Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House expresses its deep regret at the death on 3 November 2007, of Mr Peter James Andren, former Independent Member for Calare, and place on record its appreciation of his long and meritorious service, and tender its profound sympathy to his family in their bereavement.

Peter was born on 28 August 1946 at Gulargambone in New South Wales. He graduated from Macquarie University with a Bachelor of Arts degree and trained as a teacher at the Alexander Mackie College in Sydney. He taught for three years, between 1965 and 1968, and in subsequent years he remarked that he still regarded teaching as the most honourable of all professions. He made a career shift into television journalism in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War, and those years of seeing all the incoming war footage on television news left an enduring impression on him. He worked as a news producer for the Seven and Nine networks in Sydney before moving to the central west of New South Wales in 1977. There he became the news editor for the Orange radio station 2GZ and then newsreader for the Prime television network station at Orange.

Peter first entered parliament in 1996, having won the seat of Calare as an Independent. It is rare for a politician to be elected to the House as an Independent member. It is even more uncommon to enter the House for the first time as an Independent. More commonly, those who serve as Independents have previously won office as a member of a party and have subsequently left that party. Peter won the seat of Calare in 1996 with a vote of 63.3 per cent after the distribution of preferences. By 2001 he had increased that margin, with a further 15.1 per cent swing in the election that year. This made Calare the second-safest seat in the country. That was an extraordinary achievement for an Independent.

As others have commented, Peter’s achievement in not just securing that seat but also increasing his margin in it is testament to his local popularity and also his deep commitment to many of the policy debates we have had in this parliament. Peter’s popularity in his electorate was all the more remarkable for the fact that many of the stances he had taken prior to the 2001 election were deemed unpopular and out of sync with his regional electorate. There was a great public admiration for Peter’s integrity that transcended conventional political alignments. Peter was a forthright Independent member who brought dignity, honesty and integrity to Australian politics—and these are rare commodities. He was well regarded by all sides of politics and respected for his thoughtful and controversial contributions to debates on subjects as diverse as refugees, Iraq, Indigenous affairs, mandatory sentencing, renewable energy and telecommunications.

Peter was a particularly important friend and colleague to the member for New England as well as the member for Kennedy. He was a man of principle and an absolute Independent. He worked hard and cared deeply for his constituents. In his 2003 book The Andren Report he described his job as one of pastoral care, except he conceded that it was he who needed the flock most. I think his observation about pastoral care is important for all of us as local members of parliament to reflect on. I am advised that he used to tell his staff that they should treat every single inquiry at his electorate office as if it was the most important event happening in that person’s life at that moment. That is an important discipline for us all to reflect on. As we are caught up in the affairs of this place, so many people who need the most basic and elementary of government services come to members of parliament, often as a last resort. They need a friendly ear, a friendly face, someone to talk to, someone to try and make the bureaucracy work for them. Peter’s observations in his book The Andren Report on the role of a local member are worthy of all of our collective reflection, study and application.

Peter was a deeply compassionate man. In The Andren Report he recounts a moving story from his childhood days living near the railway line at Camden. I would like to share a bit of it with the House. This is Peter Andren, in his own words, as a little boy growing up:

I was rapidly forming my ideas about who was regarded as important, and who was not, in this society. A small and bent old guy, white-bristled and perennially dressed in a dirty grey suit … used to shuffle up the street past our house to the pub on the corner. He embodied evil in my childish mind, although I never stopped to analyse why. He just looked an outcast and, somehow, threatening. When I saw him coming I’d run and squeeze myself between the wall of the house and the side paling fence, an alleyway barely a foot wide. I’d crouch down hiding in the dampness and spider webs as I watched him toddle passed on his way ‘up the street’. One day he stopped and looked down the side of the house at me, directly catching me crammed into the tiny space and frozen with fear.

‘Don’t worry about me, lad,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

The sadness in his old, grey eyes hinted at many stories of his loneliness, his rejection. I felt scared and ashamed. He moved on, with that slow, painful gait. He lived alone, and eventually died alone, in his little shack down behind the saleyards, near the river flats. I never asked my parents, or anyone else, who this man was. But I knew from that day on that he was misunderstood, harmless. I began to understand the meaning of rejection and of isolation, and of the cruel injustice of prejudice. I’ve probably been trying to make it up to him ever since.

What an eloquent story, an eloquent reflection of a moment in Peter Andren’s life when he realised the impact of rejection and isolation on others—values which shaped his subsequent public and political career.

When his cancer was diagnosed on 10 August last year, Peter was planning an audacious run for the Senate. Peter Andren had guts—real guts. He was about to take on the entire political machine and run for the Senate, and we will never know whether that gamble would have succeeded. I strongly suspect it might have. Peter Andren’s death is a loss to our parliament, and this 42nd Parliament will miss his presence on the crossbenches.

I would like to recognise today the fact that Peter’s partner, Valerie, along with friends and former staff members, are here in the public gallery and that Peter’s great friend Tony Windsor, the member for New England, will also be a speaker in this condolence motion. On behalf of the government, I offer condolences to Val and sons, Greg and Josh.

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