Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a privilege to deliver a very, very brief anecdote about my opportunity to meet Gough Whitlam. It begins with the observation that probably the lowest act of any hospital house officer is to switch off your pager—stop taking calls from the hospital—and then switch it on a few hours later and hand it over to your colleague who is taking over and tell you it has been a terribly busy shift and you have been unable to do all the work. I have to confess that the day Mr Whitlam was admitted to my hospital for a very brief stay I did that and spent three hours talking to Mr Whitlam. I am sure that my successor will forgive me on this one occasion for not doing my work during that shift. As I was warned in hushed tones by the ward staff as I went upstairs at St Luke's hospital in Sydney: 'Please go and admit Mr Smith, but by the way it's Mr Whitlam,' I could see administrative staff scurrying up from the ground floor where Margaret was dealing with all the paperwork. Many of them were quite daunted by the prospect of dealing with her.

Obviously, when I went in I was very trepid. I asked if I could have a bit of a chat. Mr Whitlam was very accommodating. I offered him a later time, but he said, 'No, no, let's have a chat now.' That was about 6 pm, and we chatted for about three hours. It was probably the longest admission I have ever done, but it was an absolute privilege to hear a complete history of Australian banking reform going back to the early 20th century. I realised as I walked in the room that he was seated on a hospital bed, looking very fit, and that even seated on the bed he was taller than me. I remember that my first political memory was when I was six years of age being hunched over a short-wave wireless radio on a tiny island off the coast of Papua New Guinea and my ashen faced mother looked up and said to me, 'Darling, Mr McMahon has lost.' That is one of the first political memories I have. Obviously it heralded the Whitlam era, for most of which I was overseas.

I guess, when I walked into that hospital room, I sense he could pick a Tory a mile off, with my haircut, distressed denim and pointy shoes, although today he would have a lot of trouble spotting his Labor colleagues as being Tories, sometimes. Basically, he explained his view of the world. It was impressive for me, being a super specialist trainee focused on one or two textbooks, to see a man who could cast his considerable intellect over a range of topics and talk about them almost indefinitely. That has been described before in this place.

He made an observation about Queensland which I loved, about his relationship with Joh Bjelke-Petersen. He did work in a bipartisan way, even with Joh, to get the South Bank cultural centre and museum off the ground. He remarked ironically then that, really, Joh should have named at least one of those great sandstone buildings on the Brisbane River after him, so there was little hint of political naivete, if not overoptimism.

He talked about a range of topics. He was generous in his discussions of other leaders who have followed him. He spoke at great length about people like Bob Hawke and Paul Keating in particular. I felt a little bit humbled to be listening even to those kinds of observations, which were incredibly frank and blunt. This was the measure of a person who spoke without any fear. He was a person who did that through his career, to the benefit of many. He would walk into a room and everyone would notice him and, I think, also enjoy and cherish every minute they spent with him.

There is an oft used and somewhat tired Shakespearian quote that 'the evil men do live after them and the good is oft interred with their bones', but I think even on this side one would have to confess that the great stuff that Whitlam achieved lives on even now and, in many ways, many of the things that we were most angry about at the time seem to have faded away. If that is a measure of his brief but luminous contribution then he has done a wonderful job as a former Prime Minister and we recognise him.

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