Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to join with other members of this parliament in expressing my condolences to Mark Colvin's mother and to his family. I did not know Mark Colvin, other than being a follower of his on Twitter, which I guess made a lot of people feel like they knew Mark Colvin, but I have some friends who knew him well. I know that they would be very pleased to have some very good tributes paid to Mark Colvin in this parliament to mark his passing and to acknowledge his life and the contribution he made.

I could not possibly write a tribute as fine as the tribute that James Jeffrey wrote on 12 May 2017, and I wanted to read some of it in the parliament today in case members missed the tribute that James wrote. I am going to quote it quite extensively, and I think that that is probably enough from me, to repeat James's words, because I do not think you could really get better than them. He said:

I must have walked a million miles in my local Bunnings ­because of Mark Colvin. It's like he could sense when I was in there and therefore free to chat.

It tended to be in the doldrums of a Sunday afternoon and my phone would buzz in my pocket—something important or trivial or amusing or splendidly random had crossed his mind, and he had to share it. "Hello mate," he'd say, and we'd be off.

I'd give up any pretence of looking for what I'd come for and would meander up and down the aisles, trolley in one hand, phone in the other. And it was glorious. Sometimes it was serious, sometimes not, sometimes both. I'd always pick up new knowledge and, as if to keep things in balance, lose a bit of hearing as his laugh boomed in my ear.

Our conversation sometimes wandered the world or history, sometimes stayed very local. Sometimes we dug deep, sometimes skated happily across the surface. Then eventually, we'd say goodbye—and suddenly I'd realise I was still in Bunnings.

I first met Mark briefly at some event, but it was on Twitter—that corner of the internet that feels like it was designed with him in mind—that our paths started to cross. I was in awe of him, so I was beside myself when he took a shine to my writing.

We met at a cafe around the corner from his house and we never looked back. A love of words brought us together, but there was so much we revelled in: Eastern Europe, Iran, comedy, music, good writing and, with almost equal enthusiasm, bad writing. (Just last weekend he was eager to alert me to the latest output of one scribe who regularly baffled us into a state of hysterical disbelief. His text contained just one word: the writer's surname.)

Just to deviate from the text slightly, I will leave it to members to work out which writer that might have been. To go on to quote James's article, his tribute:

Many were on the receiving end of Mark's magic, and Twitter expanded his reach. He was so generous—not least with young journalists—and he'd sweep up everyone in his enthusiasm, his wisdom, his great tidal waves of encouragement.

James goes on to talk about Mark's ability to swear, and I certainly—I have never heard the words that appeared in this article before. They are completely new to me. That is probably pretty impressive given how old I am and my extensive range of swearing, of course, but these are words that are new to me. I do not propose to read them into the record, but please go and look for yourself in James's tribute to Mark Colvin if you are an aficionado of bad language, of cussing—not that I am suggesting that you are, of course, Mr Deputy Speaker!

I want to go on to quote the following part of this article, and then I will sit down and let people use their own words. James wrote:

Mark may have been a man of profound depths, but boy was he gleeful splashing through the shallows. Then, just after another round of silliness, he'd turn around and give you what felt like half the universe. When he asked me to read some chapters of the manuscript that became his memoir Light and Shadow, I lost myself in a bigger world. His. He was brave, he was stoic. Injustice and hypocrisy made him angry. A bowl of fresh raspberries sorted him out. As did his special place in the water. Last Christmas he texted from his mother's place in the country: "Here the dam is full and I swim around the island in the evening. Bucolic peace."

And James writes:

Mark loved my family, and even extended that affection to our pets. He was very much a dog person (I keep thinking about his boxer Chops waiting for the boss to come home), but he got his hands on one of my pythons and looked like a happy little boy.

He was one of the finest people I've ever known, and becoming his friend has been one of the great joys of my life.

He left one last tweet to be sent out once he was gone: "It’s all been bloody marvellous."

But for now, I'm clinging to the last message he sent me. It was on Wednesday and I promised to come see him the moment I got back to Sydney. He replied with the simplest expression of love: "XXXX".

I know that there were people across this country who were gravely saddened by the too-soon loss of Mark Colvin. I know there are people in the media who are very saddened. It is an honour to pay some small tribute of my own and to read this beautiful tribute from James Jeffrey into the record today.

Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a privilege to make a statement about Mark Colvin. I did not know Mark Colvin. I had the privilege of saying hello to him once. But I would like to talk about four aspects of Mark Colvin: his family, his kidney, a remarkable lecture I saw him give and his quite extraordinary voice, which was one of the great sounds of the ABC and one of the great sounds of Australia.

Mark Colvin comes from a family of public service. His father, John Colvin, was a British spy and diplomat. Mark Colvin wrote, not that long ago, a significant memoir about his father and the difficult relationship that they had, particularly around the way his father seemed to act for much of his life, the sorts of behaviours that a former spy would show: a lot of secrecy in his life and a lot of half-discussions, as it were. He was also of interest to people in this place as the great-great-nephew of Stanley Melbourne Bruce, a former Prime Minister of Australia, a man who was, sadly, more noted for wearing spats and losing his seat in the federal election while he was Prime Minister than for his many achievements. In recent years, Mark Colvin tried to help correct the record and present a more balanced view of SM Bruce, particularly through exhibitions in national institutions—in this place, at Old Parliament House and at other places.

Colvin was 15 when his 'Uncle S', as he used to call Bruce, died. The two of them would often talk about sport. They would talk about figures that he did not know that much about at the time, about when SM Bruce served in the war cabinet and stood up to Churchill, about some of his amazing friendship with Kemal Ataturk—given that both of them had served at Gallipoli and were leading their countries at a proximate time—and about many arguments with Billy Hughes, whose portrait, of course, appears in this Chamber. Colvin said of SM Bruce:

He wasn't some perfect politician, he wasn't somebody who necessarily would have fit in very well into modern day Australia, but he was a much, much more interesting figure than some people have dismissed him as.

Mark Colvin is also the brother-in-law of Ambassador Mark Higgie, Australia's current ambassador to the EU, NATO, Belgium and Luxembourg. Some colleagues will remember that he is also a former senior international adviser to former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, so he has an intergenerational connection with this place.

I want to talk a little bit about Mark Colvin's kidney. Mark Colvin was probably the most famous kidney transplant recipient in Australia. He developed a disease which affected his kidneys as a journalist in Africa in the 1980s. He had met a remarkable woman called Mary-Ellen Field. Mary-Ellen Field was a great friend of my predecessor, Philip Ruddock. She had been a victim of the News of the World hacking scandal. She had done some work for Elle Macpherson, and News of the World had hacked into Elle Macpherson's phone equipment and so on, and Mary-Ellen had copped the blame for this. Mark Colvin took up her story and championed Mary-Ellen Field. Mary-Ellen was so taken with Mark that, when he needed a kidney, she volunteered to donate her own. They were not related. There was no particular reason to do so, but anybody who has met Mary-Ellen will know what a remarkable person she is and what an extraordinary relationship the two of them had. In fact, the story of Mark Colvin's kidney was made into a play by Tommy Murphy. I am very proud to have been on the board of playwriting australia, which develops Australia's great playwrights; playwriting australia was one of the organisations that were involved in the dramaturgy of bringing this uniquely Australian story to the stage earlier this year.

I wanted to talk about Mark Colvin as a lecturer and as an innovator in the media. There are very few lectures that you will ever hear in your lifetime where you think, 'This is so remarkable, both in its presentation and in its content, that I just don't want it to end.' There have only been three or four for me: Dyson Heyden's Quadrant lecture; Jonathan Sacks's Beckett lecture; and Bruce Ackerman's Holmes lectures that I got to hear at Harvard—although I disagreed with Bruce Ackerman's perspective on American constitutional law. Mark Colvin's Andrew Olle lecture is up there with those for me.

Mark Colvin's Andrew Olle lecture in 2012 was about the digitisation tsunami. Although Mark Colvin had a voice that made him sound as establishment as a deep-button leather couch, he was very much at the forefront of mixing up both the old media and the new media. He was an enormous user of Twitter through the @Colvinius account that he put together. Who better, then, to talk about what the digitisation tsunami would be like?

What was remarkable about his lecture is that, obviously, he was not very well at the time. He came to the stage and sat on a bar stool to deliver this lecture. It went for about 45 minutes, but it was extraordinary in its observations and extraordinary in the way in which he delivered it with some considerable passion. I would just like to read a short passage about the digitisation tsunami and then refer to four points he made about the way which one should use modern technology:

The digitisation tsunami has finally hit, and that means that mainstream media in Australia and around the world face of not one, but several crises at the same time.

There is a crisis of consensus, with journalists find it increasingly difficult to find a common ground from which to write.

