Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the 1980s I had the opportunity to visit New York City many times. I used to enjoy my visits to this great metropolis. One of the things that used to unfortunately characterise one of the downsides of New York before Mayor Guiliani cleaned it up was the attitude of people to each other, particularly when incidents of crime happened. When terrible things would happen in the street, no-one would stand up for the victim of crime—the person who was being assaulted or worse.

I contrast that with the actions in my city of Melbourne in the last few days of a very brave man, Brendan Keilar, the father of three children—Phoebe, Lucy and Charlie. They and his wife, Alice, have lost him because he did precisely this: he represented that Australian spirit, that optimistic naivety, that sees people intervene when confronted with a violent incident of the kind that he witnessed on William Street. Brendan Keilar thought it was not like New York in the streets of Melbourne. I share the sentiment of nearly everyone in Victoria—and indeed Australia—in agreeing with the Herald Sun editorial which was published yesterday, which said:

[we] ... mourn the passing of lawyer Brendan Keilar, the good Samaritan whose bravery cost him his life, who fell at the hands of a man not worthy of sharing the same footpath as him.

I think I express the great sorrow of all the Australian people, including all the people who live in Melbourne, for his children and his wife. His tragic death emphasises the point about not allowing the easy availability of handguns in Australia. While our regulations are already tighter than those in the United States and lead to obvious differences in the murder rate, we need to remain very strict as to restrictions on handguns. It is disgraceful that the person who apparently killed this good Samaritan had access to a handgun. The Herald Sun concluded in its editorial:

... there may come a point when it will be seen as folly to try to assist others at risk. Perhaps we reached that point yesterday. We’re all poorer for that.

I certainly would bemoan that development if the case is that we have reached that point of fear.

I was going to express my anger and the anger of the community towards the individual responsible, but I think the reaction of my tradition to a person like that is better: that his name and memory should be obliterated—whereas we remember Brendan Keilar and his intervention and the spirit of Australia that he represents. We particularly remember his family. Let us hope that his death is not an epitaph for the spirit represented by his intervention, by his optimism, by the kind of public spiritedness that we saw. I read something that I think is a fitting tribute to him. It was this:

What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains, and is immortal.