Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just after midnight on Friday, a friend and former work colleague Campbel Giles passed away after living beyond the time cruelly allotted to her after being diagnosed with cancer in 2012. Campbel was 41. She was a friend of many, a daughter, a sister, a wife to Matt and mum to Elsie.

I first properly met Campbel—a journalist and political adviser—when she applied for a job in my ministerial office soon after Labor's victory in 2007. I say 'properly met' because not so long before that I recall being witness to the arrival of a striking, boisterous and gregarious woman, accompanied by her more demure and laid back partner, Matt, at the races on Derby Day. She did not so much arrive but explode onto the scene, with energy and laughter. She was hard not to notice. But here before me, at this interview, was a serious, intelligent professional, engaging me with an intensity that was, I soon discovered, a hallmark of her dedication to any task she undertook. A fly on the wall would have had some trouble working out who was interviewing who. She had learned her trade at Shepparton News, WIN TV and the Victorian Labor government and joined my office early in 2008. While she was there, we abolished the Job Network, created Job Services Australia and embarked on a tour of the country with a then tireless Prime Minister Rudd in areas of high unemployment confronted by the global financial crisis. Her contribution in those early days, working with a fledgling minister, was vital to the successful execution of those reforms and initiatives.

If I was looking for an adviser who held her tongue and kept her opinions to herself I made an awfully bad choice. I knew of Campbel's views on any given matter whether I liked it or not. Her advice was direct and unvarnished and, most often, accompanied by a compelling argument and rapid-fire expletives. Even when I did not take her advice, my decisions were invariably better from having listened to her. I have no doubt our partnership would have continued if she had not followed her heart to the Top End, where her soon-to-be husband had his dream job of flying helicopters for a living. Of course, she had no trouble getting a job with the Northern Territory government. For all of her work success, the birth of her daughter, Elsie, was her greatest joy. There are, of course, so many people who knew her better and longer than I did, who knew much about this remarkable woman, and I look forward to hearing stories from them. Her lust for life, her energy, her care for others and her great courage and dignity in dealing with this random injustice will be forever remembered by all who loved her. May she rest in peace.