Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I feel immensely privileged to have known Clyde Cameron and today to be a member of this House and therefore able to briefly speak about his remarkable life and his distinguished parliamentary career. I will certainly treasure my last encounter with Clyde Cameron because it was at that encounter that I was able to get a personally autographed copy of his biography, A Life on the Left, which I enjoyed reading and which gave me a tremendous insight into the contribution he made to public life and to the Labor Party.

Clyde Cameron has been described by some as a giant of the union movement, a giant of the Australian Labor Party and a giant of the Australian parliament. I believe that those descriptions of him are quite proper. His life was eloquently summarised by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, by the Leader of the Opposition, Brendan Nelson, and by you, Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas, in the condolence motion on Monday. I also enjoyed listening to the member for Berowra’s contribution to this debate as someone who served in the parliament with Clyde Cameron and who obviously knew him even better than I did.

It would seem to me, as I reflect back on my understanding of parliamentarians and politics in Australia, that it is unlikely that we will ever see another person who will have an influence on public life to the extent that Clyde Cameron did, bearing in mind not only the amount of influence he had on the union movement, the Labor Party and the parliament itself but also the length of time over which that influence extended. It is something that perhaps, with today’s lifestyle, we will not ever see again. I suspect that the pace of life has changed to the extent that we will not see people remain in this parliament or in public life for as long as Clyde Cameron was able to.

As I said in my first speech to parliament, I was asked to join the Labor Party by Reg Groth, a former AWU organiser who went on to be the state member for Salisbury. Through Reg Groth I got to know a lot more about the AWU and about Clyde Cameron. You might say, given that Reg Groth, I understand, became a member of state parliament as a result of the support he received from Clyde Cameron, that I may well be standing here today as a member of this parliament indirectly because of Clyde Cameron.

Clyde Cameron came from the union movement. Through Reg Groth, I got to know Don Cameron, Clyde’s brother, who was a senator from South Australia. When I was working for the late Senator Jim Cavanagh, between 1976 and 1981, I got to see firsthand the influence that Clyde Cameron had, particularly on the South Australian branch of the Labor Party and on federal parliament. It is interesting, when you reflect back, that in the 1950s, when there was certainly turbulence within the Labor Party and the great split of the day, it was in fact thanks to Clyde Cameron, Geoff Virgo, Jim Toohey and Reg Bishop that the South Australian branch of the party remained unified and was able to continue with the policies that I know underpin the Australian Labor Party.

In the time I have today I want to touch on three areas of Clyde’s life that, I think, sometimes go somewhat unnoticed—although perhaps the first does not. It relates not only to his personal influence in the parliamentary process and within the Labor Party but to the influence that will carry on and has carried on since his retirement from parliament as a result of the people whom he assisted and perhaps influenced to become members of parliament. I refer to people like Don Dunstan, a great reformer in South Australia who became a politician and Premier of South Australia essentially, I suspect, because of Clyde Cameron.

I am reminded of a story that was passed on to me about Don Dunstan’s elevation to the premiership. It went something like this, and if I in some way misquote it, my apologies to those involved. When Frank Walsh became Premier of South Australia after some 32 years of the Playford government, Clyde made these points about Frank at a party conference:

Frank Walsh will be remembered for three things: winning government, running a good government and knowing when to retire.

To Frank Walsh’s amazement he made that third comment without Frank being aware of it. When asked by Frank why he had made such a comment, Clyde looked at the audience and is reported to have said, ‘Frank, they’ll love you for saying it.’ The rest is history. In fact, Don Dunstan soon became Premier of South Australia and Frank Walsh did retire. It says a lot about the influence of Clyde Cameron at the time.

Then there was John Bannon, a former Premier of South Australia who, I believe, would not have been there if it were not for Clyde Cameron. And Senator the Hon. Nick Bolkus, who spent a great length of time in this place and retired not long ago, was also a close friend of Clyde Cameron and was supported by Clyde for preselection. I can well recall those days. I was working for Senator Jim Cavanagh and Nick Bolkus was also working for one of the other Labor Party senators at the time. I recall the preselection battles of the day. I am sure that there were many others—I referred to Reg Groth earlier—who equally owe their place in federal or state parliament to the work of Clyde Cameron.

The second point I want to make about Clyde Cameron’s life is that, when there was a huge influx of migrants to this country after World War II, he was one of the politicians who made himself accessible to the new migrants. For the new migrants, the early days in the fifties were very difficult. The government services and support that we have today were not available then so, inevitably, when they really needed something or were having problems with the bureaucracy, it was to people like Clyde Cameron—and in particular to Clyde Cameron—that they would turn. I am reminded of a telephone call I received only last Saturday night. By sheer coincidence an acquaintance of mine from Melbourne rang me to congratulate me on being elected to parliament. That day the news had broken about Clyde Cameron having passed away. In the same breath, the caller said: ‘And it is sad to see that Clyde Cameron passed away. I remember that when my family came to this country in the fifties he helped us immensely.’ I believe he was speaking for hundreds if not thousands of migrants who came out to Australia at the time.

The third point I make is that he was one of the first politicians to stand up for the rights of women in this country. In particular, his stance on equal wages for women was something that made him an exception.

There is no question that Clyde Cameron was an influential person, and I suspect his 80-year membership, or thereabouts, of the Australian Labor Party will never be beaten. Listening again to the member for Berowra, it is clear to me that, whilst Clyde Cameron was only in government for three years during his time in parliament, which was 31 years or so, his influence—was extended, even in his years of not being in government, by his close association with members of the opposition. The member for Mayo made mention of that in his address on Monday as well. Clyde Cameron was one of those people who befriended people from both sides of politics and, I am sure, in the course of that friendship was able to convey messages and influence policies of the government of the day, even when he was in opposition.

As I said from the outset, I feel privileged to have actually known him, albeit not as well as others, and to have been able to be in this place at the time of his passing and therefore speak on his life. I close with this quotation, and it is a quotation which I have sourced in respect to an obituary that Clyde Cameron wrote about Bob Santamaria at the time that Bob Santamaria passed away. He said:

I shared Bob Santamaria’s sadness over the way politics have deteriorated to a position that it is now a contest between the rich and the poor; the privileged and the underprivileged; the exploiters and the exploited; the tax avoiders and the tax payers; the greedy and the needy; the buyers of labour and the sellers of labour; with the odds always stacked up in favour of the first party!

I think that quotation summarises and expresses Clyde Cameron, the man, better than I ever could, and it is in itself testimony to the commitment that he made to working Australians in this country. My condolences certainly go out to his family—to his wife, Doris; to his sons, Warren and Noel; and to his daughter, Tania.

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