Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I do indeed rise as the member for Macarthur to offer my condolences to the family of John Joseph Fahey. Macarthur has had some interesting members over the years—going right back to the original member for Macarthur, Jeff Bate, who later married Harold Holt's widow. It is my view that there has been no better member for Macarthur than John Joseph Fahey.

He led a life of faith, of family, of service and of humility. My friend Jim Marsden describes John as a man who changed Jim's life forever for the better. Jim was working as a solicitor in Wollongong because he didn't get on with his brother, John Marsden, who ran the Marsdens practice in Camden, and it was John Fahey who visited Jim several times and talked him into coming back and joining his brother John in the Marsdens Law Group, which has gone on to become a very influential group of lawyers in south-western Sydney and beyond. Jim credits John Fahey with, as I said, changing his life for the better and never asking any credit for that and never, in his own humble way, requesting any favours because of that. Jim knew John Fahey very well.

I met John Fahey on several occasions since I started my medical practice in 1984, at the same time as John started at Marsdens solicitors in February 1984. He was always known as a very good lawyer, a very decent man and a man who believed in both his faith and his family. John Fahey was almost a baby boomer, born in January 1945. He took the best of both those generations, the war generation and the baby boomers, throughout his life, showing such great attributes as hard work, humility and, once again, faith and family. He played football initially at St Anthony's for the Picton Magpies. He went to school at St Anthony's primary school in Picton, which still exists, and later went to high school at Chevalier College and then on to Sydney University. He played lower grade rugby league for the Canterbury Bulldogs and they remained the love of his sporting life throughout his life. He married Colleen McGurren, a coal miner's daughter in 1968 and they had three children, Matthew, Melanie and Tiffany. Tragically, Tiffany was killed in a motor vehicle accident at the age of 27, and Tiffany's two children, Campbell and Amber, were brought up by John and Colleen as their surrogate parents. By all accounts, they did a wonderful job as parents the second time around.

John had multiple achievements. There are too many to name them all. He won the seat of Camden for the Liberal Party in 1984 in the state parliament and transferred to the Southern Highlands seat in 1988. He then replaced Nick Greiner as state Premier in 1992 after Nick Greiner was forced to resign after an ICAC investigation. John Fahey described that as one of the saddest days of his life, interestingly, because he believed that Nick Greiner had been unfairly persecuted. John went on to become a very good state Premier, being defeated, however, by Bob Carr in 1995. In 1996, John became the member for Macarthur until 2001, when he resigned because of his first bout with malignancy. He lost a lung to lung cancer, after a long history of cigarette smoking, and then went on to achieve even greater things, including as the President of the Bradman Foundation, President of the World Anti-Doping Agency from 2007 to 2013, and Chancellor of the Australian Catholic University. He was, of course, a devout Roman Catholic and practised his faith throughout his life, until his death. His legacy is huge. As a member for Macarthur, if I do 10 per cent as well as John Fahey did, I will have done very well. Vale, John Fahey. He will be missed. He was a great servant of the state and its people and he will be missed.

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