Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

It's an honour to follow the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Opposition. Alex is not a person I knew personally, so I have obviously been in search of who he was, and I've certainly developed a much greater understanding of that.

I first went to his Twitter account. I don't have a Twitter account. For obvious reasons, I don't engage much on Twitter. Alex's last tweet was in November of 2018, only a few years ago; he obviously wasn't a great fan of the medium either! The last tweet that he made, in November of that year, had a photo that he had taken on a plane he was flying on of the TV screen at the front of the plane. The tweet said: 'Peter Dutton paused due to inflight message. Not a great look!' He tweeted this photo of me somehow being frozen on the screen in front of him. I thought maybe, from what I have come to know of his personality since then, he might have a wry smile on his face now and appreciate the irony that I've got the last word here today in response to his tweet.

Having looked carefully at his career, at the person that he was, and having spoken to his colleagues and heard the fine words of, in particular, the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, I will say this: Senator Gallacher was a no-nonsense, plain-talking and committed union man. He was, in short, a blue-collar Labor man of old. He was a thoroughly decent Australian. He sought election not for self-aggrandisement but to better the lives of those he represented. From the outset, in his maiden speech, he emphasised humility, respect and the importance of remaining humble.

Senator Gallacher was a man who came to Canberra for the right reasons. He came here because he believed in something. We each serve in this place for different reasons. We represent different communities. We hold divergent beliefs and seek our own goals and aspirations. Alex was a proud and lifelong truckie. He revered the transport industry and he rightly saw it as a central pillar in our society. He praised the spirit and the drive of the industry, shared by employees and employers alike. He described this as a capacity for hard work and a selfless dedication to the task at hand. These were attributes he himself embodied. As we know, for 23 years in the TWU, and for 10 years in the parliament, Alex was an indefatigable advocate for road safety. The Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee will indeed not be the same without him.

It is true the parliament has lost a colleague, a friend and a fine public servant, and the Labor Party has lost a true believer. In the parliament Senator Gallacher was a formidable sparring partner and dogged interrogator both in the chamber and in the committee room. His passing should give members pause to stop and reflect. Parliament is by nature, as we know, an adversarial place, and Alex was no shrinking violet. But there is another side to this place. Beyond our verbal jousting and the pitch clash of ideas, the parliament is a community. This marble-clad boiler room of democracy is a workplace like no other—the highs, the lows, the early mornings, the late nights, the vagaries of convention procedure and precedence, the incessant ringing of bells and the habitual glancing at clocks. We grieve together today for a man who came to this place to fight unyieldingly for something he truly believed in and to make our country a better place. Today all members of this place grieve together and we feel acutely the loss of one of our own.

To Senator Gallacher's family, to his wife and pillar of strength, Paola, and to his children and grandchildren: we send our deepest and most sincere condolences. I know you are proud, and you should be proud, of him, and we know that he was equally proud of you. To Alex's colleagues across the parliament, both in this chamber and the other, I want to say: we stand with you as you grieve the loss of an old friend. We thank Alex for his many years of service to our nation. The parliament is a poorer place for his loss.

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