Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As the member for Perth, I think it is most appropriate that I do recognise the passing of a former Lord Mayor of Perth—a lord mayor under whom I served when I was on the Perth City Council. I entered Perth City Council in 1988, and Reg was elected as lord mayor in 1991. I will be honest: I was part of a generation of people from Western Australia that very much saw Reg as something of an Antichrist because of the role that he had played in bringing down the Whitlam government and, in our view, contravening the conventions of guaranteeing supply. Notwithstanding that, when Reg and I came to work together on the Perth City Council, we had a very cordial relationship. We were both able to put the party politics aside. I found Reg was always very straightforward to deal with and—as Peter Walsh has gone on the record as saying—whilst Reg might have been very cynical, he was never hypocritical. He was always someone I found to be very much a straight shooter.

I do note some of the commentary about Reg's vision for the city. I always remember Reg giving me a book he had just read, Edge Cityabout American cities—which seemed to have been written by someone who was saying that the future of the inner city areas was over and that, in the future, there would be massive rejuvenation or expansion out on the edges of cities, with Walmarts moving out to the edge of cities—that was where people were moving; that was where jobs were moving—and that the inner city was dead. Whether Reg was fascinated by this book because he thought that was inevitable or because he thought that was a trend that we should resist was never entirely clear to me. Nevertheless, it was certainly an interesting period in the history of the city of Perth. In my second reincarnation as a local government person as mayor of Vincent, I worked very closely with his son, Simon, who was the mayor of the adjoining tiny town of Cambridge. We forged, I think, a very good working relationship on a number of issues, so it has been interesting to work closely with two generations of this family. Can I pass on my condolences to Shirley, who I met many times during her time as the lady mayoress and who was always a very gracious person, and to Simon and to all of the family.

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