Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I miss Alby; I miss him a lot. When I first arrived here, I think there were five of us who had formerly been members of the New South Wales parliament: Bruce Baird; Tony Windsor; the member for Werriwa, who is still here; and Alby Schultz. Alby was very kind to me from the time that I arrived, but I probably got to know him best during my time as Minister for Agriculture. I think it is worth noting the one member of the then government—so his opposite—that he acknowledged in his valedictory speech was Simon Crean, also a former Minister for Agriculture.

In that final speech, Alby gave one of the most emotive descriptions that I have ever heard of what people go through during times of drought. I quote:

I have watched with a great sense of anguish and sadness the heart-breaking sight of farmers, emotionally drained, when they have to put down badly burnt animals, bury them and take into their homes the smell of the charred countryside and what they have had to do to their suffering animals. They are the epitome of the true Australian rural spirit, which is replicated year in and year out across our sometimes harsh, unforgiving landscape. It is something which sadly is forgotten too quickly by people in this place.

Alby engaged a lot, in particular during my time as Australia's Minister for Agriculture. He had passionate views on wheat. It was at that time that I was responsible for bringing into the parliament the legislation to end the AWB monopoly, which was an issue that ultimately saw Brendan Nelson make the decision that the Liberal Party would back the legislation we had and the National Party decided to oppose it. That suited Alby down to the ground. In almost every interaction I had with Alby, there would be a reference to the National Party. For him, every election that came around, that was the battle that he would often focus on at the both a federal level and a state level. On his passion over wheat, he would acknowledge that it was not necessarily the view of his own wheat growers in any big way. But he had a policy view that if you grew it, you had the right to decide who you would sell it to. He would follow his beliefs there to the letter.

There was also a particular personal significance for me with Alby in that his electorate is where those ancestors of mine who are not convicts—and there were a few—settled. Alby was fascinated when I brought the old family Bible from Tumut to be sworn in on. He came around to my office and we sat down together, looking through the pages and looking through the family history. Whenever I visited the graves of Michael Burke and Bridget McInerney, there, at a tiny little church of what our family reckoned was called Burke Hill but was probably more officially known as Wagra or Wagragobilly, the interest that Alby would show was second to none, for one very simple reason. He viewed the history of the properties in his electorate as an important part of the history of Australia. He understood that a big part of Australia's story rested within the land that he was responsible for within this parliament. With that in mind, I know that, among the different people around the chamber, a lot of people spend a lot of time socialising across the chamber with the other side of politics. I probably do not; but there are a few people who I have formed very strong relationships of trust with over the years. Alby Schultz was one of them. People look at today's politics and say, 'Where are the great personalities?' When we lost Alby, we lost one of them.

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