Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to pay my respects to Joe Riordan. The member for Barton so eloquently spoke and I know how close he was to the family and to Bernie in particular, one of the six children. I first met Joe Riordan in 1971. I had commenced with the Federated Storemen and Packers' Union, as it then was. I was a research officer and Joe was the secretary then of the Federated Clerks Union of Australia. He was New South Wales based. He was one of those people who always struck me as being prepared to take on and nurture the younger generation coming on. I was fortunate in my career in the trade union movement that there were many of those mentors and supporters from all around the country. When we look at where the trade union movement went in the eighties and nineties, it was because of the foundation that was laid in the seventies—and Joe Riordan was an essential part of that foundation.

He became secretary of the clerks union in 1970, having been its assistant secretary for a very long period before that. He made sure that the clerks union represented not just its members' interests; he grew the membership base of that union. He was not frightened by the advent of technology. I can remember in the early seventies people not wanting technological change because they thought it would put people out of work. This was a very common strain. But Joe, as the secretary of his union, not only understood the importance of it but also believed it should be accessible to all. He would have applauded, and did applaud, what this government has done with the National Broadband Network, enabling the whole of the country to be better connected and better served as a result.

Joe went into the federal parliament in 1972 with the election of the Whitlam government. There was another overlap because while we lost Joe from the trade union movement he became an essential part of the Whitlam team, and my father was the Treasurer and subsequently Deputy Prime Minister in the Whitlam government. Interestingly, Sunday is the 40th anniversary of the election of that government and a great milestone, and our caucus talked about that today.

Joe was a product of the Depression. He was a Sydney boy who grew up during that Depression, and that forged—like so many of them—the strong conviction for social justice and lifting people out of poverty, ensuring that those dreadful strains of recession/depression, no jobs and loss of dignity should not be repeated. If you listen to all the speeches that have been made about Joe, this commitment to social justice comes through.

He became the minister for housing. He succeeded Les Johnson. His parliamentary term was all too short: two terms; three years. He lost in the 1975 election. On the day of the Dismissal, when the then Governor-General had dismissed Gough Whitlam, Fraser began a censure motion in the parliament against the government of the day. Immediately the parliament resumed after lunch, my father was on his feet having to defend the government against this censure motion. We—and when I say 'we' I mean the Labor Party, the then government; we still considered it to be the government—turned the censure against Fraser. The government passed a lack of confidence motion against Fraser when the penny dropped as to what the Governor-General had done. Interestingly, Joe Riordan said that when he came into the parliament—he had come in to sign ministerial correspondence—my father was on his feet and someone next to Joe said: 'Don't sign any more of that correspondence. You're sacked.' The commission had been withdrawn; he no longer had the authority. When we talk about pennies dropping, there were lots of them dropping all around the place. I will not go into the history of how all of that could have been avoided and what wrongs were done, except to make the point that it was a traumatic time.

Joe did lose his seat. I think the parliament lost a great contributor—someone whose time was cut all too short. After that election, he went on to head up the New South Wales Department of Industrial Relations. Between 1986 and 1995, he was a senior member of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. These were two areas in which I had a lot to do with him.

There was Joe's time before parliament, his engagement whilst he was in parliament, particularly through my dad, and then his life after parliament in the industrial relations sphere. The whole period from 1983 through to 1996 was spent on the development of the accords. The labour movement was engaged in advancing the social wage, superannuation, minimum wage rates, enterprise bargaining and transfer payments as part of the wages trade-off. There was all of that agenda, and we needed a framework in which to do it. The Industrial Relations Commission was an important part of that framework, and Joe Riordan played an essential role as a senior member of the industrial commission.

Fittingly, his career ended as it started: he held the position of chair of the WorkCover Authority of New South Wales. Joe was a person who gave a lifetime of commitment not just to the labour movement but also to the betterment of working Australians. This was a man who was always prepared to engage and who had the passion, the commitment and the conviction. He took the defeats and the successes, but he always moved on.

I pay tribute to his lifetime of service not just to the labour movement but also to the country. I also offer my condolences to Joe's widow, Pat, and his six children—and Bernie is the one of them whom I know best of all. I offer my sincere condolences to them in the knowledge that Joe's was a proud contribution to a nation at a vital time. He went into all of these jobs with the very best of intentions: to serve the public. That was his conviction from his early childhood, and he discharged it with great vigour and with great distinction.

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