Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Hansard source

As I rise to speak on this motion commemorating the life of Steve Irwin I want to note my thanks to the member for Fisher, Peter Slipper, for moving this motion. I give my full support and I know that all the members of parliament here do as well. Steve Irwin’s passing was a true tragedy. He was indeed a great Australian—I do not think that there is any doubt of that.

I did not actually know Steve Irwin; a lot of people in this place did. People who have spoken about his life knew the man personally. I did not. But my children knew him and he had an immense impact on them. I have three young children, seven, eight and 11, and on that day when Steve passed away I got a call from my middle daughter, Emily, who is eight years old, and she told me about Steve Irwin’s passing. She said it was like losing a friend. She had met him only once but he obviously had such a huge impact on a whole range of people and children right across the world that people who met him at once felt that he was a close friend. The public outpouring of grief and the worldwide media coverage of his death is a testimony to the enormous contribution he made to Australia, and a mark of who the man was and the amazing impact that he had on the wildlife and conservation movement globally. I remember that day when there were rumours going around that he may have been killed; websites and news sites jammed and collapsed under the weight of inquiries from people trying to find out what had gone on.

Above all else, we can speak of the man just simply as a family man. He was a father and he was a son and we learnt afterwards really just how important those roles were to him and to his family. His passing obviously will be most felt by his family, particularly his wife, Terri, his two children, Bindi and Bob, and his father as well. It is more than obvious that they were a very close-knit family.

Today I publicly offer my condolences to the Irwin family and to the people closest to Steve, those people who will miss him the most. There is no question that Steve Irwin lived an action-packed, eventful life. He was a man who was full of life. It is the greatest irony, I suppose, that while he died doing something that he loved it was probably the safest of all the crazy things that he had done previously, and for him to go in that manner was a shock to all of us. There was always an expectation that if Steve Irwin were ever to be killed it would be by a shark or a crocodile or some vicious animal, but in the end it was not a vicious animal but an animal acknowledged worldwide as a passive animal.

He followed his passions and he encouraged all of us to do the same. He encouraged the whole world to enjoy wildlife and nature and to conserve wildlife. He believed in it so much that he devoted his whole life to it, and not just his life and his time but every resource that he had. It is my understanding that all the money that he earned and everything he had when he had very little he poured into saving animals and conserving tracts of land and wildlife. As others have said, he tried to put his money where his mouth was.

He did this not only in Australia but all around the world. It is probably a sad indictment of Australia and Australians that while we all love Steve Irwin and speak so highly of him today, in the early days before many of us had even heard of him it was really in the United States and in other countries where he was a legend, a folk hero, to so many people. It was not until much later that we saw some of that and appreciated it. I do not think that we really, truly appreciated or understood the depth of the work that he did until he passed away.

His contribution to Australian life was immense and he should be remembered for that and for what he did for the nation and for tourism and for a whole range of other things. There is no question that one of the greatest attributes this man had was a special rapport with kids. He could communicate with them on a level that not many people could. He dedicated much of his life to trying to educate young people and children—he really was an educator—and lobbying and working hard, talking to anybody. There was no obstacle when it came to Steve Irwin trying to achieve his goals. He was bigger than life. He was bigger than his own life. He was not just talk; he was a man who took action. Nothing would stop him in terms of trying to save animals and conserve—(Time expired)

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