Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The best contribution that I can make to pay tribute to Rick Farley is to tell stories about him, and he would wish that I did so. I did not know Rick for a major part of his life, but I was intensively involved with him on a number of occasions, so I want to put on record a couple of those stories. At Rick’s funeral, Phillip Toyne, who had worked closely with him, described how he and Rick walked into Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s office with an irresistible offer: that the two great traditional adversaries, the environment movement and the National Farmers Federation, would join forces and put forward a proposal for a decade of land care. It was an irresistible offer and Phillip Toyne informs us that Bob Hawke, as Prime Minister, agreed on the spot. As they were walking out of the Prime Minister’s office, Rick turned to Phillip and said: ‘Damn, I knew we should have asked for more.’ I said to Phillip after the funeral, ‘You should have too.’

As it turned out the $320 million, which was granted over 10 years, did grow into a billion dollars, so no great damage was done. One of the reasons this offer was so irresistible is that we had decided to put together what John Kerin at the time called WGES, the world’s greatest environment statement. This was after the Prime Minister had said to his cabinet, ‘Now, it’s very important that we don’t raise expectations about this environment statement that we’re planning.’ So John went out and described it as the world’s greatest environment statement. It involved measures in relation to ozone protection and confirmed the Australian government’s position on a ban on mining in Antarctica. It recounted some work that had been done to save the Tasmanian forests—the Southern Forest of Tasmania and Lemonthyme—that were heading for the World Heritage List but it also very neatly incorporated this decade of land care. It was a privilege, as an environmental adviser, for me to be able to do that preliminary work with both Rick and Phillip so that the Prime Minister was in a position, when he made the offer, to say on the spot, ‘Yes, I agree.’

I decided in preparing for this statement to retrieve the relevant section of the world’s greatest environment statement, Our Country Our Future. It describes, under the heading of Landcare:

A year (1990) and Decade of Landcare (to the year 2000), suggested initially by the National Farmers Federation and the Australian Conservation Foundation, will entail awareness, participation and education programs among rural and urban communities.

During this Decade of Landcare, the Government expects to provide over $320 million for land care and related tree planting and remnant vegetation conservation programs …

That was the $320 million about which Rick lamented, upon leaving the Prime Minister’s office, that perhaps they should have gone higher. That was an enormous achievement on the part of Rick Farley and Phillip Toyne. I take this opportunity to acknowledge the very good work of Phillip Toyne—these two characters, one from the farming community and one from the green community, working together in this alliance to make Australia a better place and to make our land healthier. It was a wonderful achievement of the part on Rick and also of Phillip.

The final story I will tell is that, having got to know Rick quite well—and he was often a bit prickly in his dealings but underneath it all a tremendous person who was always focused on getting good outcomes and decent results for Australia—I got into conversation with him. He obviously had a genuine interest in politics, as was evidenced later by his run for the Senate here in the ACT. But he said, ‘Look, there’s just no way that Labor’s going to win the state election in Western Australia.’ I said, ‘Oh, we will; we’ll retain government there.’ He said, ‘Not in South Australia.’ I said, ‘No, we’ll win that too.’ He said, ‘Well, you’ll never win Queensland because it’s been 32 years.’ I said, ‘No, we’ll win that too.’ He said, ‘You’re kidding yourself; you certainly won’t win all those three plus the federal election in 1990.’ I said, ‘We’ll win that too.’ He said, ‘I bet you don’t.’ I said, ‘I’ll bet you we will.’

See this speech in context