“I would like to think I have extracted every last ounce of my ability to serve as the member for Williamstown,” retiring MP Wade Noonan told Parliament last Thursday in his valedictory statement.
Mr Noonan, who was elected in 2007 and served as minister for industry and employment, resources, and police and corrections, last year announced he would not contest next month’s election.
Addressing Parliament last week, Mr Noonan said the ambulance crisis had gripped his life for two years while he was opposition parliamentary secretary for health and mental health.
He recalled meeting parents who had lost their children while waiting for an ambulance.
“Their trauma and loss have never left me,” Mr Noonan said. “Their determination and relentless pursuit of change is something I will never forget, and in my view it helped change the government in 2014.”
It was as police and corrections minister that he met Edith and George McKeon, the parents of murder victim Jill Meagher. He described the McKeons as “a source of support” to him during his brief absence from the Parliament.
“My break from Parliament in early 2016 is part of my story, but it does not define me.
“Poor mental health does not discriminate –in fact it is everywhere. Reading the signs and getting help is the key.”
The father of two recounted to Parliament the words his own father had told him.
“When I walked into this place my father said, ‘You bring with you your integrity, and the challenge is to keep it to the last day when you walk out’, and I have never forgotten that advice.”
