Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

One in five Australian jobs is reliant on trade. In regional Australia that number is one is four, and for those people in the regions who rely on trade, Peter Reith was one of their heroes because, during the 1997-98 waterfront disputes, the work that he did, the contribution he made and the efforts he went to ensured that trade was enabled, trade was enhanced and many of the barriers to trade were lifted. They needed to be.

I know that Griffith is a vibrant city in—I'll say the Riverina area. It's actually in the electorate of Farrer now; it has been since 2016—more's the pity. It was in Riverina from Federation through to the redistribution. Almost 98 per cent of product from Griffith goes through Melbourne ports. It's a staggering statistic for a New South Wales town, but Griffith is reliant on throughput at a port. So many jobs in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area and, in more recent years, the Coleambally Irrigation Area are reliant on that port functioning smoothly. But in the late 1990s it was not, and unions ruled the roost, and Peter Reith was assigned the job of making sure that the ports were back to functioning normally for those people reliant on trade.

Andrew Clark, the senior writer at the Australian Financial Review, wrote a very good article on 9 November, the day after Peter Reith, sadly, passed. It was headed 'Peter Reith "wrote the playbook" on the brutal game of politics'. Indeed he did. In the article, journalist Clark mentions an anecdote:

During the 1993 federal election campaign, an onlooker in Broken Hill, Australia's toughest union town, was astonished to see Peter Reith alone on a street corner extolling the virtues of Fightback …

We all know that Fightback wasn't quite as successful as some might have liked. It, of course, was the Liberal Party's free market policy agenda, amongst other things. The article continues:

"Initially, he was ignored but eventually, he was encircled by an increasingly angry crowd of burly miners and furious women denouncing his message," the onlooker recalled.

"An imposingly big and snarling sort of man, Reith was undeterred and returned the crowd's hostility in kind, which eventually saw them disperse in disgust."

At the time, Reith was the Liberal Party's deputy leader …

Over more than 17 years of involvement in federal politics—in six terms, I might add—he was one of the Liberal Party's warriors. I don't belong to the Liberal Party; I belong to the National Party. But I know the value that Peter Reith brought not just outside of politics but, moreover, to the Australian nation. The unions were too militant—they just were—and his work enabled the wharves to operate far more functionally.

He was well educated, at Brighton Grammar School and Monash University. He was well qualified in economics and law. He had practised as a solicitor. He had been in local government, elected to that first level of government. Indeed, he was shire president in his last year on the Shire of Phillip Island, in 1981. It is very sad that a man of such distinction, such worth and such merit should pass from Alzheimer's disease, because it is a crippling, insidious disease, and it must have been so sad for his wife, Kerrie, and his sons, Paul, Simon, David and Robert, to see this man of such great capacity diminish before their very eyes.

But we are grateful for Peter Reith's involvement in the national discourse, the national debate. We are blessed to have had him to do the work that he did. Not only was he a fearless minister but he was also a good local member. He represented the electorate of Flinders. All he ever wanted to do was represent that electorate to the best of his ability, and he did that. That was his credo in his maiden speech, but he achieved that, in spades. He was called upon to do the tough work on the wharves, and tough work it was, and we remember him for that. We honour him for his service in the industrial relations space, education, foreign affairs, defence, education, sport and more than that besides. We heard the member for Berowra talk about the 30 volumes of policy documents and ideas that Mr Reith had. He packed a lot into his six terms as a parliamentarian. We honour his memory, and we're thankful for his service to this great nation.

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