Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Tonight, I want to recognise the life of the friend of mine, Con Sciacca AO. Con, our thoughts and prayers are with your wife, Karen, your daughter, Zina, your granddaughter, Grace, and your step-sons, Daniel and Nicholas, and also Peter Costantini, Santo Santoro, Larry Anthony and the whole SAS group—his friends. The fact that Con had friends across both sides of the chamber and could go into business with them is an indication of the kind of quality of a man he was.

Con was a true friend to many people. He was an outstanding minister in the Keating government. He actually initiated the Australian Remembers campaign to honour the sacrifice and the courage of Australian diggers—people who served in World War II. It is not, I do not think, blasphemous or sacrilegious in any way to say that Australia remembers him. We will remember him. On the Labor side, we have lost a mentor. He was a great help to me personally. He was a great friend. He had his rosary beads and his prayer book when I met with him for coffee from time to time as he struggled with the terrible illness that got him in the end. He had run the race. He had kept the faith to the very end. He probably had the best thumbed prayer book I have ever seen in my life. He had his many times in surgery and convalescence. But he is remembered fondly by so many.

Con helped me enormously. I remember in 2004, when the redistribution actually changed his seat and he ended up running for Bonner, he came out to the Ipswich RSL. Although he was a Labor bloke and had come from a Sicilian background, he was like a rock star at the Ipswich RSL. The veterans loved him because he was such a larger-than-life character. You would see him up there at Adelaide Street—he established Sciacca Lawyers. They have been operating for 40 years in Brisbane. I was a senior partner of a Brisbane CBD law firm, so our firms had a bit to do with each other over time. Their firm was one that always fought for the rights of people at work—personal injuries, actions, standing up for people who were victims in the workplace and people who were injured in car accidents and the like. You always knew that you could get a fair deal with Sciacca Lawyers. Con presided over them like not just the monarch but the prime minister as well. Con would be there with his cigar, sitting out the back up there in Adelaide Street in Brisbane and dispensing sage advice. People came to him for that—for his friendship and his advice. He was a highly successful businessmen. I think he would have made a fantastic ambassador, can I just say. I wish he had been appointed as an ambassador by any Australia government.

Con had such diverse interests and friendships across so many people. When they opened the new building up there, there were people from Labor and LNP backgrounds. It was like a coming together. It was such bipartisan joy and affection. He gave me such incredible advice and helped me so much as I made the transition from candidate and campaigner into federal member—how to transition and get out of my law practice. He gave me advice in relation to those issues, how to handle that process and how to deal with your business partners and the like. I will never forget that. I will never forget his graciousness and his friendship, the time he offered to me personally and the friendship he did give when I found that all very time consuming. Also, there was the advice he gave me about campaigning. It is often forgotten that Con ran a number of campaigns and got beaten. He knew how to take losses and he knew how to win.

Con ran a number of times before he got into parliament and he was involved in lots of campaigns. His work and his deep affection for this country can never be surpassed. He had tremendous love for his family, and his faith was just so dear to him. I think his life shows what migration has done for this country and how a young guy like Con could grow up here, in this country, from the background he came from—a tough background—and excel with resilience, good humour, affection, faith and championing the Labor cause. He is one of the lions of the Labor movement and the Labor party in Queensland. Vale, Con Sciacca, a great friend to me personally.

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