Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In John Button, the Labor movement, and indeed our country, has lost one of its greatest figures. John Button was born in Ballarat in 1933. He went to school at Geelong College and from there went to Melbourne university. I followed much later in his footsteps, in a way, being educated in Geelong and also doing law at Melbourne university. John Button was a man who loved Labor governments. He passionately believed in what Labor governments did for our country and can do for our country. In the passages that we have just heard from the member for Isaacs, you get a sense of John Button’s passion and love of Labor governments. He was utterly committed to putting Labor governments into power.

But winning government is a very difficult endeavour. It is a hard thing to do and it requires difficult decisions. It is a measure of John Button and his significance that at the commencement of the Whitlam, Hawke and Keating governments he played a pivotal role in putting in place the architecture of the Labor Party which allowed those governments to ultimately occur. Many would say—indeed, I would say—that Gough Whitlam’s greatest achievement was to modernise the Australian Labor Party and put Labor in a position where it was finally electable after a long period in the wilderness. The coalface of that struggle of making the Australian Labor Party an electable party was occurring in Victoria, which was failing to recover from the split of 1955 and was being run by an authoritarian and very left-wing Victorian central executive.

John Button was a founding member of a group called ‘the Participants’, which was formed in 1965. The group was formed out of frustration at Labor being out of power for a long time and a commitment to try and put Labor back into power once again. The group saw that for that to occur the Victorian branch of the Labor Party needed to be reformed, so they campaigned for federal intervention and for the federal executive to involve itself in the affairs of the Victorian branch. That federal intervention ultimately occurred in 1970, very much at the behest of the then opposition leader, Gough Whitlam. It was a potent combination—Gough Whitlam on the one hand and the Participants, a local group of activists, on the other—and together they managed to change the Victorian branch of the Labor Party.

In what is a fantastic, unpublished book by Senator-elect David Feeney, which was written in 1996 after extensive interviews with all of the Participants, he came to the conclusion that the Participants themselves credited John Button with the idea of putting together the combination of Gough Whitlam on the one hand and the Participants on the other. It was John Button who led that move, and ultimately Gough Whitlam met with the Participants on numerous occasions and helped to bring about that federal intervention. In the aftermath, John Button was a key figure in reinvigorating the Victorian branch of the Labor Party, sitting on the then advisory council. The 1970 intervention into the Victorian Labor Party was a critical precondition for Labor winning government in 1972. It was very difficult work indeed and at the heart of it was John Button.

In 1974 John Button was then elected to the Senate and briefly participated in the Whitlam government. But nine years later, in 1983, John Button famously participated in another event which put in place the architecture that allowed the then Hawke-led opposition to win the 1983 election. It is an often quoted letter, particularly in the last few months, which put Bob Hawke, a very charismatic and popular leader at the time, in a position to contest the 1983 election. It must have been an acutely difficult letter for John Button to write and it has been quoted before but I intend to quote the passage again where he wrote to Bill Hayden, a close friend of his, and said:

I have been consistently loyal to you in every major difficulty you have faced. I am still loyal to you. My ultimate loyalty, however, must be to the ALP.

That quote says volumes about John Button’s attitude to loyalty but also his loyalty to the Australian Labor Party. I think it is with incredible generosity and grace that Bill Hayden ultimately said at John Button’s funeral that John was absolutely right on all of those points. It is a measure of John Button’s significance, as I said, that he was a critical player at the most important, pivotal moments in the lead-up to both the Whitlam government and the Hawke and Keating governments. He was a player in the background but he was a player who ultimately made the difference and allowed those governments to occur.

John Button did have his own time in the sun. As the industry minister of this country—and it has been put on record on numerous occasions in the last month—John Button was the longest serving minister in a single portfolio during the Hawke-Keating era. He is best remembered perhaps in that sense for the Button car plan, which again tackled a very difficult issue and made hard decisions but did so in an intelligent and sensitive way. Reducing tariffs, he made the car industry much more internationally competitive, but he did so on the basis of providing export focused industry policy. The need for our manufacturing sector to be export focused is as critical now as it was then. Indeed, that is absolutely the case in the car industry and it is absolutely the case in the car industry in my electorate of Corio, where last year we saw 600 employees lose their jobs in the Geelong engine stamping plant of Ford. That ultimately was a decision which flowed from a much earlier decision by Ford in Detroit not to export Australian made vehicles into the Middle East, but that stood as an example of how important export industries are to our manufacturing sector and, in particular, to our car industry.

I first met John Button in 1990. I enjoyed hearing the account from the member for Isaacs; it sounded very similar to my first meeting with John Button. I was writing a number of letters, not of any particular note, as a university student to a number of ministers in the then Hawke government. I wrote off a number of letters but one person replied and that was John Button. I ended up having a wonderful interview with him where I think I asked similar questions to the member for Isaacs about what my future might hold and how I ought best go about it. It was the kind of interview that I suspect he would not have remembered for long after it occurred, but of course it was an interview that I will never forget. That I am obviously not the only person to have had that experience says a lot about the generosity of the man and his generosity with his time.

