When Melissa Parke arrived in Canberra nine years ago, she committed herself to waging war against indifference in a national Parliament utterly preoccupied with fighting other battles.
There was the war on terror, the war on drugs and the war on people smugglers, she recalled in her final speech to Parliament on Wednesday. And then there was the war on each other.
"Only the last one seems to have had any success, and that has been to the detriment of all of us and of public trust in our political system," Parke told fewer than 30 MPs in the House of Representatives.
Among them were Liberals Russell Broadbent and Philip Ruddock, who crossed the chamber to warmly embrace Parke after her valedictory speech, as did a tearful Green's senator Sarah Hanson-Young.
If the number of MPs was modest, the list of issues that Parke addressed was vast, from homelessness and marriage equality to foreign aid and Indigenous disadvantage. But it was Australia's treatment of asylum seekers that provoked the most passion.
"The present offshore detention system is a festering wound that is killing people and eroding our national character and reputation. It needs to be healed," said Parke, a human rights lawyer with the United Nations before she became a West Australian politician.
While both sides of politics are committed to offshore processing and never resettling those in limbo on Manus Island and Nauru in Australia, Parke said it was time for a debate based on facts and obligations under international law – not politics.
There was an alternative that involved establishing a genuine regional framework, working constructively to improve conditions in source and transit countries and negotiating resettlement arrangements with other countries, she said.
Parke also challenged entrenched views on a host of other fronts, calling for a shift from the "current economic orthodoxy" that economic growth can and should continue indefinitely.
If this seemed a touch idealistic, Parke said she also looked forward to the day "when the resources we devote to peace-making and peacekeeping are within touching distance of the resources we pour into weapons and war".
She concluded by speaking in the language of the Noongar people of Western Australia, saying: "I talk with you in truth. My heart is glad that we can listen together."
But the truth was that the Parliament had lost an intelligent and articulate voice, when the war against indifference has barely begun.
