Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, first of all I will add my congratulations to you on your elevation to the speakership. I know that your good humour and sense of fair play will make sure that this House reflects what all Australians hope it will.

Kim Beazley Sr is often viewed—and I think the Leader of the Opposition really picked this up—as something of a political enigma, a moral man in a not-so-moral profession. In fact, his own words reveal the high moral integrity that constituted his very being and guided both his political and personal life. This was clearly reflected when he said: ‘If you do not accept the importance of conscience, you accept only the importance of power.’

Not only was Kim Beazley Sr immovably true to his own conscience, which was not always to his political advantage, he was also widely regarded as the conscience of the Labor Party—no easy task, we can tell you. At his funeral in October last year his son, the Kim Beazley we all know, told the hundreds in the congregation that his father wanted to be remembered for two things. One was his conviction that he had a duty to pursue the dignity of our Indigenous people, the other was his conviction that education should focus on the needs of the child—that every child counted. He was determined to address sectarianism.

Today I asked Kim what his father would have thought of the apology to the stolen generations which is to be offered by the parliament tomorrow. His response was simple: ‘Dad’s whole life was about saying sorry,’ he said. From the early days of his political life he worked to improve the lives of Aboriginal Australians. It was his conviction that, if he focused on the issue rather than laying blame, he would catch the conscience of the people. He was, as his son recalls, a voice for Aboriginal Australians at a time when many were unable to speak forcefully for themselves. I can only imagine how satisfied he must have felt with the emergence of a generation of articulate, passionate Indigenous Australians more than capable of arguing their own case.

He was a pioneer in the campaign for Aboriginal land rights back in the early 1950s. And in 1952, in a first for the federal parliament, Kim Beazley Sr made the first speech on Aboriginal reconciliation in the House of Representatives. In 1963 he travelled to Yirrkala in Arnhem Land to support the Yolngu people, who were speaking out against a bauxite mine planned for their land on the Gove Peninsula, a mine given the go-ahead without consultation with them. The Yolngu people made a traditional petition fashioned from a piece of bark. Today this now famous bark petition is here in Parliament House, brought to Canberra by the Yolngu people, a permanent reminder of the fledging land rights movement. Kim Beazley Sr was there with the Yolngu people as they brought their struggle to national attention.

After 27 years in parliament and with the election of the Whitlam government, Kim Beazley Sr at last entered the ministry, and with the education portfolio came his chance to make a difference. One of his first initiatives was to encourage Aboriginal children to be taught in schools in their own language with English as a second language. Until then, in some states teachers could be penalised under the law for teaching in an Aboriginal language or in any language other than English. When he left the ministry, Aboriginal children were being taught in 22 of their own languages.

He instigated a national inquiry into education which resulted in innovative reforms, including programs for Aboriginal children, migrant children, children with special needs, technical education and adult education. It was under his direction that legislation enshrining the principle of Commonwealth funding for all schools based on need was passed, ending forever the bitter and divisive debate in the Labor Party and in the community over state aid for non-government schools. And of course thousands of people from my generation gratefully remember him as the minister who abolished university fees.

Kim Beazley Sr will be remembered for many things: his formidable intellectual capacity, his effectiveness as a minister, his sharp debating skills and his immense moral integrity—not that he was one to be above having a dig at his opponents. One of his remarks, which has passed into parliamentary folklore, was directed at the then Country Party when he accused them of ‘socialising their losses and capitalising their profits’. He will be remembered for what he stood for. He stood for justice and equality; he stood up for the disadvantaged and the oppressed; he was a champion for public duty and the overarching imperative for our national leaders to act with integrity and honesty. To his family I give my heartfelt condolences.

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