Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

Like the honourable member for Berowra, I extend my appreciation that the parliament has made a little time available for us to reflect on the life of Bruce Cowan. The previous speaker would have been in the federal parliament, I suspect, for the whole of the time that Bruce Cowan was a member of this House. Bruce Cowan's last term was my first term, so we crossed over by about three years. I have very fond memories of Bruce as a man. I got to know him briefly before I entered the federal parliament, but our relationship extended beyond the time of his retirement. Frequently when I went to the Taree or Port Macquarie area he made sure that he was around so that we could talk about issues. He was keenly interested in politics for all of his life, right up to his very last days.

When I attended his funeral service in Taree and listened to people talk about his life it reminded me of how similar his early life was to my own. I could see many similarities in the way in which we grew up and, I suspect, the sorts of things that led us into politics. Bruce Cowan was born on a dairy farm on Oxley Island. It would have been a battle. Dairy farming has always been hard work. I was also born on a small farm. It had ceased to be a dairy farm by the time I was born, but all the relics of the dairy industry were there. He had his start in the Junior Farmers organisation. So did I. That later became Rural Youth. It gave us, as farm children, a real opportunity to meet other young people in our district and to understand something about living and working with other people and broadening our own experience.

Bruce then went into local government, as I did. He became Deputy Mayor of Taree City Council, where he served with distinction. By that time he had actually left the farm and was operating a stock and station agency and real estate business in the town. He was very active in his community and on a whole range of agricultural issues—and was so all through his life. I was interested to hear again, at his funeral, people talking about the things that he had been doing only in the past weeks in support of local community organisations, especially the church where his funeral was held, and his keen interest in community affairs.

My fundamental description of Bruce Cowan, if I had to put it into one word, would be that this guy was a gentleman. He was a humble man, an able man, a man who cared about the people around him. He endured a great deal of hardship through his own life but always cared about others. He was keen to listen. He was always interested in the views of others. He certainly had his own views, but he was interested also to hear what other people had to say and was very keen to follow through on their concerns. It is also interesting that he never used speaking notes—he always spoke without notes and spoke from the heart. Speaking without notes enabled him to speak more freely than he otherwise would have been able to do. He certainly was a man of substance, but also he was a man of great warmth and great feeling.

Bruce is one of the few people to have served in all three tiers of government. As mentioned earlier, he was on the Taree council, serving as deputy mayor; he moved into the New South Wales parliament, where he served as a minister under two premiers; and then he moved into the federal parliament. I am sure he would have wished also to have been a minister in the federal parliament, but that was not to be. Nonetheless, he always had the respect of his colleagues in this place. Indeed, it would be hard to identify any political or personal foe that he ever really developed in his life. He respected his opponents and generally got on very well with them.

I met Bruce Cowan on the very first day I came to this parliament, at the airport in Sydney. The National Party was in a bit of trouble at the time because we had had a bad election result. Our leader had been defeated and the first job of new members of parliament coming to Canberra was to choose a new leader. Bruce had always been a lifelong friend of Ian Sinclair and felt deeply aggrieved that Ian had been deposed as leader. He felt that we needed to do the right thing and put Ian back as the leader of the party. He lobbied strongly and compassionately for that. His friendship with Ian lasted a very long time, right up to Bruce's death. Indeed, Ian and Rosemary were present at his funeral, along with a large number of state and federal political colleagues from New South Wales and interstate.

In about 1987 his wife Laura was killed in a car accident. That was another very difficult time for the Nationals because at about the same time Noel Hicks, the member for Riverina, lost his wife in a car accident. Both women were at the time going about their duties as the spouses of members of parliament. It did draw to the attention of all of us the dangers of travelling on country roads over very long distances. They are the risks that we all take as people who need to be active around our electorates all the time. Losing Laura was a huge blow to Bruce, but he later married Jan Churchill and Jan, with her wonderful personality, was able to help Bruce in his work as an MP and then right through the rest of his life.

The other thing we will always remember was Bruce's dedication and his commitment. He had two daughters, and one, Rosemary, is the wife of the new New South Wales Premier. Having met Bruce's grandsons, Tom and Will, I suspect there may end up being three generations of his family in politics. They are a wonderful couple of boys and I am sure they also have an enormous contribution to make in the future.

Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia in 1991 for his service to government and the citizens of the Taree region. He had served 35 years in local, state and federal parliament—a remarkable record. He was a very fine man. I felt that his farewell service at St John's Anglican Church in Taree was one of the most impressive I have been to. The town turned out and his friends were there—and his friends naturally included some well-known and famous people. But everyone attended not to be in the company of famous people but because they respected Bruce as a man. They acknowledged the contribution he had made to Taree and district, and those of us who regarded him as a friend—virtually everyone who knew him—knew that we had lost someone we cherished very deeply. I extend my sympathies to Jan, and to his daughters Rosemary and Jane and their extended families. They can be very proud of Bruce for the role he has played and for the model and the lead he has provided for so many people.

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