There is a crisis of authority, in which institutions that have tended to hand down pronouncements like stone tablets from the mountaintop now often find themselves subject to disagreement, abuse or even ridicule.

And there is a crisis of credibility, as, Wizard of Oz- like, the curtain is pulled away from so-called authorities like News Corp and the BBC to reveal the sometimes despicable reality.

Looming over all, though, is the fourth crisis, the biggest of all - the crisis of finance. How, in the age of creative destruction brought on by digitisation, can we make journalism pay?

He went on to look at all four of those issues in the lecture.

I thought, given that he was such a great user of technology, that it would be worthwhile noting some of the lessons that he had learned—four lessons that he had learned from his time on Twitter. The first lesson that he noted was that one should be a crowdsourcer. That can mean using the crowd for anything from checking a date to asking people to help scour through large government documents.

Secondly:

Be a presence on social media, giving as much as you. Don't just plug your own stuff: encourage conversation and join in others' discussions.

Use Twitter as a rolling news wire, but subject it to the verification tools developed by journalists over decades.

Thirdly:

Admit you can be wrong, but correct yourself as soon as possible.

And fourthly:

… if you're an institution, admit that you're not monolithic. You're a collection of individuals, as good and as fallible as those individuals and the culture you create around them.

The digitisation tsunami has been very disruptive to journalists and to news organisations around the world. Colvin ended on an optimistic note, without saying, in any sense, that he could predict the future. He said:

All I can give you is my profound conviction that good journalism - journalism of integrity - is a social good and an essential part of democracy, and we have to do everything we can to try to preserve it.

I think he was absolutely right about that.

The final point I wanted to make was about his extraordinary voice and what an extraordinary presence that was in the lives of so many Australians. For me, it was sitting in the car and driving to a function or driving home, listening to his voice interviewing people on PM and compering stories. As an interviewer, he was firm without being aggressive. He was able to extract facts from the interviewee—from the subject—and he was able to present things in an authoritative style, with his civilised, cultured, educated and modulated voice that became a feature of so many Australian families and Australian lives as they tuned into PM of an afternoon, either at five or six o'clock and listened to his pronouncements.

Australia will miss Mark Colvin and the wonderful contribution he made to journalism in this country. To his family, may I say that I hope his memory is a blessing.

Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today on indulgence to offer some personal reflections on the departure from this world on 11 May 2017 of someone I never met, someone I did not know, and someone who would never have heard my name. Yet I heard the voice of Mark Colvin telling me 'Goodnight' on most weeknights for the past 10 years. Whether it was while driving, in my office, at home or sometimes later on a podcast, I have been an avid listener of the brilliant PM show on the ABC and, therefore, Mark Colvin for so many years. PM and the remarkable medium of radio, and now the podcast, allowed Mark Colvin to continue his career as a broadcaster beyond his already remarkable career as a foreign correspondent. Over 20 years of hosting PM, Mark Colvin—along with teams of producers, technicians, journalists and ABC staff—delivered to all of us lovers of radio our evening update of national news, current affairs, international issues and global concerns. It was the voice of Mark Colvin that brought the program together and gave us a window on the world and the gift of familiarity and trust.

Across May and April on successive Sundays when I had the chance, I had read much of his memoirs, Light and Shadow, in our upstairs room while sharing a large beanbag with one of my dogs. It is a terrific memoir—one of those works where you feel compelled to read out passages to passing loved ones, beautifully written passages that tell the story of a life so extensively and enthusiastically lived and so generously shared with all of us listeners and readers. I finished reading Mark Colvin's book about 10 days before he left this earth, and I must say I was very sad to hear of his death. Just the night before I had been speaking about him and the magic of broadcasters in general with one of his friends, James Jeffrey, and I thank James for his wonderful tribute that the member for Griffith told us about earlier this afternoon.

Since the day I heard of his death I have been reflecting on broadcasters who have fed my addiction to radio and now, more latterly, to podcasts. I think of the great Wally Foreman, a Western Australian broadcaster who I would regularly spend Saturday mornings listening to as he would talk me and thousands of others through a cricket game or a footy match. I think of Eoin Cameron, once also a member of this place, who was a greatly loved breakfast broadcaster and generally a curmudgeon of Western Australia. Both are sorely missed in my home state. In Perth, thousands of people turned up to Wally Foreman's memorial service. Hundreds turned up to the funeral of Eoin Cameron. In Sydney, many hundreds of friends and listeners—as well as family, of course—paid their respects at the memorial service for Mark Colvin, and many, many more listened over the web.

