Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before the member for Boothby leaves, will explain the reason I interjected on him. Alby Schultz and I were both members of the state parliament, and we both left the state parliament to run for election in 1998. It was a parliament where Bob Carr's Labor government had a majority of one, and at that time neither the opposition nor the government were too keen on having a by-election. So what happened, because we both wanted to stand for the federal election, was that those seats were not filled until the next election, in March. It was less than six months. So to some extent I would not be in this parliament if it was not for Alby Schultz and vice versa, I think. I apologise for interjecting. It was just that Alby and I both were elected in 1998 and there were no by-elections. After my history lesson, I will go to the point of this important notice of indulgence on the death of Alby John Schultz.

Alby was unique. He was the kind of member of parliament that you do not see so often these days. He did not go to the standard politics or member of parliament school. He was a person that had very strong points of view on many things—and very, very different to my own on just about everything—but I respected Alby because of the fact that he was so forthright, because you always knew exactly where you stood with Alby.

But you could work with him as well. One of the reasons I really wanted to speak in this debate was Professor John Forbes, who is a specialist in Newcastle. He has led the Australian and New Zealand breast cancer trials. Alby worked very hard in the area of raising funds for breast cancer, as did his wife, Gloria. We both came together to actually work to get Professor Forbes an Order of Australia. We got support from a lot of other people because people thought he was a pretty good guy, but there had been rumours that there had been a previous attempt and it had failed. When the two of us put together our information and sent it in, Professor Forbes was not awarded the Order of Australia; instead he was made an AM, which really attests to the quality of Professor Forbes. To me it demonstrates the passion that was Alby Schultz: the ability to reach across the parliament when he chose to work with the other side to achieve good outcomes.

I miss Alby. I miss his tenacious manner. I miss the fact that I cannot have a good argument with him—because we tended to argue a lot about things. But at the same time I had great respect for Alby. He really cared about his electorate. He really cared about each and every person in his electorate and, if they did not vote for him, it did not matter; he still cared about them. He was what I see as a really outstanding grassroots politician, a member that came to this place to represent his constituents and a member who did that each and every day that he stood here.

My condolences to his family—Gloria in particular, and the boys. I know that you must miss him very much. I am sure that the last little period of his life was quite a painful period, but Alby would have approached it with the same tenacity as he approached everything in his life.

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