Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of this condolence motion for the Hon. Edward Gough Whitlam AC QC. I want to make special mention of Gough and Margaret's surviving children, Tony, Nicholas, Stephen and Catherine, as well as his sister, Freda. All too often in circumstances such as this, it is the family of those who have passed who are treated as the epitaph, an afterthought at the end of speeches and news reports. I want to mention them first because as a nation we lost our 21st Prime Minister; their loss is the greatest loss of all. I recently suffered the loss of my father, and to Gough and Margaret's family I want to say this: for all the intrusions that the politics of this nation have made into your lives over the years, thank you for sharing your father and your mother with all of us. Your sacrifice has helped to make us the country that we are today.

The passing of a Prime Minister is a national event. It is something we all rightly mourn and for which we show our deepest respect. Regardless of whether any of us agreed or disagreed with Gough's politics, there are times when our humility triumphs over our differing political views, and this is one of those times. As polarising a political figure as Gough was in life, I for one have been humbled by the fact that we as a nation have all come together to celebrate his life, his triumphs, his failures and how he contributed to our view of ourselves as Australians. I do not believe that anyone in this place could be unmoved by the way that Gough's passing has brought us together, political opponents united in respect for one man.

Even in death Gough is challenging us to think beyond our petty squabbles and hatreds. As my parliamentary colleague the member for Wentworth has said:

… hatred, as we know, destroys and corrodes the hater much more than it hurts the hated, and so many people in our business, in politics, find themselves consumed by hatred and retire into a bitter anecdotage, gnawing away at all of the injustices and betrayals they have suffered through their life.

This was not the case with Gough, as both he and another former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser demonstrated over many years.

There have been many superlatives spoken about Gough this past week, just as there have been many less forgiving and quite blunt appraisals of his competence in government—or, rather, the lack of it. This must be really confusing for a generation of Australians who did not live in Gough's time. Where does the truth lie? For me, it is a little of both. It is properly acknowledged that Gough thought big. He had big ideas, big dreams and, by all repute, a big ego which eclipsed both. I believe he genuinely wanted to change the lives of all Australians for the better. I do not believe he knew how to best go about achieving that goal, but his belief in the ideal was admirable. His government ended conscription and recalled our troops from Vietnam. He recognised China, introduced Medibank, abolished university fees and gave Papua New Guinea its independence. He transformed our approach to Indigenous Australians and he championed the cause of women. His government's incompetence in the management of the economy, however, would ultimately prove that Labor was not fit for office at that time.

In the passing of Gough, we must guard against a temptation to canonise a man who was, as Prime Minister Abbott has rightly described, a 'giant' in our country's history. There are lessons we can learn from Gough, from his successes and his failures. As a young country still creating the depth of its political mythology, it is only right and healthy that we have such debates and contest these ideas, that we seek to learn. But we cannot learn if we view our own history through rose-coloured glasses. One lesson I believe we can take from Gough is that style over substance is no way to lead a country.

But, in saying that, and as Henry Ergas said in The Australian yesterday, unlike some Labor leaders who have come after him, Gough was:

A self, not a selfie, he had character …

Edward Gough Whitlam was an Australian statesman and a patriot. He was an optimist and unashamedly ambitious for this country. If there is any legacy from Gough that we should seek to emulate it is this: we must never stop trying to make this lucky country of ours even better.

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