When I listened to these memorial services myself, I was thinking how strange it was that a radio voice would mean so much to me and to so many other people who do not know the person who offers it. I was reminded of another radio broadcaster that I met once—sadly, only once. Older people across WA often ask me if I am related to Catherine King, MBE. I let them know that I am only related to her through marriage, and that Catherine King is my husband's grandmother. The people I chat with tell me how they remember her show on the ABC from many years ago, how they or their mum or their relatives would always listen to the women's sessions and how they liked the friendly voice and easy familiarity of Catherine. I must admit that, at the time, I could never understand why this woman was so significant to them—after all, it was just radio; it was not like the famousness of television or the movies. I had not appreciated how great and personal a connection a listener has with a radio broadcaster, to a voice and a personality a listener lets into their life on a regular basis.

After the loss of broadcasters I have listened to for years, and now with the loss of that king of current affairs, Australia's window to the world and the host of the brilliant and dependable PM, Mark Colvin, I now know better. I can understand why so many people ask me after a Catherine King. She was their friend on the radio. Now I have lost my friend on the radio, as well. My sincere condolences to the family, loved ones, friends and colleagues of Mark Colvin, of which there are so many. My very sincere condolences to those of you who knew him and loved him. Mark Colvin left his mark on this country, and has made a tremendous contribution to journalism and broadcasting in Australia. I did not know him, but he was my radio friend. He was the radio friend of many thousands of people and, on behalf of all of his radio friends, I know we will miss him greatly. Vale Mark Colvin.

Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mark Colvin was born in London to an Australian-born mother, Anne, and a British father—the naval officer, diplomat, secret agent and historian, John Colvin. His father's work took him overseas, so the young Mark Colvin was sent to boarding schools, including Summer Fields prep, near Oxford, and Westminster School, in London. He did not enjoy his time at boarding school, which he later described as barbaric. After his parents divorced, when he was 11, Mark and his younger sister lived with their mother, while their father moved into a nearby flat. But even then Mark did not find out his father was a high-ranking member of MI6, and could not ascertain from his father the full details, even when his father passed away in 2003. In his memoir, Light and Shadow: Memoirs of a Spy's Son, he goes into some of those details. He reflected, too, in an interview with his son, William Colvin, about the impact that his upbringing had on him. He said to his son: 'I always tried to be a good dad to you and take you to lots of places.' He was determined not to send his own children to boarding school, despite being a foreign correspondent, but was determined to go to the theatre and to cook meals and to be what he called 'as much of a present dad as possible.' Words that I am sure all of us in this place who are struggling to combine work and parenting feel most acutely.

Mark Colvin got a cadetship at the ABC in 1974, joined 2JJ in 1975 and then was promoted to foreign correspondent at the age of 28. He served in a range of different contexts. It was when he was working on covering the Ethiopian famine that he won a gold medal at the New York Film Festival for his report The Forgotten Famine and was nominated for an international Emmy. His foreign reporting came with costs. In covering the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, Mark Colvin contracted a rare autoimmune disease, Wegener's granulomatosis, which caused him severe pain. His friend Leigh Sales described him as a Stoic, somebody who did not talk about his physical ailments because, as he put it to her: 'It's just so boring, Sales. There are so many more interesting things I'd rather discuss.' I love that Stoic approach to life, that pain is something to be endured and it is just better to get on with living life.

He was within two weeks of dying in 2011 when a British woman, Mary-Ellen Field, who he had come to know through the News of the World phone-hacking case, reached out to him and offered him a kidney donation. He tried to put her off but eventually relented, and that gave us six more years of the wonderful Mark Colvin as well as a play, Mark Colvin's Kidney, staged at the Belvoir Street Theatre. Ms Field reflected on the donation just days before his death, saying she had spoken to Mark Colvin and he had told her how much he loved her and that she 'mustn't cry, because he needed me to be strong.' 'It was the best thing I have ever done,' she said, which is one of those extraordinary reminders that those moments of generosity when we feel like we are giving can sometimes be moments when we are gaining so much.

I met Mark Colvin once, at a conference, and was struck as so many people were by his mellifluous tones, by his interest in so many ideas and by his lack of dogmatism. I think Leigh Sales put it so nicely in her book On Doubt, where she said she does not trust zealots, people who do not even countenance for a moment that they might be wrong. Mark Colvin was not one of those people. He was interested and interesting. I remember engaging with him on Twitter on the issue of paying for organ donations and some of this fascinating research showing that it is only Iran that does not have transplant waiting lists, because it is one of the few countries that pays for organ donations. A piece of economic research and Mark Colvin was straight onto it and engaged and interested.

