Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

May I begin by associating myself with the remarks of the member for Macarthur, the member for Wentworth and other members that have spoken about this wonderful Australian, John Fahey.

About five years ago, The New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote a wonderful book called The Road to Character. In a column in The New York Times about the same time, he wrote an opinion piece which really summarised the central theme of his book. He said:

It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the resume virtues and the eulogy virtues. The resume virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral—whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?

We all know that, fundamentally, those eulogy values are more important than the resume ones. But our culture and our educational systems spend more time teaching us about the skills and strategies you need for career success than the qualities that you need to radiate that sort of inner light we so rarely find. Many of us are clearer on how to build an external character than on how to build an internal character. One of the things about John Fahey is that throughout his life he built both the external character and the internal character.

John Fahey was a remarkable man: a chain-smoking, rugby league playing Irish Catholic, solicitor, former trainee priest, and a bloke who was in law firm practice with the very controversial John Marden. John Fahey's presence in our party was a reminder to us and the Liberal Party that the party at its best is a party that represents all Australians.

John was a member of the New South Wales Parliament for 11 years. He was Premier of New South Wales for almost three years. As everybody else who has spoken about John has remarked, John is most remembered for winning the Sydney Olympics—and 'the jump for joy', as the member for Wentworth said. The Olympics were an extraordinary moment in Australian history, and everyone who lived through that moment saw the best in our country as our city showed what it was really like when everything worked like clockwork for that magical fortnight and when we were on display and showed our values and our way of life best to the rest of the world. John is also remembered for that heroic action—a strange heroic action for a republican—in rescuing Prince Charles from an attacker, David Kang, who today is a Sydney barrister.

John later served as a member of the Commonwealth parliament for five years, and he served all that time as Minister for Finance. The Howard government had inherited $96 billion of debt—which, at that time, was an enormous amount of debt, though it doesn't seem quite so big in today's standards—and both John Fahey and Peter Costello had the herculean task of starting to repay the debt and to get the budget back in order. Peter Costello, in his memoirs, talked about the first budget and that first expenditure review committee, and I thought it was worthwhile quoting him here. He said:

The room in which the ERC met had no windows, no fresh air and no telephones. During that first winter we generally would be there for twelve hours a day.

A brotherhood tends to develop among the Ministers on the ERC—and it was particularly strong during our first year in Government. I got to know John Fahey, former premier of New South Wales and the Government's first Finance Minister, well. He became a valued friend during this process. He was a great raconteur, Like all the Irish, he could talk. Sometimes as a punishment for long-winded Ministers, I would ask John to reply to their arguments. He could go a lot longer in reply than they did in making their submissions. Letting John loose was a tactic designed to wear down even the most loquacious of the other Ministers.

John's political career was sadly cut short by his diagnosis of lung cancer and, in 2002, he ultimately lost a lung. Anybody who spent time with John—and the Speaker told the story yesterday in the House—knew it was hard for John to go upstairs and it was hard for John to walk around generally.

Today I want to reflect on some my own experiences with John Fahey. John had a seminal and formative experience in my own political journey. The first campaign that I ever worked on as a political apparatchik, as it were, was as 18-year-old in John's last campaign as the member for Southern Highlands, the same year that he was Premier of New South Wales, in 1995. I was 18 years old. I'd gone to the birthday party of a friend of mine and impressed her father, who happened to be John's SEC president in the Southern Highlands, who said to me, 'Why don't you come down and campaign for John, and you will get to meet him and it will be a great experience for you? You obviously have an interest in politics. This would be great.' The father of my friend Clare—whose party I had been at—Murray Branch, who is no longer with us either, was a legend in Goulburn and a legend in the Liberal Party in that part of the world. I remember that hot day in February 1995. It was a big garden party out on their lawn in Goulburn, and Murray had arranged for me to have some time, just one on one with John—which was so generous. John was the Premier of New South Wales at that time.

I remember three things about John. Firstly, I remember that he had security guards. I had never seen a politician who had security guards before. In 1995 the world was a less dangerous place, but even then the Premier of New South Wales needed to have their own security. Secondly, John was taller and more engaging in the flesh than he was on television. I think that's probably true of all of us.

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