Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the Prime Minister for his words. In the last 48 hours we have seen a lot of that glorious, grainy footage of the 'Friendly Games', the 1956 Olympics. It is a glimpse of an Australia that many of us perhaps had forgotten—men in hats, women in long dresses, everyone in their best for this sporting occasion. It is a snapshot of a simpler, more frugal, more optimistic time. Australians celebrated the Olympic ideal and the love of the game, and watched spellbound as a whip-thin 18-year-old with a shock of blonde hair—high knees propelling her down the cinder track, mouth stretched wide—hit the tape. There was the 100 metres, the 200 metres and then the anchor leg in one of Australia's finest Olympic moments.

I went on YouTube earlier today and watched that race. I listened to the call. It was a beautiful Melbourne day, not a cloud in the sky, not an empty seat in our long-demolished grandstands. Australia is in lane 3. Strickland out to Croker. Australia right on the heels of Great Britain. Croker to Meller, touch and go. Meller to Cuthbert, down the straight, a photo finish for gold and a new world record in the 4 x 100. A perfect end for the golden girls. Three gold medals for Betty, an athlete whom the press had barely mentioned in the lead-up to the games. She was a young woman so modest and so uncertain of whether she would make the Australian team that she actually purchased tickets to the games.

In an era when amateur status was fiercely enforced, this instant elevation to superstar brought no instant rewards, no material contracts on the new television. In fact, when Betty was voted ABC's Sportswoman of the Year and rewarded with a new cutlery set, she had to return it. A few weeks after she stood upon the dais to the cheers of a very proud nation, she was back pulling weeds out of her parents' nursery in Western Sydney. When injury and interrupted preparation cruelled Betty's defence of her titles at the Rome games, she retired at the age of 22. Then, as she always said, God told her to run again. She returned for the only perfect race she ever ran. A fourth gold medal, in the first ever women's 400 metres at Tokyo. Just to give you a sense of her achievement that day all those years ago, Betty's time in 1964 would have been fast enough to qualify her for the semi-finals in the world championships last week.

Five years after that perfect race, that display of unparalleled athletic control, Betty noticed she was breaking tea cups and having trouble applying lipstick. Her friends saw her stumble uncertainly at parties. A decade after Tokyo, she was formally diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. As the Prime Minister said, when the Olympics returned to Australia, Betty graced the track in a wheelchair—beaming, blinking back tears, as her friend Raelene Boyle pushed her and the Olympic torch around the stadium. Once again, the home crowd rose to urge her on. For someone who spoke with God often, Betty never asked why he'd given her this disease, because in her mind she knew the answer. She believed that God had given her MS to raise awareness for others, to help raise the money to find a cure.

Betty knew more than her share of hardship in later life. She lost her home to storms in 1993. She lost her modest savings to investment scams in 1998. In 2002, she suffered a brain haemorrhage. Yet her faith never wavered, nor did her compassion.

I heard a story yesterday that when a rugby league player from Western Sydney was diagnosed with cancer, Betty called to send him a cheque, which would have been a fraction of his income but all of hers. All her life Betty was loved by her doting parents, proud twin sister and dear companion and carer, Rhonda Gillam, who was there to hold her hand until the last. Rhonda alone knows just how much that would have meant to Betty and how much comfort it would have brought her. Farewell, Betty Cuthbert—forever a golden girl.

Honourable members: Hear, hear!

See this speech in context