He had, too, such a terrific sense of humour. As Leigh Sales writes:

I once told him that I wanted to brighten up his hospital room with some beautiful images and so I texted him three photographs of flowers and one of Gerard Henderson. He told me he thought he'd cracked a rib laughing so hard.

Michael Janda tells the story that he was doing a live finance report on PM with Mark Colvin and read out:

… "gold is worth (whatever the number was) US dollars a barrel."

I quickly corrected myself to say "an ounce", and continued to the end of the report.

Then Mark Colvin did the back announce:

And that's our finance reporter Michael Janda, who buys his gold by the barrel.

Mark Colvin was somebody with whom we shared the stories of the day. We knew that he was not just a scribe but that he was engaged in the important issues of the day. He was instrumental in seeing the release of Australian journalist Peter Greste from an Egyptian prison, in campaigning on organ donation, in encouraging Australians to think of ourselves as being a part of the world. So much of PM is different from what you hear if you listen to, say, NPR in the United States. I lived for four years in the US and one of the joys of coming back to Australia was coming to a country where world news was not just five per cent at the end of the bulletin but could well take up the bulk of the bulletin if the things happening in the globe mattered to Australians and we needed to know about it. That was the way in which Mark Colvin operated, not a narrow parochialism but an engaged internationalism.

I loved listening to the sound of his voice, as so many did. Having worked for Michael Kirby for a year—one of the other great Australians with mellifluous voices—I have got to say there is a real pleasure in sharing ideas with somebody whose voice comes from deep within their chest and whose ideas are rich and engaged. Former ABC managing director, Mark Scott, described Mark Colvin as a Renaissance man who always had the messiest car in the ABC car park—one of those reminders that sometimes a messy desk and a messy car can be a sign of a mind that is well engaged with the world. He was generous to young journalists, he was engaged with his audience and we will miss him a great deal. Like Andrew Olle, another ABC great taken from us too young, Mark Colvin shaped our world and shaped how we think about the globe for the better. He is survived by: his wife, Michelle McKenzie; his sons Nicolas and William; his mother, Anne; and his sister, Zoe. Rest in peace, Mark Colvin. We will miss you and we are so much better for having known you.

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I join with my colleagues to pay tribute to Mark Colvin but I will talk about the contribution he made to advocacy on organ and tissue donation. We have heard many excellent stories about his fine contribution to journalism, his significant contribution to journalism over decades and decades. We have heard many wonderful stories about the power of his voice, about the depth and creaminess of that voice which we would end our days listening to. It was a wonderful voice. He was an excellent journalist. He was an experienced journalist who had travelled the world, experienced the troubles of the world and returned here to Australia.

We have heard so many stories on his contribution to journalism that I want to focus today instead of his contribution to the organ and tissue donation advocacy sector because his contribution was significant, as it was to journalism. Before I became the member for Canberra, I was an active member on the Gift of Life board, which was an organ and tissue donation awareness group that was set up here in Canberra to advocate and to raise awareness about the need for people to have a conversation with their loved ones, for people to actually sign the register and to raise awareness.

In Australia, more than 80 per cent of Australians think that organ and tissue donation is a wonderful idea. They love the idea but they do not actually sign up and they do not actually have a conversation with their family, which is absolutely vital. Having been actively involved in this sector, I understand the fact that many Australians find it very confronting to talk about organ and tissue donation because it involves talking about someone's end of life. Many Australians find it difficult to talk about death. They find it difficult to talk about end of life management plans and pain management plans. Organ and tissue donation encompasses pain management and end of life management, as well as the extraction of organs and tissue, so it can be quite confronting for a lot of Australians.

Mark Colvin was such a very strong advocate for it on a national basis. I did not share some of his views on ways to raise awareness and to lift our numbers, which pale compared to our colleagues in the US—from memory—and also Spain. Despite the fact that we have the world's best transplant health services here in the country, we still do not have the rates that we should have given the fact that, from survey results, Australians seem to support the concept of organ and tissue donation. He made a very fine contribution to raise awareness about that. It was his great commitment. It was a passion for him after he contracted the disease that we have heard about today when he visited Africa to cover the massacres in Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Congo. He said at that time:

My own immune system went a bit mad and started attacking me.

