Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, on indulgence, I pay tribute to Emeritus Professor Frank Fenner, who died yesterday at the age of 95. Professor Fenner was one of Australia’s greatest scientists and a man of exceptional integrity, modesty and generosity of spirit. During World War II, he helped lead the effort to control malaria in Papua New Guinea, which had been badly affected and which hampered Australia’s war effort. After postwar studies he became a foundation professor at the Australian National University and an original member of the Australian Academy of Science. His finest hour was in helping to oversee the eradication of smallpox, which killed and disfigured millions of people each year. Frank Fenner was a selfless benefactor to scientific causes and in retirement maintained a productive output of books and articles. Until recently, he attended his office at the ANU, his red jumper a familiar sight around Canberra. Professor Fenner showed that Australians are capable of great things. Today we acknowledge his brilliance and his achievements but also the sense of public service that drove him to seek excellence in everything he did. I honour the memory of this remarkable Australian and offer my sincere condolences to his family, friends and colleagues, who today are mourning the passing of a giant.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the remarks of the Prime Minister and to lament the passing of a truly great Australian, in fact he was probably the finest Australian scientist not to have won a Nobel Prize. Many other prizes, though, were deservedly heaped upon him for his work overseeing the smallpox vaccination program—which, as the Prime Minister has just observed, did finally eliminate that dreadful scourge from our world—the development of myxomatosis to help control rabbits in this country and for his antimalarial work in Papua New Guinea. It can be said of Professor Frank Fenner that he brought knowledge from the laboratory and magnificently applied it for the benefit of all mankind. We mourn his death but we celebrate a truly great life.