Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Hon. David Scott Thomson MC was born on 21 November 1924 in Sale, Victoria. In 1942 David Thomson enlisted in the Australian Army and trained at the Royal Military College Duntroon, beginning as an officer in 1943. Deployed to defend his nation in both World War II and the Korean War, David Thomson is remembered by his colleague retired colonel John Sullivan, who was the then National Country Party member for Riverina between 1974 and 1977, as a great and highly decorated soldier. Mr Sullivan was also a Duntroon graduate. David Thomson was, John Sullivan said, a much loved and respected director of infantry who had a distinguished military career and was awarded a Military Cross for his service to the nation in Korea. He served as director of infantry and regimental colonel of the Royal Australian Regiment between 1967 and 1970.

Upon finishing his career in the Defence Force David Thomson ran a guesthouse before his election to parliament. Turning his hand to politics in 1975, he was elected as the National Country Party member for the federal division of Leichhardt in 1975, reclaiming a seat the Labor Party had held for the preceding 24 years. In December 1979 David Thomson was appointed Minister for Science and the Environment before his appointment as Minister for Science and Technology in November of the following year. He retained that portfolio until the defeat of the Fraser government on 5 March 1983. It was at this election that David Thomson also lost his seat, the then bellwether seat of Leichhardt, to Labor's John Gayler. Above all, John Sullivan remembered his friend and parliamentary colleague as 'a bloody good soldier, a bloody good member and a bloody good bloke'.

Aged 88, David Thomson passed away on 13 October this year in Batemans Bay. I join the current member for Leichhardt, Warren Entsch, and others in this place in extending my sincere condolences to David's wife, Judy, and his family.

Honourable members having stood in their places—

I move:

Question agreed to.