Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Defence Personnel) Share this | Hansard source

Our hearts go out to Kimberley's husband, Andrew; her parents, Leigh and Bill; her brother, Ben; Bill Shorten, the member for Maribyrnong, his wife, Chloe, and their kids; and Kimberley's staff and family. We thank Andrew, Leigh, Bill and Ben for giving Kimberley to all of us.

We Labor moderates are in deep shock. I can remember my staff telling me the news of Kimberley's passing when I came back to my electorate office in Ipswich. Deputy Speaker, you and I were both at a meeting of the Greater Springfield branch of the Labor Party that night presenting reports on our local electorates and how we were flooded. I was late to that meeting. As I arrived, I turned to you and said, 'Have you told the branch about Kimberley?' You were stony-faced and looking straight ahead. I couldn't do anything other than look down because I felt like I wanted to cry when I looked at you. She had been a friend of yours for decades, a friend of mine, a factional ally and someone we knew very well. That's the impact she had on people's lives.

Kimberley was urbane and charming, erudite and eloquent, abounding in intelligence and had a heart not just for God but for people. Her breadth of knowledge would shame a diplomat. She had the ferocity of an advocate, a QC in full flight. She was smart and savvy and stylish. Bill Shorten talked about going onto the MCG. Well, she was a Queenslander. She might have represented Victoria in the Senate, but she was a Queenslander at heart. I could see her at Lang Park. She'd put on that gear—those clothes—and you'd go to a meeting with her. She represented me at Senate estimates. You'd go to a meeting with Senator Kimberley Kitching, and that's what she looked like: she was Senator Kimberley Kitching. It wasn't just Kimba; it was Senator Kimberley Kitching. You'd go to that meeting and she was thoroughly prepared for Senate estimates, I'm telling you. There's a great tradition we have in the Labor Party— sadly we've been in opposition for too long—and we have contemporary people like Senator Penny Wong and Senator Kim Carr who are great advocates and investigators. She was in the great tradition of Senator John Faulkner and Senator Robert Ray. She was in that tradition, and she was there. She was thoroughly prepared. There was a lawyer I trained many years ago who said to me that one of the things that I taught him was preparation, preparation, preparation. No-one had to teach Kimberley Kitching preparation. She was completely prepared. She had the discipline of an athlete in Senate estimates.

I loved talking with her. If my background was quite provincial, hers was international. She might have been a Queenslander and went to the University of Queensland a decade after me, but you could have conversations with Kimberley about arcane factional matters in the Australian Labor Party in Victoria, discussions about the long history of the United States and the progress of democratic politics and discussions about art and culture in Europe with her all at the same time. She could talk about esoteric language issues, because she had such a breadth of so many different languages. Goodness knows where she picked them all up and how she learnt them.

One of the things that really struck me is how ahead of her time she was. The former member for Melbourne Ports Michael Danby got onto me about this Magnitsky act and about the fact that we needed to do this in Australia. Kimberley was on it as well. And I remember saying, 'Michael, what are you really on about? What's this about helping victims of justice and making pariahs of pariah states and individuals?' Kimberley was recognised for that, and we have that legacy in our Australian democracy because of Kimberley's initiative and advocacy. I pay tribute to Michael as well. He talked about this for such a long period of time. And Michael was a great friend of Kimberley. I've had many dinners with Michael Danby and Kimberley Kitching. I'm going to miss those dinners. I'm going to miss those late-night chats that so many of us have had—you thought you'd ring her up and ask her about something, and the conversation would go on for half an hour or an hour. She was almost like a confessor you'd talked to, but also someone who knew so much. I think she had a great heart for people—and a heart for people internationally, as has been recorded. I say amen to all those comments that people have made about her work, whether it involved the Hong Kong activists for democracy or the Uyghurs or the Tibetans. Talking to her about the work she did in Afghanistan—she was quite modest about it, to be honest with you—I think she had a great understanding that Labor is the protector of the national interest but also the advocate for social change in this country. She was an evolutionist; she wasn't a revolutionary. She was a moderate, and she was proud of it. But she had a great heart and she understood the Labor Party and the Labor movement, and she was proud that she was union and proud that she was she was Labor. She had an understanding of where we'd come from as a country and where we needed to go. On the Labor side of politics, we believe in the collective—the union movement and the Labor Party. But it requires an individual sometimes to be its conscience—to say yes or to say no and to hold minority views that aren't always popular. Kimberley was like that, a person of courage and conviction. At times it requires someone to build coalitions across the aisle, as the Americans would say. I could not believe the day she told me that she was mates with Pauline Hanson. I had been campaigning against Pauline Hanson and One Nation since 1996 in Ipswich. I couldn't believe it. But she was. She had friends across both sides of politics.

I'm going to miss those conversations. I'm going to miss her jocularity and fun. The last time I had a conversation with her, I was in Bill Shorten's office during the religious discrimination bill, which we were discussing. She was there, in fine form, talking about every issue you could possibly imagine, international and domestic. Bill was there. She was there. A number of people's staff were there, waiting around. She might have liked a glass of champagne, but I am telling you that that just lubricated her immense intelligence.

I want to end on one scriptural note. I looked this up because I thought she would understand this—the sacred exhortation to people of faith. Kimberley was a deep Catholic and had a great understanding of where she stood in that Catholic tradition. It was found in the Book of Isaiah 1:17:

Learn to do right; seek justice.

Defend the oppressed.

Take up the cause of the fatherless;

plead the case of the widow.

Kimberley did this and so much more. She obeyed and fulfilled this commandment in her life and in her life's work. Vale, sister, Kimberley Kitching.

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