Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On indulgence, I first came to know Peter Veness on the doors of Parliament House. For those outside this building, doors are a bit of a strange ritual. You walk out the front of Parliament House to a press pack that asks you questions about any issue of the day. Pete Veness was the man who asked the hardest questions. He would often be on the fringes of the press pack and he would call out at you, not about what was on the front page of the paper necessarily but about what he thought was the most important issue. He had been diagnosed with cancer in 2009 and given a few months to live, and he nearly made it to three years. In that time as he worked as a journalist, Pete knew that his life was short and he needed to do what he could to make it count. His questions were punchy, penetrating and straight to the point, as the best journalists are. I remember he said to me after one particularly bruising doors session: 'This place has lost its spontaneity. Doors used to be about the opening of the car doors; now it is about the opening of the parliamentary doors.' All I could reply was: 'Pete, I have come out here to face your questions. I want to be prepared.'

I talked to Pete about this when I went to see him in the Clare Holland House hospice towards the end of his life. I am not sure how much he understood. He was going in and out of sleep at the time. With him was the little blue teddy bear and the crucifix that he held in his hand. As you do in these circumstances, I just talked and told him about how much he had influenced me in the short time we had known one another. And it was a short innings. Peter Veness passed away aged 27, far too young for anyone to be taken from us. His funeral was a fitting send-off. AAP journalist Adam Gartrell spoke about how Peter embodied the best of the craft of journalism. He told the story of Peter Veness writing a yarn that Peter thought was the best one he had ever written. It was about a farmer doing it tough. The only reason he got the story was by striking up a conversation with a random guy in a pub in the bush. Gartrell said:

That was pure Pete. He may have written about elections, political spills and scandals, but writing about the plight of the common man was what really made his heart sing.

We heard from his wife Bec Veness, who with extraordinary strength gently scolded Pete for having failed to prepare some words and said, 'He didn't lose. He kicked cancer's arse every day for almost three years.' Warwick Newell told a splendid story of one of his big nights out with Pete. He said, 'I lost Pete after a big night out. He called me a few hours later from a bus in Bankstown in a frenzied and unexplained search for Paul Keating.' All of us erupted into laughter. That was one of the many sides to Pete Veness.

The service itself finished in the most poignant of ways, with the parliamentary press gallery forming a guard of honour from the door of the church through to the gate at St John's. It was all the more poignant because on the back of the funeral service program was a picture of Pete and Bec coming out of the same door of the church just a few years earlier, after their marriage.

One of my favourite obituaries of Pete Veness was that written by Chris Johnson, a Canberra Times journalist, who really got to know Pete because they were in adjacent offices in the press gallery and were both inveterate music lovers. Chris wrote in his obituary that Pete Veness was:

A larrikins' larrikin by any reckoning. Loud and boisterous, yet with a heart as big as his cheeky grin.

Chris told the story that Pete, who appeared to me an extremely confident journalist, once confided to him, 'Do you know what a big deal it is for me to be in this gallery? I'd better not stuff it up.' But you never got that sense of fragility from Pete Veness. You got a sense of somebody who had earned his right to be here and who did his job in the best spirit of the press gallery.

Chris disclosed that Peter Veness sometimes wrote music reviews under a pseudonym, the name Sal Caulfield, combining Sal Paradise, from On the Road, and Holden Caulfield, from TheCatcher in the Rye. That, of course, sent me on a hunt for some of the reviews written by Sal Caulfield, where you see some of the best of Pete Veness's writing. Here he is in the Canberra Times on 8 May 2008 writing under his pseudonym about an album by Cog, Sharing Space:

Producer Sylvia Massey left plenty of air among the almost apocalyptic electronic twitches that dart around Flynn Gower's pleading, pounding voice in the verses. The air evaporates when the chorus arrives pushing the listener back with sheer volume and urging the ear forward in anticipation at the same moment.

It is beautiful writing—another reason, I think, so many of us are so sad that Pete is not here to contribute to the great craft of journalism for many decades yet. He worked to the end. As recently as 3 November last year he wrote for AAP the story of the killing in Afghanistan of Captain Bryce Duffy, Corporal Ashley Birt and Lance Corporal Luke Gavin. He wanted to keep on working to the end and he did, and he continued to make a great contribution.

Journalist Peter Martin reminded me that one of the things that some of the tributes to Peter Veness have passed over is how devout he was. At the service, Peter read psalm 23, The Lord is My Shepherd, and he pointed out to me that Peter Veness was the chair of St John's Anglican Church council and he was studying theology part time at St Mark's. Peter Martin suggested that in preparing these brief remarks I should speak to Margaret Campbell, the assistant minister at St John's. I spoke to Margaret this morning and she said that I should remind the House of what a man of great faith Peter Veness was, that he took great comfort in the promise of eternal life and that he was there in the church every Sunday. Margaret said, 'Peter Veness challenged us, and we will really miss one of our own.' I too will miss him. Doors will never be the same without him, and this place is a little poorer for his passing.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would just like to say to the member for Fraser, whose speech preceded this one, what a heartfelt and well-meaning speech that was. I pass my congratulations on to him because he has summed up Peter Veness extremely well.

I did not know Peter Veness all that well, but the reason I stand here today to add to the comments about his life, which was so tragically cut short, is that Peter went out of his way to give me advice and to give me the benefit of his wisdom when he did not need to. As a matter of fact, I do not think he really needed to do anything when it came to me. But he did that. He came into my office on two occasions and spent over an hour with me. The first was just telling me about the doors and what you should look out for when you do it—what the traps are when journalists try to interview you, especially the types of things that he was trying to get out of members that would make the news. He did that really out of the goodness of his heart and also because, when it came to policy, we shared a common interest. That was the other hour that he spent with me. That was talking about trade policy.

Peter was a journalist who knew, understood and followed trade policy. He was pretty rare in that regard. I had a very insightful discussion with him about where global trade policy was at and the pitfalls. We could talk World Trade Organisation, we could talk Doha Round and he understood all the language that went with trade.

Once again, he went out of his way afterwards to always make sure he flicked to me the latest developments which were coming out of Geneva—anything that was occurring with regard to Australia's bilateral free trade agreements, whether they be with Korea. I would note—and I think Pete predicted this—that the free trade agreement negotiations with South Korea have stalled once again. But that would be the sort of thing and the sort of advice he would flick to me: 'Have you seen this? Have you seen what's going on?' There was no need for him to do that. There was no need for him to sit down and give me the benefit of his wisdom about the doors. But he did so out of the goodness of his heart.

We touched briefly on his illness and how he was dealing with it. I just remember the incredible strength with which he was able to talk about it and the resolve he had in dealing with it. He was truly someone we should all admire for his strength of character and the way he dealt with, for three years, a debilitating illness that was to cost him his life.

I pass on my condolences to his wife, Bec. I say to her that I am sorry that I could not make the funeral. I would have liked to have been there because of the goodness that he showed me, but I could not be. I would just like to say: rest in peace, Peter Veness.