Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Loss and grief bring people together, and that has been one of the consequences of the MH17 disaster. We have all seen images of this terrible event, on the far side of the world. We all feel we know the field in which MH17 crashed on 17 July.

So as members of the Australian community, most of us with no personal knowledge of those on board, we share the sense of grief that is felt so much more acutely by the friends and the families of those on board.

We all mourn the 38 Australian citizens and residents who died when MH17 was shot down and we honour their lives. But it is not just the Australians for whom we mourn; we mourn every life lost on MH17, the passengers and the crew.

The MH17 crash reminds us of our common humanity and of the unexpected dangers that can affect anyone at any time. It is a reminder that, even in this modern world, none of us is immune from danger.

It reminds us, too, that although Australia is a mercifully peaceful place, conflict in other parts of the globe can and does affect us. We have to be peace builders. That is why Labor fought so hard to claim a role on the Security Council and I congratulate the foreign minister for using the position we won to move the resolution that allowed access to the crash site.

As we mourn the loss of those who died, it is also important to remember what wonderful contributions they made to their communities and to our Australian community. They came from diverse backgrounds; they came from all corners of the country. But together they create a tapestry that shows the kind of nation we are.

They were retirees, children, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, people young and old returning from adventure. Five were lost from one family and four from another family. There was a nun, doctors and business people.

There was a Glen Iris couple from Melbourne, who migrated to Australia four decades ago, and an English teacher and her husband, a novelist, from Toorak. There was a couple from the Victorian town of Mallacoota, who ran a hairdressing salon and an abalone fishing cooperative. There was a teacher from Maningrida in the Northern Territory and a preschool teacher from Sydney. There was an IT specialist, a real estate agent and his wife, both heavily involved in their local football club. There was a couple from Toowoomba, a pathologist and a GP; a former school principal from Albion Park, near Wollongong; and a public servant from Canberra. There was a couple working in finance in Melbourne, originally from Malaysia and the Netherlands.

Perhaps our greatest loss was of our children. It is so very easy, as a parent, to imagine the excitement of these children, excited about going on holidays and then excited to be coming home to share their experiences with their friends. It is heartbreaking.

We also mourn the victims from overseas who were travelling to Australia, particularly those researchers on their way to the 2014 AIDS conference in Melbourne, the largest ever health conference held in Australia. Among them was a giant of HIV research, Joep Lange, who was once the president of the International AIDS Society.

David Cooper, the Director of the Kirby Institute at UNSW, said that his colleague of 30 years was:

… committed to the development of affordable HIV treatments, particularly combination therapies, for use in resource-poor countries.

In his 30 years of HIV research, Lange held pivotal trials of antiretroviral therapy and had a pioneering role—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 10:05 to 10 : 22

Before the interruption, I was speaking of the pioneering HIV researcher Joep Lange. I told the chamber that, in his 30 years of researching, Mr Lange led pivotal trials of antiretroviral therapy and had a pioneering role in exploring affordable and simple antiretroviral drug regimes for the prevention of mother-to -child transmission of HIV in poor countries.

This work really is an extraordinary gift to humanity. We know that, in countries where HIV transmission rates—or infection rates—are very high, millions of children were being born already infected with HIV, and their prognosis, of course, was never good. Being able to prevent mother-to-child transmission has been an aim of the international HIV-researching community, and Mr Lange's work in making such a contribution to that shows the very best of human endeavour. Five other delegates to the AIDS conference also died in the crash, including Lange's partner.

These people only ever wanted to do good in the world and to help others. They wanted to help people who were complete strangers, people that they would never meet, mostly living a long way from their own homes. That absolutely altruistic desire to do good in the world is such a sharp contrast to the stupidity and violence of those who fired a rocket at a passenger jet, which of course represents the worst in human nature. There could not be a starker study in contrasts. We thank those, all of those, who helped in responding to the MH17 disaster: those who worked on the ground in Ukraine; Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston; Australian, Dutch and Malaysian specialists; Australian Federal Police; Australian Defence Force personnel who were on backup; the Australian consular staff who helped the families and friends of the victims. We hold the victims, and their families and friends, in our hearts.

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