Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the House for those generous words. We have lost one of our own and lost someone who has been described, quite rightly, as a true entity of the Labor Party through and through.

We often get debates about people with a union background, and it's often not understood how people come to the union movement. I think Alex Gallacher was a classic example but not a unique example. Yes, Alex had a career as a labourer, a truck driver and an airline ramp operator, but take the TWU team in the Senate: Tony Sheldon worked as a garbage collector; Glenn Sterle delivered, as a truck driver, a whole lot of green leather—and that's what everyone is sitting on here now. Those chairs were delivered here by a truck driver who is now a senator. The solidarity of that TWU group is something really special in the parliament, and they have lost more than a colleague.

There have been a few opportunities now to quote Alex's first speech. It's rare in this place that you get members of parliament for whom their first speech and last speech marry up so neatly. But for Alex, Alex was not changed by being a member of parliament. But he did change what happened here by virtue of being a member of parliament. In his first speech he referred to workers in the transport sector; there's no smoke and mirrors, just plain talking—hardworking employees and employers alike in a tough, competitive industry that works harder than most people imagine and continues to work while most people are asleep. He wasn't showy, but worked hard and all the way through, right to the end, still chairing meetings of the wage theft inquiry, trying to fight for people who were having their pay stolen.

He was tough in all his negotiations. I think there's a risk, when we lose someone like Alex, that we describe them in terms that become so genteel that we're not really describing the person we've lost. Glenn Sterle was very keen for me to relate the anecdote from the Wagga ACTU meeting. He said, 'It won't be true to the delegates unless you say it out loud. They want to know.' This was at the ACTU meeting in Wagga where, as an organiser, Alex was unhappy with his union secretary and got into a fight with the union secretary—not an argument, got into a proper fight—and decked the union secretary. Now, you would normally think, 'Okay, that means you won't last much longer as an organiser.' That's true: shortly after, he became the secretary. Tony Sheldon last night was receiving text messages from employers remembering Alex very fondly. But as part of their fond memories, it was how uncompromising he was. He was not uncompromising if you put an argument to him that was logical or that he then accepted. But if he knew he was right, he was not going to cave, which resulted in one Qantas executive sending a message to Tony Sheldon that concluded with the line, 'He was the only union official to ever throw a chair at me.'

He loved his family, was loyal to his friends and, unlike some of the people you get in this place who just try to be friends with as many people as possible, Alex worked out whom he trusted and he stuck with and was loyal to them. He believed in secure jobs, safe jobs and a secure retirement and fought for the superannuation as part of that secure retirement, a retirement that he himself would never enjoy. But he dedicated his last speech in part to young workers, pointing to the challenges, where he said:

There are many young people at the moment who have never had the luxury of a permanent job. They have never had it. They can get 16, 17, 22 or 25 hours but they can't get a permanent job. In other areas of quite reasonable economic activity, you have an inordinate number of casuals or labour hire people. Once again, those people don't see a permanent opportunity coming forward.

He continued the whole way through to fight for people who needed a champion. He continued the whole way through to never take a backward step. He loved life and loved his friends. He would have cancer treatment in the morning and play golf in the afternoon. He was not going to let cancer beat him, and indeed it hasn't. There are so many who will take up the mantle and continue to fight for what Alex believed in, and there are so many people at work to this day who have more dignity, who have safer jobs, who have better conditions and who will enjoy a better retirement because of Alex Gallacher. To his family and his friends, our deepest condolences.

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