Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

One of the great myths we often hear peddled around by the chattering classes is that members of this parliament, especially members of this government, members on this side of the chamber, somehow generally lack life experience before they come to politics. Alby Schultz's background shows just what an absolute myth that is.

We know that Alby as a young kid worked at night-time selling newspapers to raise a few extra dollars for his family. We know that Alby's father, a World War II veteran, suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome—something that was not recognised back then—and that when Alby was 14 he left home because of the violence in his family household. Alby went and lived—and slept—under an old iron railway bridge, across the Murray River, at Echuca. That is Alby's background. He was taken in by a local family and given a job in an abattoir. The first job he had was sweeping out the waste and mess from the abattoir. You could not think of a more lowly beginning or lowly start in life, but that is the background that gave Alby his character. That is the strength he brought to this parliament: that determination to stand up; that understanding of the real issues of life.

On one occasion during the last parliament there was a debate about live-cattle exports. For many people in the city there is a disconnect between the food in our supermarkets and the fact that someone has to kill an animal along the way. I remember during this debate that everyone was getting upset about a poor cow that had been killed. Alby got up and said: 'What absolute rubbish! I remember, when I was a slaughterman, sometimes the stunning wouldn't kill them and you had to take a sledgehammer and belt them over the head,' and he did all the great actions. That was the life experience that he had. That is what made him such a great parliamentarian. That is what made him stand up against political correctness in this place.

For all of us in here, something that happens in our lives determines why we are sitting on one side of this parliament or the other. I would like to quote from Alby's speech about why he was a Liberal:

I am the son of a wool store labourer from a low-income working-class background. My grandfather on my mother's side was a personal friend of John Curtin. An uncle recently told me that my grandfather would turn in his grave, knowing I was a Liberal member of parliament—and he is absolutely right. Having established my family's Labor Party bona fides, I can assure members on the opposite side of the House that I was converted to conservative politics at a very young age because extremely well paid union officials, similar to those members opposite, had me out on strike more times than I worked. … As a young slaughterman in the meat-processing industry I learnt … that the only people lining their pockets at the expense of the working class were not the employers but the union officials on executive levels of pay driving company cars.

Those were the words of Alby Schultz, in his maiden speech, about why he followed Liberal Party values. When I first came to the parliament, it was a rather overwhelming experience. And Alby was one of those existing members who took me under his wing, talked to me and made sure I was comfortable. I remember Alby showing me all the stationery that he had ever had printed and saying, 'This is what I have done.' He said something along the lines of: 'What I do isn't right but you might be able to learn or pick up one little point from these documents.' And I did. He was a great man to sit next to in the chamber on the opposite side during the previous parliament.

Alby gave a very emotional valedictory speech when he was suffering from cancer. We knew that he did not have much time left. In fact, there was a chance that he might not have been able to give that speech. But apparently he wrote two valedictory speeches—and I quote from the valedictory speech that he gave:

This valedictory speech that I am going to read to you tonight is the second valedictory speech I have written over the past six or eight weeks. I wrote one, and my wife read it and she said to me, 'You're not seriously going to bring that into the chamber, are you?' She said, 'You really do have to write something a little bit softer than that, love.' So I have succumbed to that wise counsel from my wife, as I have done for … the 51 years that we have been married, and I have written something a little bit different to what I would normally put pen to.

So somewhere out there in Cootamundra, in the electorate of Hume, lies that original valedictory speech. And I would suggest that we should find it, frame it—

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