Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in this condolence motion on the life of Tom Uren. Tom Uren was simply a great man. It sounds easy to say but a simple contemplation of his life leads you to no other conclusion. I think it is instructive in looking at Tom's life to reflect that we are all in this place and all of us in our lives patterned by our experiences as children and by our families. For Tom, the major shaping influence on his life was the Depression. One would normally think that growing up in Depression affected Sydney and Balmain would be enough to shape a life, but for Tom it also became his life in the Australian Army and the work that he did thereafter.

It takes lots of different characters to make up this place, but in the life of Tom Uren you can speak of a father; you can speak of a fighter, a boxer; you can speak of a prisoner of war; you can speak of a great legislator; you can speak of a man whose passions and loves led his life. You cannot really speak of an economist. You cannot really speak of an economic rationalist. Tom spoke too often from the heart.

Tom died at the age of 93. He was born in Balmain. He had a life which became in many ways almost the stuff of a Russell Crowe movie. He became a lifesaver, a rugby league player and a boxer until he joined the Army. I will just quote here from the obituary that Tony Stephens wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald. After Tom had arrived in Darwin, he went to Timor and then further north. Tony writes on what Tom went through in World War II, as follows:

As the Australian force was being overrun in February 1942, Uren volunteered to go forward in a vehicle armed with a single Bren gun to support a Tasmanian battalion, the 2/40th, which was making what has been described as the last bayonet charge in Australian military history. Witnessing the Australian advance up Oesaoe ridge under machine-gun fire marked the 20-year-old for life.

Forced to surrender, the prisoners were taken early in 1943 to Singapore, from where Uren was loaded into a railway goods truck which ended up at Konyu River camp, where the surgeon Lieutenant Colonel Edward 'Weary' Dunlop was commanding officer of the men slaving to build the Burma-Thailand railway for the Japanese.

It is a remarkable thing, and many speakers have spoken of Tom's love of life and of his fellow man and woman, and his ability to raise himself and those around him from the horror that he saw and faced down at that time. Our parliament is made better by people like Tom Uren; our lives are made better by the contributions of people like Tom Uren.

But when Tom entered the federal parliament there blossomed a view of our urban environment, of urban design, of the character of our cities and of the importance of our heritage. There blossomed of view of what our cities can be—not in the simple built fabric, but in the art of those cities: in great walkable cities, in cities where people enjoy to live, and in cities that are our living and our built heritage. Tom saw that, in so many ways, before any of us did—before any of his contemporaries did. God bless Tom for doing that.

With great passion, he built government instruments, such as The Department of Urban and Regional Development, to help aid in that cause. Friends of mine who worked with Tom in the 1970s recalled that whenever the Fraser government brought down a budget he would look with great passion to see where DURD was in the scheme of things.

I can recall the staff that Tom had on board. In this place, you can often tell a good parliamentarian and a good politician—they attract good staff. Tom attracted a fellow called Professor Rolf Gerritsen to work with him. Professor Gerritsen became one of the eminent professors in public policy at the Australian National University, and now at Charles Darwin University. Tom attracted Anthony Albanese to work for him, who was, and remains, one of the great powering intellects and drivers of the Australian Labor Party. He had wonderful people working for him all of his professional working life, when I knew him in my role as a national organiser and then assistant national secretary of the Australian Labor Party. Tom had a young and enthusiastic media adviser, Kathy Collier, who was filled with passion and pride at working with and for Tom, and with and for the great mission that Tom had—which, for a while in the middle-1980s, seemed as if it was simply rebuilding the old Department of Urban and Regional Development. Tom had passions that he did not let go of, and God bless him for that good heart.

He was the Labor Party's first spokesperson for the environment, and what a terrific shaping of Labor's approach to the environment we enjoyed while Tom was in that role. Labor in government went on to create a number of enduring institutions, but, more than those institutions, they created for Tom a great public service, a great public dedication. A man whose early life was shaped by the depression became a man whose life and contribution was shaped by his love for his fellow man.

I can recall a story of my father-in-law making reflections in the Senate about a Liberal senator. Tom took a deep dislike to Peter Walsh's reflections and went to see Peter to set him right about the things that bind us in this place, and the things that divide us. Only a man as passionate as Tom, as understanding as Tom, with as big a heart as Tom, could have done that in that environment.

Tom was a great man. Tom made a wonderful contribution, and at 93 he made a contribution that I am sure his entire family would be proud of, as we should be in this place.

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