Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to pay tribute in this place to the extraordinary life of the Reverend Keith Dowding, who passed away on 26 August 2008 at the age of 97. At the thanksgiving service for Keith Dowding, his son, the Hon. Peter Dowding, the former Western Australian Premier, and the Hon. John Cowdell, the former President of the Western Australian Legislative Council, spoke movingly about Keith in their eulogies. In making this statement I draw heavily and with gratitude from those eulogies.

Keith served as a minister in the Presbyterian and then Uniting Churches for over 60 years and was a moderator of the Presbyterian Church and General Secretary of the Western Australian Council of Churches in the fifties, sixties and seventies. The values of Christian socialism that Keith Dowding embodied led him to activism not only in religion but also in community and politics, which he believed were inseparable as vehicles for social change. In his inaugural address as Moderator to the Presbyterian General Assembly in 1962, Keith stated:

Without intending to be provocative—

and, according to John Cowdell, he always started that way and always was—

I say with the full authority of the Word of God, that there are certain responsibilities of the Church, which can be fulfilled only by political action. There are certain demands of Christ which can be obeyed only when the Church sends her members into the World.

Even as Keith delivered this address he was engaged in a confrontation with the ALP, of which he was an active member, over the White Australia policy. He stated to the ALP general assembly:

But with tragic hypocrisy, we have refused to see that our own immigration policy is one form of racial discrimination, and our cynical callous treatment of Australian Aborigines is another form. I am convinced beyond all doubt that no Christian is obedient to Christ if he practices discrimination against any man because of the colour of his skin.

Keith was expelled from the ALP for opposing the White Australia policy.

As an army chaplain, Keith performed a Christian burial ceremony for the first Japanese pilot shot down over New Guinea, resulting in public and official outrage. He subsequently resigned his army chaplaincy in 1941 and re-enlisted as a private soldier, serving until 1946. In 1953 Keith was expelled from the RSL for his ‘alleged communist leanings’. He was closely associated with Labor leader Doc Evatt’s defence of fundamental rights in the face of the anticommunist hysteria of the time.

Keith’s belief in the interconnectedness of faith and community activism and of local and global issues was evident in the causes with which he became involved. As Peter Dowding noted, Keith’s life’s work was to have a belief that one could help change society by speaking out, starting or supporting organisations and agitating for reform, and so he used his membership of the ALP, the United Nations Association, the Council for Civil Liberties and Amnesty International to campaign against moral persecution and for nuclear disarmament, gay rights and freedom from hunger.

Keith’s influence extended far beyond Western Australia and, indeed, Australia. From 1963 to 1965, as Director of the Bengal Refugee Service based in Calcutta, Keith had responsibility for 20,000 refugees. In 1966-67, he was the Administrator of the Save the Children Fund in Nigeria, and, following this, he organised the International Year of Human Rights in the UK and Northern Ireland. Keith was 92 years old when Australia participated in the invasion of Iraq. He was invited to speak at a rally in Fremantle and, as Peter Dowding described it, Keith:

… caught the bus from Maylands to the City, then the train from the City to Fremantle, he tottered over on his titanium knees to stand at the demonstration where endless speakers repeated the same things, and as the crowd had obviously had enough and were drifting away, the organisers invited him to speak which he did, standing under a tree and he electrified the crowd which drifted back to listen to this eloquent speech against the actions of the Australian, American and British governments.

As is clear from this brief summary of a life lived entirely in accordance with his own conscience, Keith’s actions often unsettled many people and he paid a price, as he freely admitted. But there were personal vindications. The White Australia policy was overthrown, civil liberties were enhanced and Keith was readmitted to the ALP and the RSL. He became a respected member of the Former Padres Association. He was awarded the Order of Australia in 1987 and the Centenary Medal in 2003. He was also awarded life membership of the ALP, which, as John Cowdell observed, made it rather difficult for him to resign when he was outraged from time to time by the party’s policies. I pay tribute to the Reverend Keith Dowding, a man to whom we and Australia owe a great debt.

Question agreed to.