Tasmanian Liberal senator Jonno Duniam has bowed out of federal politics.
He promised his three sons their years of missing out were over, urged his party to return to its roots and warned Australia must set rules on artificial intelligence “this year”.
The shadow home affairs and immigration minister gave his valedictory speech yesterday, four months after announcing he would quit to put his family first.
“You’ve been missing out on holidays with dad, time at home with him and all the normal things that many of your friends got,” he told his sons.
“For 10 years I’ve given this everything, but I dedicate the rest of my life to supporting you, nurturing you and helping you as you go on to your own adult lives.”
He thanked his wife Anisa, saying she had kept the family running in his absence.
Duniam also urged the Liberal Party to stick to its values as it fights to win back government.
“My party can give Australians what they need, not by pretending to be someone else or seeking to appease certain actors but by returning to our roots,” he said.
“My party has been around for decades. It isn’t populist. It isn’t flash in the pan. It is here to stay.”
His last major task was the Coalition’s immigration policy, released last week. It would cut net overseas migration to 100,000 a year for its first two years in government.
Duniam, deputy chair of parliament’s joint select committee on AI, called the technology “one of the most capacious opportunities I believe we will see in our lifetimes”.
“It is my ardent belief that we as a nation must chart our course this year,” he said.
“If we don’t get it right, we will not only miss the boat on enormous potential, but we will also be exposed to our adversaries who will, with malevolent intent, take advantage and equip themselves with the power of AI.”
“This is not a call for a blank cheque but a call to recognise the urgency to get this done on our terms.”
He also thanked the prime minister’s office, tongue in cheek, for “spellchecking my work and for leaving track changes on”.
It was a nod to the row over markups from the office on the committee’s recent letter to the prime minister.
Duniam revealed Tasmanian Labor senator Carol Brown had “conspired” with him to secure funding for Foodbank in Tasmania a couple of elections ago.
“I don’t think we ever told our headquarters that we did that,” he said.
In his tribute, Tasmanian Greens senator Nick McKim praised Duniam for “taking a tilt” at Eric Abetz, who McKim described as his “archenemy”.
Duniam knocked Abetz off the top of the Liberal Senate ticket ahead of the 2022 election.
“If you take a tilt at the king, you want to make sure you collect him – and you did, Jonno, so congratulations to me!” McKim said.
He added that with Abetz now Tasmania’s treasurer, “I’m not sure who won out in the end”.
Duniam won his Senate seat in 2016 and served as an assistant minister in the Morrison government.
Former state minister Sarah Courtney, who took second spot on the Liberal Senate ticket in August, is set to replace him.
He closed by quoting his great-great-grandfather, who gave up paid employment to start farming in the new district of Mount Hicks in north-west Tasmania.
Asked by a Tasmanian parliamentary committee in 1882 how the venture was going, he said: “People said I would starve. I have not yet starved.”
“People can choose to do what is comfortable forever or they can challenge themselves and go on to do new and different things,” Duniam said.
“I don’t know what awaits me outside this chamber, but they do tell me that there is life after politics. Whatever it is, I’m very much looking forward to it.”
