Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Rick Farley’s death at 53 years of age is very sad for so many people. I met Rick 26 years ago and I worked with him for much of the 1980s during my time at the Cattle Council of Australia, when Rick was the executive director of a member body, the Queensland based Cattlemen’s Union. I worked closely with Rick during those years, and then even more closely for three years when Rick was my deputy at the National Farmers Federation. He was a great guy to work with. He did really excellent work for me, for which I will be forever grateful.

In those years we called Rick the ‘stiletto man’, because he could always find the sharp end of an issue. I would often take a draft press release in to Rick; he would fiddle around, perhaps with the words in paragraph 5, and sure enough paragraph 5 would end up as the headline in the papers the next day, usually on page 3 instead of on page 23, where it would have been had it been my original draft. Rick had a real nose for issues, and he was a great communicator in that sense.

Rick made his greatest mark, I think, as Executive Director of the NFF, especially with his work on the environment and his involvement with the Mabo legislation. Much has been written and said about those contributions, but I think reference should also be made to the many formative and valuable years of Rick’s professional career spent working with the cattlemen in Queensland. Rick made important contributions in so many areas during that time. He was there, I think, from 1976 until he joined me at the National Farmers Federation, and even then he was of course still representing Queensland cattlemen, amongst other farmers around the country.

I know, from my time with the Cattle Council, of the contribution Rick made to the eradication of TB and brucellosis in the Queensland cattle herd—no mean feat given the gulf country and the difficulty of that issue. He made great contributions to marketing schemes and carcass classification—lots of things that are now taken for granted but which were revolutionary at the time. He made an important contribution to the genetic development of Brahman cattle in particular in Northern Australia, and that has meant many tens of millions of dollars for the Australian economy and cattlemen across the north. He played a very constructive role in the royal commission into the ‘roo in the stew’ meat substitution scandal, which played a big part in making some very constructive changes to the meat processing industry across the country.

But, without a doubt, Rick’s biggest legacy is the Landcare project that he and Phillip Toyne extracted from Bob Hawke. That program has led to even bigger and better environmental initiatives; it trailblazed for a lot of the resources that have subsequently been spent to that end. But, just as crucially, it shifted, shaped and influenced community and farmer attitudes in a very major way towards accepting the necessity of a sustainable agricultural landmass. That is now conventional wisdom and nothing to be debated. It has the full support of, and is understood by, the farming community and the broader community alike.

Rick was a complex fellow and we did not always see eye to eye, but he was unfailingly a gentleman. He had a very fine mind; he was a very intelligent man. He was good company. He had a huge work ethic. He was pragmatic and effective as a negotiator and he was a fine communicator. And he moved things; he made things happen. A lot of people talk about things but do not seem to have the capacity to make things happen, but Rick did have the capacity. We saw that throughout his career, including in the last stage of his career, when he was working with our Indigenous community.

Rick was very catholic in his political affiliations, and that probably explains in some ways his effectiveness on some issues. In the seventies he worked for Doug Everingham, the health minister in the Whitlam government. In the eighties he worked with the Cattlemen’s Union and the Farmers Federation—a mildly conservative group! In the nineties he stood for a Senate seat with the Democrats. However, I will remember Rick as a decent fellow—a talented man who had an abiding commitment to our rural community and our Indigenous community. Rick’s passing is very sad for his wife, Linda; his lovely children, Jeremy and Cailin; his stepchildren; his mother, Joan, whom I know well; his extended family; and also his first wife, Cathy Reade, who was a big part of his life for a long time—and they continued to have a very amicable relationship despite the fact that they moved apart in later years. I extend my sympathy and prayers to all of them. At 53, Rick was too young to die. It is perhaps another reminder that we should all take the time to smell the roses while we can.

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