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

I would like to participate in this remembrance of Walshie. Peter Walsh was someone who was a very significant player in my political life. He was a very dominant figure in the Australian Labor Party in Western Australia from the time when I first met him in 1975. What I always loved about Peter is that he really was an iconoclast. He never hunted with the pack. He always had a very individual view and a view that he had developed after a very incisive consideration of the facts. And this related to matters of the economy, as we have heard expressed in this place today and on other days, or to internal party matters. Peter Walsh was always a person who had a very individual view and a view that was very much determined by his consideration of the innate justice, fairness and common sense of the matter.

I first met Peter at a uni ALP function in 1975. I do not think he had a particularly high regard for university students at that time, but he came along because we were having an event to mark the end of the Vietnam War. Peter felt very strongly about that war. He used to talk about the 'death lotteries that were being held'—the Australian conscription process—which many young men of his age were potentially subject to. We met Peter and got on exceptionally well with him. He had been a friend of my father-in-law, Henry Schapper, another iconoclast in agriculture and agri-economics in Western Australia. I note that Henry Schapper was indeed quoted by Peter in his maiden speech. One can get a lot of insights from Peter's maiden speech. There has been a lot of recasting of him, almost subtly, as someone who maybe could have been in the Liberal Party. I would like to quote a part of Peter's maiden speech that I thought was exceptionally good. He said:

It is near tragic that the self professed partisans of a market economy and a free enterprise system who face us across the Senate chamber … seem to be completely unable to grasp the crucial role of a pricing system in a market economy. So often it seems that the only people who fully comprehend the internal logic of a capitalist system are socialists, although I concede that there are a few notable exceptions … I do not know whether the ability to see into the heart of a capitalist system is a cause or an effect of a person having socialist political beliefs.

We would not say Peter was a socialist, but he was certainly someone who had a very strong sense of fairness and a very strong sense that the work of government should be very much directed to providing fairly for those in need and providing them with the capacity not to remain dependent but to build their individual future.

He made another comment in his maiden speech that I think defines the way he went about his task as finance minister. He said:

I am neither for nor against government intervention in the economy per se. But I think that we must insist that the objectives behind such intervention be clearly defined and that the policies as they finally emerge are compatible with the clearly defined objectives.

He was a man who brought incredible rigour, focus and intellectual discipline to his work, together with an innate sense of fairness and justice. But Walshie was not, as many people have commented, just a machine for the production of good economic policy. He was an incredible individual, a fantastic person to have around the Labor Party and a great testament to the need for us to have a diversity of people within every political party to bring together a great and strong family borne out of diversity.

I think of the many great nights that I shared with Walshie, like the 1975 'end of the Vietnam War' night. In 1977, three or four of us ended up at the party office commiserating Whitlam's dreadful second defeat. We were trying to chart a course forward and work out where we were going wrong and what radical things we had to do to get the show back on the road. In 1980, I had a particularly memorable experience with Walshie. I was working up in Carnarvon at the time. Walshie brought Graeme Campbell up to Carnarvon on a plane. We had never been exposed to Graeme Campbell. He was the freshly endorsed candidate for the federal seat of Kalgoorlie at that stage. That was a momentous night for many people in the Carnarvon Labor Party, and indicated the absolute enthusiasm with which the Labor Party was going to reclaim and reposition itself in rural Australia. Walshie was very much part of that group that saw us build great success in representing rural and regional Western Australia. Indeed, we must look to the work that he did to rebuild our presence in regional WA. It was a great night at the 1994 national conference, where four of us managed to stay up all night entertaining, talking politics until nine o'clock the next morning. For us much younger ones, we felt that we needed to go to bed only to learn that Walshie was heading out with his grandchildren to a chocolate factory.

Walshie, as I said, was a great personality, a great family man and an absolute ornament to the Labor Party. He was a man who delivered impeccable public service, insight and capacity to the exercise of governance and ensuring that Australia remains a strong and vibrant economy and a place where there is a place in the sun for all. Thanks, Walshie; we will miss you big time.

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