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

I have been in this place for almost 21½ years and in that time I have interacted with many journalists, past and present. I can honestly say that you could number on my left hand the number of journalists that I would be prepared to speak about in a condolence motion. Rob Chalmers is one of them. I found him to be a good person. I found him to be a decent person. I found him to be a very ethical person. And I liked him. All my interactions with him were interactions where he sought to check the facts in relation to something he was writing. He was one of those old-style journalists that actually believed in checking the facts before writing. He was about trying to achieve accuracy in what he was writing, because he understood the impact once he wrote and the publishing of what he wrote. That is not true of many in the gallery today due to the deadlines and sometimes the views that they have which, frankly, they do not want to change—which may if they chased up other sources in relation to their writing or what they put to air.

Rob Chalmers was old school and he had, I suppose, a charm about him—and that is why I liked him. In many respects, he had a values system in terms of ethics and what it meant to be a journalist and the high responsibility involved with being a journalist. You only have to look at what is coming out of the UK at the moment to see the lengths that people are going to to get stories and how that is rocking the system. That was not Rob Chalmers.

Rob was also so respectful of people in positions. Be they the Prime Minister of the day, the ministers of the day, the Leader of the Opposition or members of parliament, he understood the need to respect that people occupied positions and that in many respects most people are here to do good.

So I want to be associated with all that has been said to date on the condolence motion and pay my respect to Rob and offer my sincere condolences to members of his family. He is going to be missed. The reality is that he was different from all his colleagues—and that is because he was here for some 60 years. He had a corporate memory and an understanding. We all think that everything that is happening around us is new and has not happened before. The truth is that in some respects it is groundhog day. Rob was able to recount to me stories in relation to Menzies, Chifley and others and incidents that occurred back then. In my life I have always respected older people and people like Rob Chalmers who have a values system and are happy to talk not in an aggressive way but in a way that is not putting you down—in a respectful way. With Rob's passing this place has experienced a loss—a big loss—because I do not think we will see the likes of him again.

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