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

General Michael Jeffery was a soldier, a governor, a governor-general, a patriot, a statesman—somebody who was deeply concerned with and interested in Australia, its history, its institutions and its future. I'm delighted to have the opportunity to pay tribute to him.

General Jeffery's career is well known. He left school at 16 to join the RMC at Duntroon. He served in the SAS, becoming its commander, and did tours in Malaya, in Borneo, in Papua New Guinea and in Vietnam, where he was awarded both the Military Cross and the South Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. Later when he came home, as I say, he went on to head the SAS. He was our national counterterrorist coordinator. He was promoted to major general and commanded the Army's 15,000-person 1st Division and rose to be assistant chief of the general staff. Between 1993 and 2000, he was governor of Western Australia.

In 2003, because of some of the controversies that had surrounded General Jeffery's predecessor, Peter Hollingworth and had ultimately led to his resignation, John Howard was looking for a person to restore public confidence in the office. He wanted to find a person who had a proven track record of service and who had already discharged the role of being a vice-regal representative with great distinction. He could have done no better than choosing Michael Jeffery, who really restored public confidence to the office.

In many respects, General Jeffery was a formal and austere man, but he was very compassionate at the same time. As Governor-General, he discharged his duties impeccably. He was a great believer in Walter Bagehot's dictum about the monarchy—that the monarchy has three rights: the right to be consulted, the right to encourage and the right to warn. As a special adviser to the then Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, at the time of some royal commissions that were being established, I was told very clearly that General Jeffery was a stickler for precision, in terms of terms of reference and in terms of the presentation of documents to him in the context of executive council. So extra care and precision were taken in preparing letters patent for his signature. In fact, it was well known among government circles that General Jeffery would often send ministers back to reconsider matters from time to time if he thought that the balance wasn't right. He took his constitutional duties as Governor-General very seriously. He was in no sense a rubber stamp. His period saw the last years of the Howard and the beginnings of the Rudd government. It was not a period of constitutional controversy, and that was a good thing.

Today, in my remarks, I particularly want to focus on some work that General Jeffery did subsequent to leaving office as Governor-General and particularly his contribution to the discussion and debate about our Constitution. I think this is a perhaps less well-known aspect of General Jeffery's contribution. When General Jeffery was Governor-General he was invited to become the patron of a new organisation, the Constitution Education Fund Australia. I was there at the birth of the Constitution Education Fund Australia. In the wake of the 1999 republic referendum, a group of largely constitutional monarchists, like myself, who had been involved in that campaign took the view that Australians would benefit from knowing more about our Constitution. All of the data tells us that Australians know far too little about our constitution, and that this is particularly the case with younger Australians. And if people don't understand our Constitution and our system of government, how can we have an informed debate about changing it at some point, if people wish to do that? Indeed, from my perspective, the more people know about the system, the less they will want to change it, and I think that's a good thing.

The Constitution Education Fund Australia was the brainchild of Kerry Jones, who remains its executive director. She managed to attract a whole range of highly distinguished Australians to be involved in the organisation, both serving on the board of the Constitution Education Fund and participating in its work in substantive terms. She got people who had been involved on both sides of the republic debate, and that was very important because the organisation has no particular view on the republic debate itself. General Jeffery, when he was Governor-General, became patron in particular of the Governor-General's Prize, a $10,000 undergraduate essay competition on a topic of significance related to the debate about Australia's Constitution. It is awarded every year, and has been since 2004. That is a really significant thing that he did. It's a really significant prize and a significant way of encouraging more people to understand the Constitution.

In 2014 he became the chair of the Constitution Education Fund Australia, occupying the role from 2014 to 2019. I want to read something that General Jeffery had to say about the importance of people understanding the Constitution and about CEFA itself. He said:

I firmly believe that all Australians, young and old, those born here and those who have come from other lands, should have a broad understanding of the system of government that has made our country one of the most successful democracies in the world. I hope that you will consider either participating in, or supporting this cause. By doing so you will be helping to give all Australians—especially our leaders of tomorrow—a greater appreciation of a system of government and a Constitution that has played a vital part in making Australia a country of which we can all be rightly proud.

To that I say: hear, hear! General Jeffery has been succeeded as the chair of the Constitution Education Fund by the Hon. Robert French, the former Chief Justice of Australia, and I think that indicates the quality of the organisation and the quality of the people involved.

