Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband) Share this | Hansard source

All members of this House and all Australians were horrified and deeply saddened to hear of the tragic helicopter accident which took the lives of three of the ABC’s most well-loved and most experienced employees—Gary Ticehurst, Paul Lockyer and John Bean. They died doing what they had done well for so long; bringing the vision of Australia—particularly the Australia that is beyond the cities where most of us live—those images and that life of the Australian bush to the rest of this nation. In doing that work over so many years they were part of the great mission of the ABC, which as a national public broadcaster is able to knit together this country and, in particular in the way it serves regional Australia and represents the views of regional Australia and the images of regional Australia, serves to remind all of us that there is a world elsewhere, that there is an Australia outside of the congestion and the busyness and the hustle and bustle of the city streets. While we may not be like the clerk in Banjo Paterson’s famous poem and wish that we were out of the city and out there with Clancy droving, nonetheless we can at least have some insight into that world courtesy of the ABC.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 10:19 to 10:32

Before we adjourned to vote in the division I was observing that the three men who died in this tragic helicopter crash, Gary Ticehurst, Paul Lockyer and John Bean, had spent much of their lives—particularly Paul and Gary—in recording and documenting the life in rural Australia. I speculated as to whether, like the author of Clancy of the Overflow, Banjo Paterson, we, looking at the wonderful pictures they brought back of life outside the cities, whether we, like Banjo Paterson, fancied ourselves leaving the busyness of the city and going out for a more rural life, going out into the wide open spaces of Australia. As we were coming back from the division the member for Forrest reminded me of his extraordinary gift for reading and remembering poetry and so we turned up that poem, Clancy of the Overflow, which I have not memorised, but those last two stanzas really sum up the image of an urban country like Australia that for all of its life—and we have been one of the most urbanised countries in the world, despite our vast land mass—how, as a very urbanised country, we still seek to stay connected with and to understand regional Australia. Those last two stanzas Paterson writes:

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me

As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,

With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,

For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow fancy that I’d like to change with Clancy,

Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,

While we faced the round eternal of the cashbook and the journal –

But I doubt he’d suit the office, Clancy, of ‘The Overflow’.

Gary Ticehurst, Paul Lockyer and John Bean did not suit the office and they died as they had lived. Gary Ticehurst had been the ABC’s lead helicopter pilot since the 1980s. He had logged more than 16,000 hours of flying time, most of those in his work for the ABC. He is remembered for many great stories that he enabled the ABC to cover, but probably the most spectacular was his consistent coverage of the Sydney to Hobart yacht races. Of course in 1998, in that tragic race, he played a very important role—much more important than just delivering us spectacular imagines of the yachts at sea—where he effected the rescue of 14 crew members of the yacht Business Post Naiad, which tragically lost its skipper and one of its crew. He was out there in that wild weather spotting the yachts and relaying their position to the search and rescue officials. He saved lives. He did not simply record the life of the sailors, he saved lives. He was loved by all of the people that he worked with at the ABC and, as I said, he represented the wings that enabled the writers and the cameramen to get out and record the life beyond the cities of this great country.

Paul Lockyer was one of the most distinguished journalists in the ABC and, indeed, in Australia. His career had spanned more than 40 years, which is remarkable because he looked so young. He was extremely well preserved. Clearly the life of being an ABC journalist is very good for one’s personal appearance. He always looked youthful and brought a vitality and an energy to all of his reporting. His jobs at the ABC have spanned just about every corner of its activities, but most recently his focus had been, as I said earlier, on regional issues. Very recently he was in Grantham when the floods hit in Queensland this year, as my colleague, Mr Buchholz has spoken very eloquently about. He was regarded as one of the people, one of their own, by the people of the Lockyer Valley—and appropriately, given they share a name—and the Mayor has said that every time he returned to Grantham, which he did many times after the floods, the locals embraced him as truly one of their own. He was a man of great compassion, great professionalism and embodied the very high standards of journalism.

Of course, the most beautiful words are not nearly as persuasive or as compelling without the pictures, and John Bean, the cameraman who also died in this crash, had been working for the ABC as a cameraman for 20 years. He had worked on a whole range of Australian television programs: Australian Story: Catalyst, New Inventors, Gardening Australia, 7.30 and Landline. He, like Paul Lockyer and Gary Ticehurst, had a fascination with and a love of the landscape of Australia and his work on the documentaries Return to Lake Eyre and After the Deluge are great testimony to both his passion and his art.

These three men will be sorely missed by their families, by their colleagues and by all Australians. It was a tragic loss and, as I said, they died as they had lived, serving the people of Australia through that great public broadcaster, the ABC.

I would also like to take this opportunity to honour another great leader of the ABC, another great journalist, Ian Carroll, who many of us have known. He is the husband, of course, of Geraldine Doogue, another very distinguished journalist. Ian had a remarkable career with the ABC. He died of a very cruel disease, a very cruel cancer. He worked right up until the end of his life. He had contributed to so many programs over the years at the ABC. He was an interesting man; he was in his mid-sixties when he died. He rather belies the view of Gen-Y that only the people in their twenties can be great innovators. He is an encouragement to all of us because he was the founder, in large measure, of the ABC program Lateline, which of course has become one of the most significant current affairs programs in Australia and really is one of the handful of platforms on television where there is actually the scope for a reasonably informed, intelligent debate about public policy, which is an enormous part of the ABC’s role.

Also, over the last decade, Ian really pioneered the entry of the ABC into the digital world. In my view, the ABC does a better job on the digital platform—on the internet, with iview and its podcasts—than any other broadcaster in the world. If people want to correct me on that then I would be very interested to be proven wrong, but I think what they have done is extraordinary. You take the way in which the reach of so many outstanding programs and Radio National have been expanded exponentially with podcasts, the way that the reach of ABC television programs has been expanded dramatically with iview and, of course, the ABC’s many websites—whether it is opinions as in The Drum or so many other platforms—have really expanded the reach of the ABC. Far from being, as one might have expected, a rather stuffy old public broadcaster, it has become a real leader in digital innovation. This was done by Ian Carroll. He was the driving force. He was the one that more than a decade ago was pushing the ABC and saying, ‘This is the new frontier. Our world does not end at free-to-air television and radio. We have to drive into the digital arena’, and they have done it very well. Ian is also deeply missed.

It was a very tragic week for the ABC to lose those four men. All of them made a great contribution the ABC—a remarkable one and unique contributions in each case. All of them are very sorely missed, so it is appropriate that this parliament records our sadness at their passing, our respect for them, conveys our condolences to their family, friends and colleagues at their work, and also in doing this, recognises the great work that the ABC does to bring our wonderful large nation together, and in particular to bring together the far-flung parts of Australia, out in the bush in regional Australia, to the clerks in the city, who in the midst of the bustle, without the ABC, would only be able to dream of the splendours that Clancy enjoyed.

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