politician in a big country electorate comes at a cost to other really important parts of one’s life, particularly as this is my second career. I had a full-on 33-year career doing even longer hours as a GP, followed by these five campaigns.

“I’ve worked out that you need a lot of skills to be a good MP. You are not just a legislator. You’re a voice for your constituents. You’re an inquisitor in committees. You’re a policymaker.

You’re a negotiator. You’re part parish priest. You’ve got to be an economist. You have to be an industrial advocate, a diplomat, a social media genius, a writer – and the list goes on. It has been a journey and a half, full of highs and lows.

“Lyne getting its fair share of our nation’s infrastructure build has been fantastic.

“The big favourites are the two major Pacific Highway upgrades that bookend the seat of Lyne: north of Port Macquarie to Kempsey delivered in the first term and now the Hunter River crossing.
But there is still unfinished business. There are six highway overpass interchanges and several realignments that will need to be completed for it to turn into a full freeway. It’s not only for safety. There will be major economic differences if we get those.

“I have noticed that, as a country MP, you see a lot of community and sporting infrastructure and arts funding totally skewed and massive amounts going into capital cities. So I worked really hard to develop sporting facilities in my electorate of Lyne.

“Sport, in a country town or in a big town, levels all strata of society. If you’re in the same sporting team, it’s good. It’s great for children’s development and for teamwork and it unites all layers of society.

“In my community, I was known as a doctor, but it was really cool for me to develop and deliver into my own electorate some really important health facilities. In Port Macquarie, in my first term, when I wasn’t in the ministry, with the help of Professor Lesley Forster of the University of New South Wales rural medical school, we developed a unique model that would allow a cohort of students to train not just for three months or six months as a sampler course but to go from ‘go to whoa’ in Port Macquarie.

“During this time in parliament, we’ve had some major challenges. We had the devastating, record-breaking 2019 fires after years of really extreme drought. Everyone thinks it’s always green on the coast and that the rivers are always full, but most of them are salty. They’re tidal. And we had a drought like no other. Some of the rivers on the coast stopped running. But for the tide, they wouldn’t have had water in them.

“Then a year later we went to the other extreme and had the most massive floods since the 1960s. It was really distressing to see houses, lives, memories and animals literally going up in smoke. Hundreds of buildings, including many houses, were destroyed. Then, in the flood, thousands of people were made homeless. Whole houses and huge numbers of livestock were literally washed away. We had literally thousands of people living temporarily in service clubs, like the local sporting clubs, the RSLs – all sorts of places.

“During my time in child services, it was a bit distressing. I was there during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, where I heard many harrowing stories. I also had oversight of and insights into the state-run foster-care system.

“You want these children to have what every other child wants, and that is a permanent home. Fostering is meant to be a stopgap measure and there are glorious people that do it. But there’s an inertia in the system, not to change. Instead of foster care being temporary housing until children are placed in a permanent parental arrangement, depending on the state. It’s now only NSW that allows adoption easily these days. There are now 46,000 children in permanent foster rotations. When I was in the ministry, it was only 42,000. And it seems to be growing.

“My best thing ever, and probably my most substantial non-legislative role, is setting up the Parliamentary Friends of Nuclear Industries. Radiotherapy and isotopes have allowed medical practitioners like me to diagnose to treat, to cure and to do amazing scans. I have had more radioisotopes on me than I can poke a stick it, but I’m still here. It’s only too much radiation that’s dangerous.

“The friendship group had lift-off. The aim of educating and convincing members and senators on the nature of nuclear energy and its potential here in Australia has been reached. We in the Nationals have been ahead of the curve. We’ve seen the light, and our membership and federal council adopted this many years ago. I’m so pleased and proud that my Liberal colleagues are now onboard. That is the way to go.

“The urgent necessity for this nation now is that we’ve still got an electricity system that works – just. But where we are really thin is on liquid fuel security. We have got to, as President Trump said, ‘drill, baby, drill’, because we need to get liquid fuel security in this country.”

By Sue STEPHENSON