Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

On indulgence—what to say about the life of Peter Veness? Many things have been said, by many who knew him a long time and many who knew him just in the recent months of his most acute suffering. I do not intend to speak about his life as a journalist. Others are much more familiar with that than I am. His colleagues have spoken of his professionalism, and they will speak with eloquence and effect on that. I would just like to reflect for a moment on Peter Veness the human being, the person. There is a strange thing about this place—Parliament House, Canberra; the cauldron of the nation. Here we see the best and worst of people. Peter Veness was one of the best, because he had about him an almost universal humanity and a universal—and I use the word advisedly—spirituality. There was something about this young man that, beyond his experience of suffering and the automatic response of compassion which that evokes in any person of feeling and of conscience, gave him the remarkable ability to touch you as a human being. What was it that was unique about this young guy in his 20s? It had something to do with the fact that Peter had a deep and underlying dignity and calm. As the member for Chifley just reminded us, he was the best at a throwaway line or remark about the depths of suffering through which he was going. That is one of the great Australian attributes. When people ask, 'How are you going, mate?' a person might reply, 'Oh, I'm battling on,' knowing that they only have a few weeks to live. But, underneath that, it was the dignity and calm of this individual that struck me as a human being.

That dignity and calm came from a number of factors. When he was getting sick again, he asked to come and have a yak. I had just come out of heart surgery at the time, and so he came round to the house that we have in Yarralumla. We spent a long, long time talking. His grounding as a human being—his dignity, his calm and his poise—came from the absolutely foundational love of his parents. Adults do not often reflect on that, but it was the unconditional and supporting love of his parents that gave him those things. David and Cheryl were rocks to him—the rocks of his life. That gave him a sense of foundation from which he could not be moved.

Then there was the love of his life, Bec. They chose to get married in 2009, both knowing full well that he had a pretty ugly sentence hanging over his head. But they embarked upon the adventure of a married life together absolutely confident in their future and absolutely determined to rejoice in every day that they had together. This for him became the second great grounding force in his life. I have never met a young woman like Bec, who has such strength of character for one so young. She was presented with so many of life's adversities in such an acute form so early. Maybe it is growing up in the country; I am not sure. But the two of them, and young Bec in particular, would literally take my breath away, and Therese's as well, as we sat and talked. We attended the same church here in Canberra, St John's in Reid.

That brings me to my third point. He was also a person grounded in his faith. He had extraordinary and remarkable faith. His was not a long discourse with yours truly about Dietrich Bonhoeffer; his was a long discourse about why he was here, what his purpose was and what he was supposed to be doing in life. He was anchored in these deep spiritual fundamentals, which gave him calm, poise and dignity even as he faced death.

I last spoke to him when he was in Clare Holland House, the hospice here in Canberra. He was fading in and out. I am not quite sure how much he took in of what I was saying, so I decided to read to him instead. I understand that he took that in and received some modest element of comfort in that basic expression of human solidarity from that. I do not come to this chamber often to talk about individual lives. It has never been my habit. But the great thing about this guy is that he is one of those folk who will stay indelibly imprinted in our minds, our memories and our hearts because of who he was and not because of the position that he held. There is something deeply commendable about his humanity which I believe can ennoble us all if we reflect on it in our own future lives.

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