Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to pay tribute to a remarkable woman, Phyllis Johnson, who died on 20 July this year aged 92. A wonderful obituary was written by Tony Stephens in the Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday, 4 August 2009 and I propose to quote from it extensively. He says:

Phyllis Johnson was a campaigner of substance, and on many fronts. She campaigned for ‘Liberty Loans’ to raise funds to wage World War II, against the prime minister, Robert Menzies, in his attempts to ban the Communist Party, for women’s refuges and equal pay and, most famously, against rising prices.

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Johnson was jailed for speaking out against conscription for war and twice thrown out of the NSW Parliament … At the age of 90 she set up a table and chair at her local shopping centre to get signatures on a petition for the Your Rights at Work Campaign.

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She joined the Communist Party in 1937, attended her first International Women’s Day the same year, joined the campaign against fascism and the Spanish Civil War, became involved in the New Theatre and, in 1939, married John Johnson, a violin maker and communist.

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Johnson came to public prominence in 1970 when she set up the Campaign Against Rising Prices with other women from around Bankstown. They blamed multinational groups for forcing up prices, often of food, and their campaign gained an international profile.

Protesting against the soap makers, Johnson made her own at home in kerosene tins, and requests for recipes came from Afghanistan and Mexico. She arranged ‘sit-ins’ outside supermarkets that sold what she regarded as rancid butter and fetid bacon to unsuspecting shoppers. When some supermarkets started checking shoppers’ bags, the campaign members filled their handbags with rat traps and fake spiders.

In 1973, having repeatedly failed to meet the premier, Sir Robert Askin, the Campaign Against Rising Prices members protested from the public gallery in the Legislative Assembly, calling for control of prices. Attendants had to forcibly remove her after the speaker, Sir Kevin Ellis, adjourned the House.

However, after the Wran Labor government came to power in 1976, Johnson worked more happily with Syd Einfeld, the minister for consumer affairs. They were sometimes called ‘Mr and Mrs Prices’.

In 1975 she opened the doors of Betsy Women’s Refuge in Bankstown, to which she and several other women had allocated funds from their housekeeping money.

She loved poetry, especially Australian bush poetry, and often recited it. She spoke of herself as ‘the last of the red Matildas’.

Her honours include a medal in the Order of Australia in 1989, the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal (1977), Bankstown Woman of the Year (1977), the Syd Einfeld Award (1993), the Centenary Medal (2001) and the Eureka Medal (2008).

One of her obituaries, in the Guardian—the Workers Weekly, quotes Phyllis as saying:

I have always striven to do my best on behalf of the working people. I believe we can have no higher goal in life and cannot in good conscience do less.

I first met Phyllis in 1974 when I joined the Labor Party and was campaigning in the local election. I ran into her on a number of occasions until her death. She was a remarkable woman. I visited her on a number of occasions at home when she was ill and she was aged, but she still kept articulating the message. It was a message of compassion; it was a message of tolerance and understanding of our fellow peoples.

There was a remarkable wake for Phyllis, where her son and daughter opened up her home for her friends, many of them from the Communist Party and many of them aged because they were of her era. Sadly, her son, Peter, has subsequently passed away, so she is now only survived by Alice, her daughter.

She was a great supporter of mine. She often rang me up and gave me advice—advice which I was happy to take from her. She was a giver, not a taker. She was someone who was respected across our community. She had radical views, yes, but she was someone who people liked because she was always friendly. She did not have a grizzling bone in her body and she always treated people with warmth. Sure, she could talk, but she actually had some substance in what she was saying. She is sadly missed by her friends. She was a warm and wonderful human being who enriched our community. I pay tribute to her.

Question agreed to.

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