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

Before I go to the matter I want to speak on, I just want to reinforce our condolences and concerns for the people of Queensland. As I understand it, the cyclone is heading south and there are more endangered communities. Queensland members are returning home today, and we just hope that everything that can be done is being done to help those communities.

I want to reflect upon the passing of Martin McGuinness, who was instrumental in forging peace in Northern Ireland. Martin McGuinness had a very controversial background. He was in the IRA in the 1970s, and in 1972 he, along with Gerry Adams, met with the British government in secret after 14 people were killed in the Bloody Sunday protest. From that point on, they were seeking to find a pathway to peace. In those circumstances, it was sometimes harder to forge peace and find a parliamentary solution to the troubles in Northern Ireland than it was to take up the option of sectarian violence. No-one is pretending that there were not misgivings about the conduct of Martin McGuinness in his life. But it is true to say that his life's journey—from being in a conflict in Northern Ireland to finding, oddly, a remarkable relationship with his nemesis, Dr Ian Paisley—says something about what can happen to people in their lives. In fact, Martin McGuinness had a very close relationship with Dr Paisley, who was also a firebrand but on the other side and who showed very little tolerance to republicans and Catholics for many years. Nonetheless, the two became close and worked together on trying to develop an ongoing peace in that ravaged part of Ireland.

You could say, Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, that the troubles in the 1970s and beyond were a manifestation of a conflict between two countries that, arguably, stretched back 800 years. And yet Martin McGuinness—as Bill Clinton said in the eulogy he gave at McGuinness's funeral—said that he had fought, and then he made peace, and then he sought to make change. Perhaps the most instructive comment that I have heard was made by Ian Paisley's son, who said that Martin McGuinness 'not only saved lives but made the lives of countless people better'. That came from Dr Paisley's son, and shows us that, ultimately, Martin McGuinness made a very important contribution to Northern Ireland.