Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I did ponder whether I would speak today on this motion on MH17, trying to balance the community expectation that members of parliament acknowledge the appalling event and those who lost their lives with a personal reluctance to intrude on what is a very private grief of a family in my community over the loss of a son. Jack does not belong to us. We in this place know more about the manner of his death than the wonder of his life. We are shocked, outraged, afraid and reminded of our own vulnerability by the circumstances of his death, and we seem to have a need as a nation to mourn together when these events occur. But there are people—friends and family of Jack's—for whom the manner of Jack's death does not define their grief, whose very lives were interwoven with Jack's, who not only know the quality of his life but were part of it before he drew his first breath and as he grew into a boy and a man.

I will not speak much of Jack today, because I believe that should be left to those who lived his life with him. But he was loved—genuinely, passionately and unconditionally—and he knew it. And from the strength of that love and support he went forth to explore himself as a man and to explore the wilder parts of the world before returning home on MH17 to the bonds of his family. To Jon and Meryn: some day, if you feel you can share it, I would like to read the story of Jack, not because of the way he died but because the small excerpts you shared with us at the private memorial to his life reminded me of all those small moments we experience every day that make up a life and just how wondrous Jack's life was. Vale Jack O'Brien, 25 years.

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