Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Barker for bringing this motion forward. From the outset, I recognise Joan Hall in the chamber, as my colleagues have done. Welcome, Joan. I extend Teresa's and my condolences to your family.

As we've heard, Steele was born in Balaklava in 1928. He worked on the family farm in Owen, nowadays the wonderful electorate of Grey. He was elected to the seat of Gouger in 1959 and became Leader of the Opposition in 1965 following the retirement of Sir Thomas Playford on the eve of the election in 1965, which was subsequently lost to the Labor party. He was elected Premier in 1968, which was a wonderful turnaround for the Liberal Party. He distinguished himself as a statesman as opposed to a political animal when he undertook the reforms of the electoral system, removing the previous bias that allowed much lower populations in country seats, knowing full well it was likely to lead to defeat at the next election. That's a man who was prepared to sacrifice power on a matter of principle and fairness. In and of itself, that alone is a very telling story of Steele Hall.

The reforms were not the only reason Steele Hall lost the 1970 election. His term as premier was cut short by the loss of support of the Independent, Tommy Stott, over the proposed Chowilla Dam. If ever there was a good reason not to have too many Independents in this place, perhaps that's it. But Steele Hall recognised Chowilla for the environmental disaster that it would have been. It would have salted up the bottom end of the Murray. And despite good evidence being available to all, Chowilla was supported by the opposition leader, Don Dunstan, in a tub-thumping, state's right platform in the 1970 election, a position he then abandoned in government.

I didn't come from a political family, but, in 1970, I started to take an interest. It always seemed an incredible injustice that someone could campaign for something in an election and then turn around and do something else as soon as the election was won. That's another example of Steele Hall standing against the mob for what was right, which exemplified his strength and conviction. It is in retrospect that Steele Hall should be appreciated as a visionary. He was the Premier who identified the banks of the Torrens as a place to build the festival centre and set the wheels in motion to build it.

He legislated the Metropolitan Adelaide transport study, a plan which included a north-south freeway corridor through Adelaide, and under his government the electorally painful work of land acquisition was largely completed. Sadly, the election spelt the end of that project, and later the land was sold off. What a folly. The estimated cost of land acquisition and construction for the entire proposal was $574,000,000 in 1968, which equates to about $7 billion today in 2024. Following tens of billions spent on another half a dozen or so sections of the north-south corridor, we are now spending another $15 billion to complete the final 15 kilometres of the same pathway—$1½ billion a kilometre.

Steele Hall's time as premier was all too short. Following the almost inevitable loss in the 1970 election, support for Steele within his party fell away until eventually he left the Liberal Party and formed the Liberal Movement, for which he won a three-year term in the Senate in the 1974 double dissolution, which was in turn truncated by the 1975 dismissal election, in which he was narrowly returned. These were tumultuous years, and Steele was not always the favourite of his former Liberal colleagues. In 1977 he resigned his Senate seat to contest the seat of Hawker, which he narrowly lost. However, following the narrow loss in the 1975 state election, the conservative forces set about bringing the Liberal Party back together, and in 1981 Steele contested Boothby for the Liberal Party, won it and held it for the subsequent 15 years before he retired.

In total he served 33 years in three different houses of parliament: the House of Assembly, the Senate and, of course, the House of Representatives—a remarkable contribution to public life by a remarkable man, sometimes a maverick, certainly a visionary, always a man sure of his judgement and a conviction politician. The world is a far poorer place for his passing, but we are much better for his presence.

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