Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

What a sad day, to have to speak about the lives of two such great parliamentarians and great Australians. I rise to speak about former senator Barney Cooney. He really was one of the great men of the Australian Labor Party.

We've been talking about Paul Neville. Barney Cooney, like Paul, was absolutely thoroughly decent, hardworking, principled, with wonderful values, and respected across the parliament. He was one of the greats. He was a natural senator. He was absolutely across the detail of any legislation. He dealt with it calmly, methodically and in a collegiate way; that's one of the reasons he was so well respected by people on the other side of the parliament. He was kind and he was warm. I first knew him when I was a staffer working for former senator Bruce Childs. After I was elected to the parliament, the way that he treated me didn't change at all. He treated every person he encountered in a respectful way, with kindness and consideration.

His Labor values were formed by his Catholic faith, his commitment to social justice and his work in the legal profession—mostly around industrial relations and workers' compensation law. You could tell by the issues that he chose to champion throughout his time here as a senator how important he thought individual rights and liberties were as well. He was always so concerned to ensure that laws didn't intrude on people's lives any more than they needed to.

His role in the Victorian Labor Party was particularly important because he was one of that generation who really had to work very hard to heal the split in the Victorian Labor Party and in the Labor Party more generally. He, with John Button, John Cain and Michael Duffy, really helped to modernise the Victorian Labor Party as well. It was his work in healing the rifts and modernising the Labor Party that allowed the state electoral victories that followed in Victoria and the contributions that the Victorian members of parliament who were elected to the federal parliament were able to make to subsequent federal Labor victories as well.

Barney was born into an Irish Catholic family in Tasmania in 1934. He spent most of his early life in the Mallee region of Victoria, at the tail end of the Depression. He spoke often about his earliest memories of working men, many of them returned soldiers from the First World War, going door-to-door in regional Victoria, knocking on doors and asking for food. He told the story of his mother never refusing a meal, never refusing to provide food for the people who knocked on the door, and of how very important it was to see that example of her grace and her generosity in the way that she treated the people who were asking for help. That kindness and that courteousness informed his entire subsequent life and the way that he dealt with people not just in this place but in his professional life as well.

Barney studied at St Kevin's Christian Brothers School in Toorak in Melbourne and then won a Commonwealth scholarship to study arts and law at the University of Melbourne. He was called to the bar in 1961 and he remained enrolled at the bar for the rest of his working life, including the time that he was here in the parliament, in the Senate. For more than 20 years, most of his legal work was, as I said, in industrial law and in workers compensation law, in personal injury cases.

It was through that work and at that time when he met his wonderful wife, Lillian, who was also a lawyer. He married Lillian and they went on to have five children. In 1980 Barney Cooney chaired an inquiry into Victorian workers' compensation, which resulted in the development of the modern WorkCover system. He was elected a Labor senator for Victoria in 1984 at the age of 50 and he served for 17 years, retiring in 2002.

As I said, I first knew Barney when he was a senator and I was a staffer, but I did serve with him for several years after I was elected as well. He and his generation were wonderful role models in the way they conducted themselves—in some ways, I would say, old fashioned in their courtesy—in the Senate and in the parliament. When he left the Senate, those who served at the same time from other political parties spoke at his valedictory in the most glowing terms. I encourage members to read the beautiful piece that former Senator Amanda Vanstone wrote about Barney Cooney in the Fairfax papers this week. She described a parliamentarian who was decent, hardworking and committed, respected by senators and staff alike. Amanda also described how Barney was often deployed by the Labor whips when they were in a tight spot.

I remember this myself. He could speak on any piece of legislation. If there was ever a time when we needed to talk for another half an hour or an hour, you could absolutely rely on Barney Cooney, first of all, to be across the detail and to be able to speak convincingly, thoughtfully and intelligently about the legislation that was before the Senate. You could absolutely count on Barney Cooney to be reliable, to be there when he was needed by his party and by his colleagues.

He was a very thoughtful but very strong advocate for a number of issues that he cared about passionately. It didn't matter whether those issues were popular; he spoke up on very many unpopular issues as well, on things that motivated him. It didn't matter whether he was criticising the other side or his own side; he was a very articulate critic of some of our own policies as well.

Barney never served as a minister—although I think many would say that he should have—but, over 17 years, he became the master of the Senate committee system, chairing seven standing committees. He was best known for the work that he did as the chair of the Senate Scrutiny of Bills Committee. He took the role of that committee very seriously indeed. The role of the committee is to guard against legislation which would trespass unduly on personal rights and liberties. He was absolutely determined that the laws that we passed in this place would improve people's lives, not be a burden on their lives. He very strongly argued against the Labor proposal, in 1987, to introduce an Australia Card. It was a very fiery caucus meeting in which Barney Cooney spoke against his own party's proposition at that time.

Later in his career he was deeply concerned about, and a very articulate critic of, the Howard government's approach to asylum seekers and terrorism measures. His critique said that those measures were eroding human rights and setting the course for the further erosion of human rights as legislation continued to be updated. At his retirement, senators from all sides rose to thank him for his grace and for his commitment to our democracy. After politics, despite his illness, he continued to actively participate in the Labor Party, regularly attending branch meetings in Melbourne. He continued as a member of the Trades Hall Council's Literary Institute committee of management. On behalf of our Labor family, I send my deepest sympathies to his family—his wife, Lillian, his children and grandchildren. He truly was a great man, and we will miss him deeply.

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