Robert McClelland (Barton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Unlike the previous speakers, I never met Rick Farley, but I know and have tremendous respect for his partner, Linda Burney, with whom I am on the Mick Young Scholarship Trust. Linda, like Rick, has the ability to bring people together to work for an outcome to improve the lives of others, and that is a rare and precious gift.

Rick, by his personality, competence, drive, sense of fairness and commonsense, achieved a tremendous amount for his fellow Australians in all too short a life. Every now and then, as the member for Grayndler mentioned, we see someone with those characteristics emerge to drive an issue forward. There is absolutely no question that, because of his position and qualities, Rick was able to bring forward in a litigious sense the slowly evolving concept of customary native title by at least a generation. His work in securing the passage of Australia’s native title legislation has been lauded on both sides of politics.

Equally, Rick’s work in advancing environmental issues has been recognised. As leader of the National Farmers Federation Rick was able to convince farmers that, unless they reformed farming practices, they would slowly destroy their own capacity to produce. The fact that he was able to earn the trust and respect of that body, and its members in particular, is all the more remarkable given his background of having worked for a Whitlam government minister. Again, you can only earn that trust and respect by your inherent decency, dedication, competence and fairness, which Rick clearly demonstrated.

It is all too easy for people in public life to play to their own particular gallery. From all reports, politics within the National Farmers Federation and previously the Cattlemen’s Union, where Rick was, was every bit as challenging—indeed perhaps more challenging, given the reputation of agripolitics—as politics within any trade union, lobby group or political party. Too often we see people trying to obtain and retain power by appealing to extreme elements within their own organisations. Rick specifically did not do that. To the contrary, as has been mentioned by members from both sides of politics, he quite literally took positions at right angles to those within the organisations he led—and lead he did, as has been acknowledged, in the right directions.

As his partner, Linda Burney, said, ‘Rick made a difference.’ He made an incredible difference. His legacy is his achievements, but just as important is the example he set for all of us in public life to make a difference by having credibility and by pursuing issues of merit and decency rather than obsessions with the extreme elements within the bodies that we often tend to be associated with.

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