Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications and Cyber Security) Share this | Hansard source

While I've enjoyed listening to the contributions of the member for Goldstein, the member for Canning and the member for Oxley about Kimberley Kitching's life today, I must say that it is a grim duty for members of this parliament to speak on this motion before the House.

The sudden death of Kimberley Kitching at just 52 years of age is a profound human tragedy. Those of us in this building are still feeling the shock keenly, less than a month after the terrible news, and those of us who knew her, from across the political spectrum, are in mourning at this terrible human loss. While Kimberley was a public figure and is being mourned publicly, amidst the media coverage and the controversy, we cannot lose sight of the personal tragedy being experienced by everyone who knew Kimberley.

My thoughts, first, are with her partner, Andrew, who spoke so powerfully at her funeral. I don't know how he managed it. I can't imagine the pain that he's experiencing, and I know that I would not have been able to speak so movingly. My thoughts are, similarly, with her parents, Bill and Leigh, and her brother, Ben, who are so obviously deeply proud of everything that she had achieved, as well as having deeply loved her as a daughter and sister.

My thoughts too are with that unique form of political family, Senator Kitching's staff. I have spoken before in this House about the uniquely intimate relationship between staff and members and senators in this building. It's a close bond. I have experienced the death of a much loved staff member, and I know that my office experienced that as the loss of a family member. And I know that Kimberley's staff will be experiencing this keen loss too at the moment.

For those of us in this building, Kimberley wasn't a caricature that you sometimes read about in media representations. We knew Kimberley as a person, as a human being, with all of the complexity of human relationships that that entails. She loved poetry, and, to paraphrase Walt Whitman, she 'contained multitudes'. It is fair to say that Kimberley and I had a complex relationship at times. We ran against each other for preselection and later became parliamentary colleagues fighting for the same cause. That makes for the kind of relationship that is unique in politics.

Politics is inherently a contest of both people and ideas. What those outside of politics sometimes don't understand, though, is that sometimes this contest occurs between people trying to achieve the same ultimate outcome. Along the years, Kimberley and I sometimes had different views on preliminary tactics. While we were at times political rivals, always underlying this was the fact that I fundamentally agreed with her on the big issues. In politics you can judge people by the fights they get into. I was reflecting on the member for Oxley's contribution about travelling with Kimberley on a delegation and not wanting to cause an international incident. I can report to the House that I travelled on a delegation with Kimberley Kitching and the now member for Goldstein and the former Speaker, Bronwyn Bishop, where we did cause an international incident! I won't detain the House by going over the details of that again, but it was a constant risk when travelling with Kimberley because she got into the fights that mattered.

When the history of this period is written, it will show that Kimberley was in all of the most important political fights of our generation. In this way, the times suited her. I have spoken many times in this chamber about the moment that we live in and the need for the current generation of political leaders to champion democratic values and freedom in the face of a rising authoritarian threat both abroad and at home. The democracy needed a new generation of advocates—like Kennedy and Reagan in the US, Curtin and Chifley in Australia. Kimberley was a fierce champion of freedom and democratic values. She understood that the sacred mission of Labor politics throughout the 20th century endured into the present, and that is that we fight fascists. She understood that democracy isn't just a worthy ideal, it is the foundation of the material wellbeing of the working people that we seek to represent. She understood, too, that those who would deny freedom and democracy at home and abroad must be confronted by the labour movement and by the Australian Labor Party as its political standard bearer in this country. Kimberley didn't just champion freedom and democracy as ideas, she wasn't interested in being part of a debating society; she championed causes to deliver outcomes in the real world. And you could see the living embodiment of these fights in the people who attended her funeral—Tibetans, Uygurs, Hong Kong democracy activists, Chinese dissidents, human rights campaigners, Afghan refugees. They were a living legacy of her advocacy.

I have previously spoken in this chamber about Kimberley's role in delivering an Australian Magnitsky sanctions regime. She was an advocate for the cause long before it was claimed by both sides of politics. Over the years I attended many meetings for this cause that she arranged with the movement's founder, Bill Browder, and other advocates. She first won the Labor caucus and the shadow ministry over to the cause and maintained the pressure on the government to act through a private member's bill. She then gave the government an on-ramp to get onboard cause through a parliamentary inquiry which allowed a bipartisan consensus to emerge among the committee members. And now Australia has legislated its own Magnitsky sanctions regime, and this week we imposed our first sanctions on a collection of figures associated with that thuggish Putin autocracy and its repulsive, illegal invasion of Ukraine.

Kimberley's work to make a Magnitsky sanctions regime a reality in Australia was a worthy legacy that has never been more timely and important. It was an achievement that led her to being awarded that Sergei Magnitsky Human Rights Award in 2001, which has been won by figures like John McCain and Alexei Navalny. But we should understand that this was an award borne of Kimberley's political skills. If nothing else, we should honour Kimberley's legacy by remembering her as a political warrior. It was those political skills that enabled her to achieve her Magnitsky legacy in this parliament. She wasn't a protester, she wasn't an opinion columnist; she was someone who caught to make change through politics It's the noble cause that leads us all to this parliament. She was someone who got into the arena and fought for things and for the people she believed in. None of this was easy. It required courage and endurance.

Kimberley's husband, Andrew, couldn't have summed it up better than when he quoted from William Ernest Henley's Invictus at her funeral service:

In the fell clutch of circumstance

  I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

  My head is bloody, but unbowed.

People like Kimberley do not go into politics because it is easy or glorious; they go into politics and endure the contest because of what can be achieved when the contest is won. Kimberley Kitching has an impact during her brief time in this place and will leave a lasting legacy. She will encourage a current generation of political leadership, and the future generations of political leadership that follow, to be full-floated in their defence of freedom and democracy in the face of the rising authoritarian threat that our generation now confronts. She leaves this parliament bloodied but unbowed.

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