Senator SHOEBRIDGE (New South Wales) (13:27): I also want to express my personal condolences to Linda's family, her colleagues and her team here. It was a terrible shock to hear about Linda's passing. When you first come into this place you see people entirely through a partisan lens. You see somebody as a member of the Labor Party or as a member of the Nats or as a member of the coalition. It is only through a series of interactions, whether it is contributions in the chamber or, more often, one-on-one chats in the corridors or through the work you do together in committees, that you get a better understanding of someone as a human being. In the short time, and privileged time, I dealt with Linda, pretty much every one of those interactions was enriching, because I could see there was a woman of conviction, an extremely proud unionist, a feisty and unapologetic feminist and a proud member of her party, the Labor Party. But underneath all that was a core set of principles. Before I came into this place, a lot of the work I did as a state MP was around advocating for victims of child sexual abuse in institutions. When I talked with Linda about that, she had lived that struggle and lived that fight, had always been on the side of survivors, and was always contesting the institutions and trying to hold institutions to account. It reflected her politics. I think many people assume that, if you are working as a solicitor, somehow you are a paid agent. It was pretty clear to me from my communications with Linda that, whenever these issues came up, that was work she put her heart and soul into. She was on the side of survivors and victims and she held institutions to account, which reflected her principles and her politics. When she was appointed to chair the NACC implementation committee, she took that job on with gusto and with that very dry, directed wit that she had. I can still remember her voice as chair. It was kind of dry and kind of directed, and she'd say, 'Well, Paul,' or, 'Well, David,' and that kind of meant, 'Shut the hell up, sit down; we're going to get on with whatever we're doing.' Senator Scarr: She said that more about you than me! Senator SHOEBRIDGE: I reject that interjection! But certainly that's what it meant, and she said it to keep business moving, to keep things on track—not to be disrespectful but to use that position to drive that as best she could towards a good outcome. I think all of us respected her in that work. In that work, she had multiple pressures on her from multiple different points, and she kept it on track and she delivered a good outcome for the country. She did it with good humour, she did it with grace, she did it with intelligence and she did it, as I said, with that wry sense of humour. I miss that already. I know other speakers will want to speak, so I will be very brief. I also miss sitting there in Defence estimates, when Linda would come in there with her folder and sit at the other end of the Defence estimates—the other side of the chair—and then Nita, the chair, would say, 'We'll just go to Senator White now.' She'd be sitting there nicely and then suddenly she was just laser focused on some particular expenditure, misstep or issue that she had in Defence estimates. I remember sitting there thinking, 'Go Linda,' cheering her on. She did that because she thought it was the right thing to do. She did it because it stepped out of her values and it stepped out of her principles. Whether or not her party was 100 per cent happy with her doing that on every occasion, that was something I think she was willing to take on board. But what you saw, again, was a politician who came here with a set of principles and lived up to them. I miss Linda. To all of her friends and her colleagues: I'm really sorry. And to her family in particular: I'm really sorry. It was a complete shock. Vale, Linda.