Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Today marks the day that the Leader of the Opposition and I return from having attended three soldiers' funerals. We have been engaged in a sad and sombre duty attending the funerals of Private Nathanael Galagher, Lance Corporal Mervyn McDonald and Sapper James Martin. I am sure I can speak on behalf of the Leader of the Opposition, the Minister for Defence and the shadow minister for defence and say that, whilst this was a sad duty, it also came with a real sense of privilege. We spent some time with some families who are grieving deeply—and we grieve with them. Two families of the five soldiers we lost that day elected to have private funerals. But their grief is very real too, and I know all members of the House would be thinking of the families of Private Robert Poate and Lance Corporal Stjepan Milosevic.

Today also marks a day of return for me from a short period of leave associated with the death of my father. I want to take this opportunity to thank everybody in this House and beyond who, in huge numbers, have offered their condolences to me and my family—to my mother, Moira; to my sister, Alison; and to my niece and nephew, Jenna and Tom, my father's granddaughter and grandson. We have been overwhelmed by people's kindness. We have been particularly overwhelmed when attending funerals in the past few days that people who have lost someone so young would take the opportunity to offer their condolences on the loss of my father. My father died at 83, so it is a different thing from a man dying in his 20s, 30s or 40s—a very different thing.

My father led a very full life and a very happy life—a life that brought him from Cwmgwrach in the valleys of Wales to this great country, a life in which he got to pursue his dreams from the time of being a small boy. He grew up in a state of hardship. It was not unknown for him to literally not have enough food. He grew up in a coalmining village and he was one of seven children. They did not have much money. He also did not have the opportunity at that stage of his life to fulfil his dreams for a further education. He passed highly in the 11-plus exams of those times—indeed, so highly that he won a scholarship—but his family could not afford to not have him work, so he left school at 14 and he always felt very keenly the loss of opportunity that leaving school at that age brought. Despite that, though, he was very determined to make something of his life. So, as he went through his life's journey, he continued to study—firstly, A levels and O levels at night school and then to become a police officer in the town of Barry in Wales. It was there that he met my mother, a policewoman. He confessed to my partner, Tim, that the initial point of attraction was her black stockings. On the basis of such things was almost 55 years of marriage made. They would have celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary in December this year.

My father and mother took a life-changing decision, and that was to migrate to this great nation. I cannot imagine what the difference in our lives would have been had they not taken that decision and had we stayed in Wales. I cannot imagine what that would have brought for my sister and me. But migrate they did, to Adelaide, to a wonderful place—and I acknowledge other members in the parliament who represent the great state of South Australia. And in Adelaide they found a life of huge opportunity. My father got the opportunity to study again and to pursue for more than two decades what became the most important part of his working life, his work as a psychiatric nurse. He very much enjoyed—indeed, loved—that sense of care and compassion that he got to give people with mental illness in our society.

But, in truth, his life's work was the nurture of his family—of me and my sister initially. It is certainly true that I would not be standing here if my father had not brought from the Welsh valleys a deep sense of attachment to Labor values, a profound belief in the benefits of unionism and also a profound belief in the life-changing nature of education. I would not be standing here if it were not for that.

My father, through me, got to live a life in politics, at one remove. He was deeply interested in politics and he marvelled at every part of it. He enjoyed coming and sitting and watching in this chamber. He enjoyed meeting people from both sides of politics. He got the opportunity to meet some of the Labor heroes who shaped his adult life—people like Bob Hawke. He was mesmerised by the functioning of this place. I took him to the press gallery once. He came back full of excited stories about meeting Kerry O'Brien and Michelle Grattan—people who for him had been storybook heroes. He got to meet them face to face and very much enjoyed it.

He was also very conscious of the rigours of the life that we lead and the hard work. He would chide me sometimes for working too hard. I would remind him that he was the man who not only worked shift work and took all the overtime that was available in that shift work but also worked a second job when we were very young, and so he too knew about hard work and the benefits of it. He understood that this life comes with moments of stress and strain. He felt more deeply than I, in many ways, some of the personal attacks that we face in the business of politics, but I was always able to reassure him that he had nurtured a daughter with sufficient strength to not let that get me down.

If I gave him many of the highs and the lows of his life, my sister, Alison, really built the contours of his everyday life for him. Her staying in Adelaide, her bringing into the world his very beloved granddaughter, Jenna, and grandson, Tom, was the stuff of his everyday life. He made them—Jenna and Tom—the centre of his world for a very long time. He was tremendously proud of them, tremendously proud of Tom getting an electrical apprenticeship and then completing it, tremendously proud of Jenna's PhD in biotechnology. Indeed, even in relatively recent times he was heard to say to virtually anybody who would listen that his daughter Julia had done very well becoming Prime Minister but that Jenna was really the smart one in the family! He believed that very deeply, with the PhD. He also embraced our extended family—my partner, Tim; Jenna's husband, Damien; and Tom's girlfriend, Laura—and they became a very important part of his existence.

My father was a very proud Australian, but he tried to instil in my sister and I a sense of our Welsh origins. This would take many forms, but one of the least favoured forms, I would have to say, was to make us listen to Richard Burton, a Welshman, reading the poems of Dylan Thomas, a Welshman. He had as a very prized possession a floppy 45 record—and hopefully there are others in the parliament old enough to remember those floppy 45 records!—of Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas. One of our least favoured activities as small girls was being required to sit in reverent silence and listen to this for what seemed to us like hour after hour. But, as a result, I grew up listening to Dylan Thomas saying to his father to 'rage, rage against the dying of the light' and to 'not go gentle into that good night'. The last thing my father taught me was that in the life of a man there is a moment to go gentle into that good night. And so it was. Thank you.

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