Kelly Hoare (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Bert James, the former member for Hunter, died at Booragul on Saturday, 30 September. Indeed, this parliament had a condolence motion for him last Monday. I want to thank the member for Capricornia for giving up her spot in this adjournment debate to allow me to make a few remarks about my good friend Bert, as the member for Hunter did last Thursday evening. As I said, Bert was a good friend to me and my family. He always extended goodwill and generosity and he was one of my mentors.

I can remember when my family first moved to the lake and my husband, Reg, did not know too many people. Bert took him under his wing—he had been retired for a long time by then—and showed him the joys of fishing on Lake Macquarie in his boat, Goldilocks. There was many a time after a bit of fishing when they would adjourn over to the Wangi Workers Club, where they could tie the boat up, have a few drinks and then go back to Bert’s place, his family home, which was just down the road from where Reg and I live. Bert lived there with his late wife, Nora, and their son, Rowley, and one of their daughters, Barbara, lives just across the road from them.

My earliest memory of Bert was at my family’s holiday home at Corlette. It must have been the early 1970s. As I said, Bert was a keen fisher and he used to go out to Broughton Island and spend days out there fishing. Sometimes he would then call back into our holiday home while we were there on holidays and come to visit.

I would like to take a couple quotes from Bert’s first speech in the parliament. He said:

It may be a hereditary characteristic derived from a dad who gave a lifetime of political service to the people of Hunter and more than 50 years of industrial and political service to the greatest and most constructive political party in this country—the Australian Labor Party, the party to which I am proud to belong. From childhood I was nurtured in the home of a miners’ industrial representative whose main public consideration was loyalty to the class from which he came.

In that same speech he concludes:

I hope that I shall always be able to see my way clear to adhere to the principles of the Australian Labour Party. We believe in peace, progress and prosperity. The Labour Party believes in the principle that none should be exploited and none should be denied.

And those were the principles with which Bert James lived his life. My father, Bob Brown, who was the member for Hunter following Bert, gave the eulogy at Bert’s funeral and also wrote an obituary for the Sydney Morning Herald, which was published last Thursday. I would like to quote part of that:

A visit to Cuba in 1962, four years after the Castro revolution overthrew the Batista regime and expelled the exploitive United Fruit Company, left an indelible impression on James. He was proud to declare himself a socialist and fearlessly defended the rights of people who had been cheated or marginalised. He saw his membership of the Freemasons as backing the principle of mutual support and protection.

People who knew Bert would have known of his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam war. Bob quotes:

Long before the true nature of the war in Vietnam became general knowledge and the community reacted with horror to the increasing disclosures of the brutality and the flow of body bags returning young Australians to their homeland, James courageously joined those of his colleagues, such as Jim Cairns and Tom Uren, who were demanding an end to to the war.

James had been inspired by a young US soldier in Bangkok who asked him to expose the ‘free fire zones’ in Vietnam in which troops were allowed/required to shoot anything—men, women, children, livestock—that moved.

It was a source of great comfort when Whitlam, newly elected as prime minister, released draft resisters and brought the last of the Australian troops home from Vietnam.

Reg’s and my condolences go to Bert’s brother, John; his sister, Bonnie; his son, Rowley; his daughters, Barbara and Helen; and to their families. In the words of Rowley James: we salute you. (Time expired)