Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great honour to address the life of Sir Zelman Cowen. Whilst much has been said of his public life, I want to briefly discuss his community life. His public life of course is well known—the career from academia at Melbourne University to Rhodes scholar, Vinerian scholar, fellow of Oriel College at Oxford University, visiting professor at the University of Chicago and visiting professor at the Harvard Law School and the University of Utah, and his early role as Dean of the Melbourne Law School. His was an extraordinary academic career, which led to vice-chancellorships and ultimately to the Governor-Generalship as well as the critical role at Oriel College at Oxford University.

It is at the human level where perhaps his most important impacts have been felt. His Governor-General's role was a reflection of that. The notion of healing and of unity, and the sense of generosity of spirit at a difficult time was able to transcend many of the conflicts of those days. That is all well known. I really want to reflect more on his contribution at the personal and community level rather than at the public level. Along the way, I was fortunate to meet Sir Zelman, but I do not want to overstate that. It was a passing encounter. It has been through three other people that I have come to know of him and know of his impact on them.

At college, I was a friend of Ben Cowen, who is Sir Zelman and Anna's youngest son. Ben is an extraordinarily alive human being. There is a sense of energy, intellect and effervescence about the way Ben Cowen approaches his life. To be with him at university was to be with somebody who represented the best of his father: the intellect, the charm, the mischief and the sense of joy in pure existence. Ben is a reflection of his father and he is a source of great pride, justifiably, to his family. To see in Ben Sir Zelman is to have a sense of the best of the man himself.

Similarly, Steven Skala, who has had an extraordinarily distinguished career in business, banking and public service, is one of the many who classed Sir Zelman as his mentor. Steven speaks of the generosity of Sir Zelman with his time, but much more than that which of itself was extraordinarily valuable was the generosity of spirit. To listen to Steven talk about Sir Zelman and his ability to engage and to give people a sense that their lives could be rich with possibility and a sense of their moral duties was to feel Sir Zelman's impact. I want to quote one critical sentence from Steven's very moving eulogy at the state funeral for Sir Zelman. Steven Skala said:

In short, he was wise.

He embedded in us a love of learning, the pursuit of ideas and the power of reason in achieving justice, simply by being who he was.

I think the most valuable line in Steven Skala's eulogy, though, continues:

It is important to emphasise that he did not shape us—he helped us to shape ourselves. In discussion with him, when he sensed that we finally understood or had absorbed something, he would smile and say, ever so ambiguously: "So there we have it." This was Sir Zelman's distinctive method of closure.

It was about allowing each person to reach their potential, not to define that position for them.

The third person through whom I have had a sense of Sir Zelman is the member for Kooyong, my great friend and best man, although he says it is enough to call him merely the better man, Josh Frydenberg. Josh was a true protege of Sir Zelman. Josh collects mentors and Sir Zelman collected proteges. I think it was the perfect relationship. He was the ultimate avuncular figure for Josh and, as Josh said in his own speech at the funeral ceremony for Sir Zelman:

It became Sundays with Zelman.

On many Sundays over many years, Josh would sit at the feet of Sir Zelman and talk ideas, exchange personal directions but, above all else, develop, almost by osmosis, a sense of the morality of the world and our responsibilities as individuals. Josh has the most loving parents in Erica and Harry but, along with them, no other person was more influential in Josh's development than Sir Zelman, who gave him a sense of moral purpose and moral responsibility and the ability to aspire to be our very best selves—and, in that, you see the man.

The third element that I want to cover, apart from the public and the personal, is the community and, in particular, Sir Zelman's role within the Jewish community not as a religious leader but as a secular leader within the Jewish community and a secular representative from that community at the absolute highest level of Australian society. It is part of a great tradition: in the early part of the century Sir John Monash and Sir Isaac Isaacs were fundamental to the directions of this country.

Sir Zelman then became one of the critical standard bearers for the Jewish community. He lifted all of us. We were a better nation as a result of his presence, and his role within the community was fundamental. In the same way, that standard was then passed to people such as Mark and Isi Leibler, Leon Kempler and Colin Rubenstein. I apologise if there is a slight Melbourne bias, but those are the people whom I have known best. A new generation is now beginning to pick up that community leadership on the secular side of the Jewish community—people such as Josh Frydenberg and Anthony Pratt, both very close friends. The sense of moral purpose and a higher duty has been the consistent thread through the lives of all of them and perhaps no person within that heritage exemplifies it more courageously and with more dignity and beauty than Sir Zelman and the life he led. I want to acknowledge and reflect upon that life—not so much the public achievements, although they were great and majestic, because they have been well canvassed—and the impact that it had on many within my own sphere of engagement. It was a great life, a magnificently lived life, and we are all the better for having had him within our sphere.

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