Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As is the case with the Member for Boot Lake and for all of us here, the first -- probably one of the first people we met was Tim, and one of the first things we did was look inside the sausage maker that is politics and try and understand how we fit into this very process-oriented and pretty rigid institution. As a person who has a brand-new job, a very responsible job, having just been elected by the voters, it is truly daunting to come through the door and to try and understand which way is up. And so, you know, some of us were here in the 18th Assembly, and Mr. Mercer coached us through some of our learning curve.
I'm going to tell a story on Minister Thompson, has a lot of logo clothing from sports competitions and was always trying to sort of get away with wearing it by wearing a longer thing over it and being told no, that's not what we're looking for.
Soon after I started this job, I unfortunately had a huge burn and I had to spend weeks in bed. I had to spend weeks in recovery, and I couldn't have asked for a more compassionate and accommodating person than Tim to help me through that period. It was just such a difficult time of my life. I had just started this job, and then I was almost immediately out of action. And it turned out that that compassion was really a hallmark of the way that he treated Members and staff, you know, the -- we all lived through the death of Haylee Carlson. I saw great compassion in that and in other instances that were not as high profile. And I think that we've all benefitted from his generosity.
Certainly, as the Member for Boot Lake said, politics can be very rough and tumble and sometimes having a place to vent and trying to figure how to go for a different outcome is a very valuable thing, and Tim has always provided that for me and along with a lot of advice and guidance, which I truly appreciate and which I've benefitted from tremendously.
As far as I'm concerned, his greatest accomplishment was the assistance he gave the special committee on increasing the representation of women. It was he and the Speaker at the time who had gone to the commonwealth conference, had looked to the Samoan model for guaranteed seats for women and launched us on this process of how we could increase the representation of women, hopefully voluntarily, but if not voluntarily then with quotas. And then there were many iterations of that. There was a motion. There was an interim report. A final report. And I think that he deserves a lot of credit for the fact that we were able to really attract, through our efforts as the standing committee, a number of women to run in the last election who were successful and who are here today.
I also want to say that both of us are big fans of Arctic and Antarctic exploration, and that's been really fun to exchange articles and ideas about that, especially the infamous Sir Ernest Shackleton who went to the Antarctic, lost his boat, and came out alive, which is a pretty amazing story in itself.
I want to just note a few good changes. It's true that the focus on Indigenous languages, culture, and representation has really been heightened in Tim's time, and those are all very positive changes from my point of view when I see all the people in the interpretation booths. I'm very grateful that people throughout the territory have the opportunity to hear what we're saying in their own language.
I've also known him to provide opportunities for people to shine. He has been able to coach them to better things, to opportunities to attend conferences, training, to try new jobs, and to explore new boundaries and new successes.
And finally, I think we have with Tim our most foremost champion of consensus government, someone who understands it, somebody who's lived it, somebody who can explain it, somebody who doesn't give up on it when the going gets rough, which it certainly does from time to time. So I think that Tim's leadership here has really been transformative, and I would like to say how much I appreciate that. And I would also like to add that if Kevin were here today, I think he would say some of the same things, but he would argue with others. And he would want me, on his behalf as well as my own, to wish Tim the very best with his -- the rest of his journey in whatever that is coming forward. Thank you.