Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It was about this time of the year in 2015 that I travelled to the United Kingdom on a research trip where I was looking at the motivations and the mobilisers of terrorism. I went on this research trip specifically to speak to former terrorist operatives, and I stress the word 'former'. It was around this time of year that I met a fellow by the name of Sean O'Callaghan. In the 1970s, Sean O'Callaghan was just a teenager when he joined the ranks of the IRA and became a fairly senior operative in part of the conflict in Northern Ireland. By the time he turned 20, Sean O'Callaghan was already an experienced terrorist. But, in November 1988, Sean O'Callaghan walked into a police station at Tunbridge Wells and handed himself in, confessing to his involvement in the murder of a Special Branch detective inspector in Northern Ireland in 1974. He pleaded guilty to a whole range of charges and, for his part in the IRA conflict, he was sentenced to 539 years—a pretty big sentence. Sean only served eight of those 539 years. He was granted a royal prerogative. The reason that he was handed this royal prerogative is that, before handing himself in, he had spent around 14 years as an undercover informant with the Garda, the Irish police force.

When I went to the UK, I wanted to meet with Sean O'Callaghan. He had several death threats and evaded attempts on his life by the IRA when his role as an informant came out. I was told that I had 15 minutes with him. I met him in a public cafe in Soho. Those 15 minutes turned into five hours, sitting there, drinking coffee and talking with a man who had spent a good part of his teenage years as a high-level terrorist operative involved in a very well-known conflict. When I first approached Sean, he looked me up and down and said, 'You're an academic.' I said, 'Yes; I am.' He said, 'I suppose you want to know why I joined the IRA and why I left the IRA?' I looked at him and I said, 'No, Mr O'Callaghan, I don't want to know that, because I've read your book.' He wrote a book called The Informer, which was on The New York Times best seller list, by the way. He said, 'Well, why are you here and why do you want to meet me?' and I said, 'Because I want to know why it is that you do what you do now,' because for the last 10 years of his life, Sean O'Callaghan had devoted all his time to working with young violent offenders—getting them off the streets, getting them into employment and getting them onto a positive pathway of life.

Anyway, Sean and I sat there for five hours, and in the middle of all this Sean turned to me and said, 'You know, ehm'—because he was Irish—'life is just a series of negotiations, isn't it?' I looked at him and said, 'What do you mean by that, Sean—life is just a series of negotiations?' and he said: 'Well, you get up in the morning, you decide whether you're going to get in there, have a shower, get out there, go to work, do something positive, or whether you're going to stay in bed, whether you're going to drink, whether you're going to watch TV. You make choices. That's what life is. Life is about choices.' Then he said to me, 'But what if you never had a choice, or what if you never felt like you had a choice?' He said, 'It's not rocket science. All you need to do for these kids'—because he was talking about the young people that he worked with—'is give them a choice, give them an opportunity.'

That phrase, 'Life is just a series of negotiations', has stuck with me, and not just in my personal life. You know those days, when you're all frustrated and you'd just like to sit there? I just go: 'Life is just a series of negotiations, Anne. Life is just a series of negotiations.' It stuck with me not just for its personal relevance; it became the underlying philosophy for my charitable work and for the charity that I set up, working with young people: the idea that if you give somebody who doesn't feel like they have an opportunity, if you show them that they do have choices, that they do have opportunities and you guide them into making the right choice, you can change their lives—and not just their lives but the lives of their families, the lives of their community and ultimately the lives of an entire society for the betterment of our nation.

Indeed, I would say that that phrase, 'Life is just a series of negotiations', drives what I do here today. When I think of that phrase and I hear the Prime Minister say the phrase, 'Those who have a go get a go', it makes me think about what Sean O'Callaghan said. Yesterday in question time, our Prime Minister said 'If you're good at your job, you'll get a job.' I'm not so sure that they were ill-chosen words said in the heat of a debate. I think they speak to a much more deeper underlying philosophy, and I have to say that I don't think it hits the mark here. I don't think that it hits the mark. I think it's a very different philosophy to the philosophy that Sean O'Callaghan was imparting to me when he said, 'Life is just a series of negotiations'—the point that he was trying to get across—because who gets to have a go? Who?

How do we decide who gets to have a go, who gets our help, who gets to benefit from the policies of government? Shouldn't our policies, the settings that drive our economy—the settings that we have to grow jobs and develop the economy, particularly in the post-COVID era that we're hopefully moving into—benefit everyone? What if you're good at your job but you still can't get a job? What if you're good at your job but your job was ripped away from you, like it was for the thousands of university workers, tutors, lecturers and admin staff who have lost their jobs? I know many of those people. I worked with them. I know they're good at their jobs. I know they have a go. But they're not getting a go. What about the travel agents and the small-business owners who have lost their livelihoods? Do they deserve a go? I think they've had a go. I think they're good at their jobs. Do they deserve our help? Do they deserve to get a go?

Sean O'Callaghan passed away in 2017. I have to say that. No doubt the eight years that he spent in prison took a toll on his health. But he did some incredible work in the last two decades of his life, where he helped young people move into a positive future and gave them a chance at a positive future. I could have only hoped to emulate part of what he did in my own work with my charitable organisation, giving young people opportunities to get into work.

But I'm here now in a position, as we all are, to put into practice those words, to put into practice the idea that life is just a series of negotiations, to put into practice that philosophy that if you give people choice, if you give them opportunity, if you show them that there is opportunity and you guide them to those opportunities, then they have a better chance of contributing positively to our society, whether it's social participation, economic participation through a job, or through volunteering. Many of the young people who worked with me started out as volunteers for my organisation. One of them, who started out as a volunteer for my organisation, now works for the World Economic Forum in Geneva. He has met the Queen. I haven't even met the Queen.

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