I have another association with the Button family, through John’s son James. James Button and I had briefly overlapping careers at Melbourne university and I came to know him in that time through student politics. But I also knew James and, vicariously through James, John through a shared love that we all had of the Geelong Football Club. What I really remember—and it is a lesson that I have certainly carried on in my life—was a ritual that the two of them had. It may have involved Nick as well, I am not sure, but I came to know of it through James and so here I refer to James and John. Their ritual involved frequently going to watch the Geelong Football Club play throughout the winter months. They loved the club a lot, but the event also played a very significant role in their own relationship. They got to spend the day together—father and son—and whilst the principle focus was on watching the ‘Hoops’ run around the ground, no doubt they also shared stories about their week. It was a very important interaction in their lives, as John’s commitment of time to this place made family life difficult. John expressed that on numerous occasions since he left this place. Emerging from that period and having my own children—an 11-year-old son, a three-year-old daughter and an 11-month-old son—I am very keen that football and Geelong should be a part of the relationship that I have with them. Whilst Sam is very much on the road to being a Geelong supporter and understands it all, my daughter, Isabella, and my younger son, Harvey, will get there as well.

In 1995, while at the grand final that Geelong contested against Carlton, I read a fantastic piece in the Age written by James Button. I had got to the ground early, as you do on grand final day so that you can get a good seat. There was a lot of time to kill, but there was this fantastic feature piece in the Age written by James which described the trials and tribulations of barracking for what until recently has been a heartbreak team. He went through in detail the particular pain that Geelong Football Club supporters have suffered over the years. It was difficult to read that piece and not start crying, which indeed I did on that day after my anticipation of what I had expected to be a fantastic achievement. Aficionados of AFL history will know that I was to be very disappointed later in the day as Geelong got absolutely pumped.

I have since learnt that there was a ritual that James and John used to go through after each grand final where they would take a sheet of paper, write down on it each player on the list, imagine them in peak form and injury free, and then fantasize about what that would mean for the following year and how Geelong might go. A very intelligent mind applying itself to the trials and tribulations of the Geelong Football Club needed venting and some form of expression, and John Button did that by writing to the coaches of Geelong as industry minister to suggest players who should be picked, others who should be delisted and where particular players should play. He tells a story, and there are a couple of versions of it. In 1989 a new coach came to Geelong, Malcolm Blight, who replied to John by talking about the new policies he was going to put in place at the club and then gently suggesting to John Button that he did not need his advice as industry minister because he would be able to coach the team on his own. The first version of that story involved John being confident about that assertion by the coach and his sense that this was a man who knew how to coach. So with some confidence he put his pen away and stopped offering that advice.

Last year was an incredible year for the Geelong Football Club. There was an enormous amount of emotion leading up to the grand final and it turned out to be an utterly extraordinary event. It is difficult to convey to people who do not support this team exactly what it meant. It bears some similarity to Collingwood’s 1990 victory, but Geelong’s particular geography and the whole town’s commitment made it even more emotional and even more special. On the Friday before the grand final, there appeared in the Age again a wonderful piece of writing by a Button about what it meant to barrack for Geelong. On this occasion it was John Button himself who was writing in the Age. He told the story again of sending those letters to the coaches of the Geelong Football Club and Malcolm Blight’s rebuff of those suggestions of his. He said—and this is a slightly different version to the first version that I heard of this; I suspect that John gave both versions:

He then gave me a cold stare. As coach, he said, he wouldn’t need any letters of advice from me. I thought this was churlish. I gave up writing letters in disgust. Disgruntled, I went underground and became caught up in a loose and semi-secret network, not unlike the People’s Liberation Front of Judea in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. It involved meetings in pubs and coffee bars and restaurants to discuss “the situation” of the club. Like the Liberation Front, our deliberations were mostly irrelevant to anything that actually happened.

Perhaps it was a good thing. In May last year, for example, I met with a co-evil in a Collins Street coffee shop. He turned up with a black notebook containing a list of Geelong players’ names. We reached agreement on those who should be delisted. Six of them are playing in tomorrow’s grand final.

They are a strange lot, the Cats Liberation Front, not beyond the fringe, but on it. There’s an actor who can keep a lunch table laughing for hours and becomes as serious as Hamlet when the football is discussed. Only last week another fringe dweller said he wanted to meet and discuss tactics before the final. This man, I thought, is deranged. But it’s catching, and I met him. I can’t help wondering if other teams have people like this. Or is it all a result of long suffering in the wilderness?

Geelong now is, of course, a strong club with healthy finances, a professional football department and a good player list. It’s the best Geelong team I can remember. It should win. There’ll be a bunch of cheering fringe dwellers there to watch it, unless someone locks us out.

That piece says everything about John Button’s wit, about his love of the Geelong Football Club, about his intelligence and about his wonderful ability to write.

I last saw John Button—and indeed the last time I saw James—at the grand final. John and James were sitting next to each other, father and son, participating in a ritual that they had done over decades and I was quite near them. On this occasion I was sitting with my son Sam. It was an incredibly special day for me. It was an incredibly special day for the Buttons. I spoke with James afterwards and I spoke with John. His eyes were failing during the grand final—he did not see it all—but he absolutely understood what was going on.

My greatest joy on that day, amongst all the joys of Geelong winning that grand final, was experiencing it with my 11-year-old son. Without a doubt, James Button’s greatest joy, amongst all the emotions of Geelong winning a flag after 44 years, was being there with his father. Now looking back at it and seeing what has happened since, how significant and how wonderful it was that John Button got to see that event. But of course it ultimately was a prelude to a far more significant event that John Button got to see which occurred in November last year—Labor being elected to power once more. With all his passion for Labor governments it would have meant everything to John to see that, much more in fact even than to see Geelong winning the flag.

My thoughts very much go to John’s family—to Joan, to Nick and in particular to James, as I know James. There is unquestionably grief and sadness with John’s passing, but there must also be comfort that John left this earth with Labor back in government, with Geelong as the reigning premiers and with the knowledge that everything was right with the world.

See this speech in context