During General Jeffery's term as the chair of the Constitution Education Fund, he and Kerry Jones came to me and asked me to be the parliamentary patron of what is now the Australian Constitution Centre. They had had a dream for several years to establish a place in Canberra that people—particularly school students—could come to as part of their visit to Canberra and understand in a memorable way something about the history of the making of the Constitution and the way in which the Constitution itself has been applied by the court and the way it operates in institutions such as the parliament. General Jeffery was hugely helpful in terms of securing funding for the Constitution Centre, which was opened in 2018, and I want to acknowledge the work of former Attorney-General George Brandis, former arts minister Mitch Fifield and former education ministers Simon Birmingham and Dan Tehan, who were involved in the initial funding and then further funding of that centre to create a truly memorable and interactive experience for students coming to visit the High Court, as part of their year 5/year 6 Canberra experience, but also for Australians more broadly who are interested in something of the constitutional history of this country. The fact that he lent his name to and that he was an advocate for this, I think, gave great standing to a proposal that many had favoured getting off the ground for some time.

I said earlier that General Jeffery was an austere man, and he was very formal in his presentation. I've had the privilege of meeting several vice-regal office holders, both in office and subsequently, and for the most part they are a reasonably relaxed group of people. General Jeffery was not that. He was always addressed as 'General Jeffery'. But that formality in some respects belied a great sense of compassion. That sense of compassion came out on the second constitutional issue that I wish to talk about that he was involved in, and that was his interest in the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. General Jeffery had had a long experience in the military of working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. He had been involved in establishing NORFORCE. Remember the famous Bush Tucker Man, Les Hiddins, of ABC fame? General Jeffery commissioned him to go out, as part of the establishment of NORFORCE, and to collect information about bush tucker in order to extend the survival of troops that might be in northern Australia. He saw that the rest of the country had a lot to learn from Indigenous Australians, from our First Nations people, from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Several years ago, he wrote a chapter in a book that was edited by Damien Freeman and Shireen Morris, called The Forgotten People. The chapter is called 'The legacy of ancient Australia for modern Australia'. The purpose of that collection of essays was for constitutional conservatives, of which General Jeffery was clearly one, to come together and demonstrate that those of us who are constitutionally conservative can believe in constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in a substantive and not just symbolic way. In his chapter, General Jeffery praises the traditions—what he borrows from WEH Stanner as the high culture of Aboriginal people, their knowledge of land and their sense of family. He acknowledges both his own experiences and the experiences of the country in dealing with it. He then makes some important observations, which I want to quote today. He said: 'The time has come for the Australian nation to consolidate reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Such reconciliation must be full and dignified, and I believe this can be achieved through a process that involves both constitutional and non-constitutional reforms. But the success of such recognition requires the same characteristics I mentioned in 1994: mutual understanding, respect and the capacity for compromise. Sometimes I feel that debates about recognition focus almost exclusively on what the Australian nation can do for its Indigenous people. For my part, I'm particularly interested in what Indigenous people have to offer contemporary Australia. A number of aspects of traditional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures could possibly be incorporated into contemporary Australian life and lead to far better outcomes for us all.' That's the basis upon which he participated in the debate.

I should note that, about 10 days before the Uluru statement in May 2017, an article appeared in The Australian by Stephen Fitzpatrick titled, 'Conservatives back "tangible" change model' for Indigenous recognition, where General Jeffery and Sir Angus Houston both backed the idea of a consultative mechanism—effectively a precursor to the voice that is mentioned in the Uluru statement as part of a package involving constitutional recognition. Often people think that the Uluru statement is a document of the Left. It is not that at all. Many of the ideas that underscore the Uluru statement actually came from Indigenous leaders engaging with constitutional conservatives like General Jeffery.

I want to finish by quoting his contribution at the end of his chapter about the importance of constitutional recognition in a substantive form. He said, 'Since 1967, the Australian parliament has had the power to make laws with respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It's vital that the Australian parliament and all jurisdictional parliaments work in close consultation with Indigenous people in passing laws affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in order to identify new or better ways to ensure the restoration of pride, dignity and self-esteem, and that the gap is really closed. The need for consultation must be recognised as an integral part of the full recognition of our Indigenous peoples. We must commit ourselves to doing all of this in a way that continues to uphold the fundamental integrity of the Australian Constitution that has served the nation so well for over a century.' That's a very significant contribution from a very significant Australian. General Jeffery was, in any respect, one of the great military, vice-regal and cultural figures of the early part of this century. He leaves a great legacy. To his wife Marlena and their family, may his memory be a blessing.

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