Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the opposition I join very strongly in supporting this condolence motion, and it is with sadness that it is necessary to support it. John Button was one of those characters in Australian public life of whom all Australians can and should be very proud. He brought integrity, passion, good humour and enormous intellectual depth to Australian life and to the Australian parliament. He was a successful politician by any standard: a senator for 19 years, leader of the Labor Party in the Senate for 12 years and industry minister for 10 years. He was a key figure in the Labor Party’s modern history and instrumental to much of its success.

John began his working career as a labour lawyer and he rose to the position of senior partner at the Melbourne firm of Maurice Blackburn and Co. and stayed with the firm until he was elected in November 1974. He had joined the Carlton branch of the Labor Party in 1952 and was one of the ‘four just men’ who resolved in 1965 to challenge the extreme Left, which then controlled the state ALP and had been responsible for rendering Labor unelectable in Victoria. They formed a loose group known as the Participants to push for reform and to revitalise his party, and helped to bring about federal intervention in the Victorian branch of the Labor Party in 1970. On the eve of the 1983 election John Button wrote to his friend Bill Hayden convincing him to stand down in favour of Bob Hawke. At his heavily attended funeral Bill Hayden paid tribute to him and said:

... the quality of a good friend who delivers bad personal news with honesty and courage, and I think I’d add grace.

Button was appointed minister for industry following the 1983 election and he stayed there until his retirement in 1993—the longest tenure in a single ministry in the Hawke and Keating governments. He also played a role in establishing the Centre Left faction, bringing a flexibility to Labor’s restrictive factional system and providing the opportunity for many of Labor’s greater talents to attain frontbench positions. As a minister, John Button was central to the Hawke government’s moves to open up the Australian economy and Australian industry to international competition, for which this nation should be very grateful. This included implementing tariff reductions, including in the car industry, at a time when many in the Labor movement were arguing that protection was still required.

Following his political career, John Button continued to be active in the community. He served as chairman at the Melbourne Writers Festival, and his books and other writings are a significant contribution to the political history of this country. A Geelong tragic, his involvement with and lifelong passion for the Geelong Football Club is widely known. John Button was also a man whose character embodied those Aussie values of good humour, irreverence to authority and larrikinism. He was a man of great wit and a prankster. Describing Tim Fischer, he wrote, ‘He spoke a strange language, a type of Albury Afrikaans.’ And for years John Button would pen illiterate letters under his pseudonym, Arthur Cartwright, peppering Labor colleagues and public figures with acerbic advice. He also once wrote, ‘I admired Gough Whitlam but not as much as he did.’

John Button was a great Australian: a reformer and a creative policymaker. He was respected and he was well liked right across the political divide. He was a thoroughly decent man and a man of wit and grace. He was someone who added to the general public esteem for government, for parliament and for politicians generally. He was a giant of the Labor movement and should be honoured as such. He also endured what we as parents fear most, and that was the loss of a son under the most tragic circumstances. To his partner of 10 years, Joan Grant, his sons, James and Nick, and his grandchildren, Harry, Lola and Otis, I extend the deepest sympathies of the opposition and the Liberal Party of Australia.

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