Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to express my condolences upon the passing of Ron Walker AC CBE. I first met Ron Walker when I was a young journalist with Channel 7 news in the 1980s, during the days of Hudson Conway when Crown Casino was under construction. He was a giant of Victoria then. He saw in this particular project a project which would transform Melbourne, and that's exactly what has happened. I recall that Lloyd Williams, his great friend and partner in the project, took me on a tour when Crown Casino was under construction. I walked into the main foyer and said, 'I'm a bit worried about the design. There are no windows.' Lloyd said, 'That's the whole idea, Sarah.' They were transformational days.

As we've heard in this debate today, Ron Walker was a giant of Victoria. He chaired the Victorian Major Events Corporation. He secured the Grand Prix for Victoria, which was monumental at the time. He served as the chairman of the Grand Prix Corporation. He was the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, and in 1988 he was appointed as a commissioner for Melbourne's 1996 Olympics bid. He worked very closely with former Premier Jeff Kennett. They had a wonderful friendship and they had a great vision for Victoria, and together they achieved great things. The mark of the man was that Ron Walker also worked very closely, and with a great sense of bipartisanship, with former premiers Joan Kirner and Steve Bracks in particular. As chairman of the Melbourne Major Events Company, which managed the bids for both the Grand Prix and the 2006 Commonwealth Games, Ron Walker made a lasting impression on Melbourne and, of course, on Victoria.

He was an extraordinary man, but, as we've heard in this debate, much of his contribution to Melbourne and to Victoria was through his philanthropic contributions and, in the more recent years, his contributions to cancer research. Once Ron Walker determined he was going to do something, he certainly did it. He made an extraordinary contribution to the Liberal Party of Australia and he was a great mentor to many members of the Liberal Party. I didn't have so much to do with Ron when I entered politics, but my mother was a minister and the member for Geelong in the 1990s and worked with Jeff Kennett, and she worked very closely with Ron Walker. He made an impression upon me as a young journalist in the 1980s and he's still making an impression with his legacy. He left such a mark on Melbourne and on Victoria. He was a visionary and, for that, he is to be forever commended for the incredible work that he did for our state.

I wish to express my sincere condolences to his beloved wife, Barbara, and his children, his grandchildren and his other family members. May he rest in peace.

See this speech in context