Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I formally move:
- That this House express and place on record its deep regret in the loss to this State by the death, on 20 January 2026, of the former Governor of the State, Professor the Honourable Dame Marie Bashir, Dame of the Order of Australia and Commander of the Royal Victorian Order.
- That the Speaker convey to the family, friends and loved ones of Dame Marie, who I understand are with us in the gallery and you’re warmly welcomed, the deepest sympathies and sincere condolences of members of the Legislative Assembly.
- That this House recognise the former Governor’s contribution to the state of New South Wales, including:
- Serving as the first female and second longest serving Governor of NSW, between the years of 2001 and 2014.
- Decades of service as a doctor and a psychiatrist.
- A seven-decade contribution to psychiatry, youth mental health, and Indigenous health.
- A profound contribution to education, as a Professor and later as the Chancellor of University of Sydney.
There's hardly a more credential person that we would be offering a condolence motion for today.
Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the New South Wales parliament, we offer our profound condolences to Dame Marie's family, her children, her grandchildren, and they're represented here today by Alexandra, her daughter, Persephone, Nick, Edward, Natasha and Victoria, five of her six grandchildren and Tomas, Victoria's partner, and as I said, you're warmly welcomed here this afternoon.
Mr. Speaker, from her birth in Narrandera to her appointment as the dame of the Order of Australia, Marie Bashir went from the banks of the Murrumbidgee to the highest reaches of our community, while never losing touch with her roots, all the people that she so faithfully and assiduously served.
I'll give you an example to the house, Mr. Speaker.
During her time as Governor, Dame Marie was visiting flood ravaged Grafton, which at the time was half under water and caked with mud, and when she met the local volunteers facing a devastating clean up and the devastation of their livelihoods, their business, their local community, her very first words were, “What can I do? I'm good with a broom.”
On another official visit to Menindee in far western New South Wales, a young Indigenous girl in year eight, approached the Governor with the question, “will you visit my town?”
Now the town was quite some way away, even a long way from Menindee, which is a long way from everything.
But the Governor told the girl that if she received an invitation from her, that she would go, and when the invitation arrived, Dame Marie was true to her word.
She asked for one thing in return, and that was that this student promised to study hard and get her Higher School Certificate.
They stayed in contact for years with Dame Marie, encouraging the student who did finish her HSC and went on to study teaching.
As the child of small business owners, Marie Bashir started her schooling at Narrandera Public School.
She then followed in her mother's footsteps, attending Sydney Girls High where she was deeply influenced by her friendship with the daughters of Holocaust survivors and touched by the strength they showed in the face of unimaginable loss following the Shoah and the Second World War.
She then went to Sydney University to study medicine, where she met her husband, Sir Nicholas Shehadie, a rugby player went on to captain the Wallabies.
One day, he picked Dame Marie up from a from a children's hospital, and she was in tears, telling him how the child's been how a child had been treated.
In fact, this kid had no visitors at all, apart from the doctors and nurses who were treating him. The next day without telling Dame Marie anything, she spotted Nick going back into the hospital with an armful of toys and sitting with the boy for hours while he held his hand.
Seeing a man who shared her sense of compassion. She knew she'd met someone special, and they stayed together until his passing in 2018.
On those early days of her medical career, her family tells the story of her time working around Pendle Hill, when she would come home from house calls where the patients paid her in live chickens.
I understand, and maybe you can, you can confirm this, when her children would ask, “why did you accept live chickens?” She'd tell them, “Well, it would be disrespectful to say no.”
Fortunately, one of the neighbours I understand had a chicken coop, so all worked out fine.
After more than a decade as a doctor, she witnessed firsthand the importance of mental health, and became a psychiatrist, perhaps one of the first people to recognise this is vitally important to public health in the state.
One of her great achievements was establishing the Rivendell Child, Adolescent and Family Service.
This was a holistic residential care facility designed to care for kids with acute mental health problems.
It was a pioneering service grounded in the belief that young people should be recognised, first and foremost, as human beings and not just treated as patients or numbers or items to tick off on a day's work.
And I have to say, Mr. Speaker, that that service is still running to this day later, she went on to become the Clinical Director of Mental Health Services for the central Sydney area.
She was a true renaissance person. Dame Marie had talents and passions that went well beyond her work in mental health.
From her early years I understand, in the bush, she began playing the violin, and in her and in her high school years, she studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
There was a time I understand, Mr. Speaker where she wasn't sure if it was music or medicine that would become her career.
Marie was well known for her love of classical music and opera, but less well known for her love of contemporary music.
And during her time as Governor, so this is the longest, oldest office in the state of New South Wales, if not the country, whilst she was the Governor, a long way away from any officials or cameras, she went down to a record store in Pitt Street and joined a long queue of fans lining up to get an autograph from none other than Carlos Santana.
She patiently waited in line, and when she finally got to meet him, she said, “I've been waiting for this my whole life,” to which he replied, “so have I.”
Marie Bashir received many great honours, an Officer, then a Companion, then a Dame of the Order of Australia. She was appointed a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, and had a primary school, a mental health centre, a sports field and a rural firefighter air tanker named in her honour.
But another very important moment of recognition was Mother of the Year in 1971.
That award demonstrates, above all, her hard work as a doctor and a psychiatrist, but Dame Marie was a loving mum of three who prioritised that role.
When Marie Bashir got that call from Premier Bob Carr to become the Governor in 2001, she was, I'm told, awestruck, even she had a few doubts.
This was the oldest public office in Australia, held by the likes of Arthur Phillip and Lachlan Macquarie.
She would be the first woman to hold the office and the first person of Lebanese descent.
I'm told, she then reflected on what her mother would have said if she'd known that Dame Marie would get this offer, and the answer was, pull your socks up and do it for the people.
And as she's done throughout her medical career, that's what she did as the Governor of our state, whether it was touring communities ravaged by natural disasters, supporting the arts and artists, hosting dignitaries with grace, from around the world.
She brought humanity, strength, dignity and fierce intellect wherever she went.
Even as New South Wales changed governments, Dame Marie's term kept getting extended, but in a final act of selflessness, she called time right before she would have become the state's longest serving Governor.
That was her respect for the soldiers that she wanted to keep that honour, or leave that honour with, sir Roden Cutler, who was himself a Victoria Cross recipient.
This was not someone who served for fame or public recognition, for the honours or the awards.
Dame Marie's service was driven by a belief in the dignity of all people, and for the love of the state of New South Wales.
Whether you were a highly decorated soldier, a governor, a head of state, a premier or a prime minister, or a child in far western New South Wales, she believed everyone deserved a seat at the table.
And through her selfless drive to serve others, she earned the highest honours one could ever reach.
Her life and memory serve as an example to all of us. I know that she'll be dearly missed by your family, but we consider us all members of the Bashir family today.