One of the results was long-term kidney damage. He was in hospital for six months and he was very ill back then. Mark Colvin began dialysis as a result of that dreadful disease that he caught in Africa. He began dialysis in 2010 after his kidney function dropped to just 10 per cent. That is a significant loss. The process of cleaning kidneys of toxins—as we know and as anyone who has been to a dialysis centre knows—is not only incredibly confronting but also incredibly time-consuming in the fact that you have to sit there for hours and hours each day to go through dialysis multiple times a week. There have been significant inroads made with portable dialysis machines where people can do it from their beds at home or as they are asleep at home, but the bulk of Australians still have to go to a dialysis centre and sit there for hours and hours each day many times a week to go through that dialysis process. It is deeply confronting. For anyone who has been to a dialysis centre, it is deeply confronting. You cannot come away without feeling absolutely broken-hearted for those people that are going through the dialysis, not just because of the pain that they are going through due to the fact that they have a particular disease but also because they are chained to this machine just to survive.

As we know, it takes about five hours each day, but there is also the preparation, the travel time and also the recovery time. He described that process as an 'emotional rollercoaster' that had him feeling landlocked. He could not travel to see his friends in Melbourne or Brisbane and could not see his ageing mother here in Canberra. He said:

There are things you'd like to do, go to Brisbane or see things like the Mona exhibition in Tassie, or go down to mum's place in the country for Christmas which I was able to do for two years running because I was able to get relief dialysis … She lives near Canberra but this Christmas there was no room in the relief dialysis place so I had to go down for literally one night, for the night of Christmas Day and drive straight back to Sydney the next day. You're completely geographically changed.

That is what dialysis means. He spoke about it, as usual, in such an eloquent and powerful way. We have heard that he finally got a kidney transplant from one of his oldest friends, Mary-Ellen Field. There was a suggestion that his two boys could donate their kidneys, but that put fear into him. I have a quote here of him saying that. So he did get the kidney from Mary-Ellen Field, and 16 days after receiving his new kidney he was saying he had never felt better in years.

As we know, we have had the tragic loss of this incredible journalist. He was a Renaissance man in many ways and a very, very strong advocate for organ and tissue donation. He had been an advocate for organ and tissue donation for many years. He said he made it his life's work to ensure everybody has a conversation about organ and tissue donation. In 2013 he was honoured for his contribution to the organ and tissue donation sector by the ACT Gift of Life Awards that were presented by the then ACT Chief Minister Katy Gallagher. With his colleagues Deb Masters and Sarah Ferguson and the rest of the Four Corners team, Mark Colvin received the Angus Fairbairn-Cody Award for media coverage for that significant contribution that was made with that very compelling, powerful and heartrending piece on Four Corners that was produced by those stellar journalists and producers.

In closing, I just want to say to everyone who is listening that this is a man who, unfortunately, due to his career, his lust for life, his lust for adventure, his lust to deliver the story to show what was actually happening in the world and to show the reality of the world to Australians, contracted a disease that caused him to require a kidney transplant. As a result he became a very strong advocate for organ and tissue donation.

In closing, I implore Australians: have the conversation with your family about your intentions to make organ and tissue donations. Families can overturn them. Even though you have the card and you have said you want to donate your organs and tissues, your families can overturn your wishes once you are gone, so you need to make it crystal clear that this is your intention. You need to sign up to the organ and tissue donation register. Most importantly, you need to have that conversation with your families so that they are clear that this is your desire when you are gone. One donor can transform 10 lives. In Mark Colvin's memory and out of respect for his mother, Anne; his wife, Michele; and his sons, Nicolas and William, I do implore Australians to donate life. Vale Mark Colvin.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to pay tribute to Mark Colvin, who was a constituent of mine who lived in Lilyfield in the inner west of Sydney. Of all the tributes I read after the passing last month of Mark, I was most touched by a piece written by one of his colleagues, Stephen McDonnell, the ABC's former China correspondent. Stephen wrote:

You would walk out of the office after PM had gone to air, and there he would be sitting next to a young reporter going through their story.

Stephen wrote that Mark could be overheard going through the reporter's copy line by line. He would say:

"You could've flipped the piece around; what about this question instead? You've buried this information; here you could be a bit cheeky."

This description of Mark as a concerned mentor speaks volumes for the man. Journalists are a bit like politicians; it is a very competitive business. They are all chasing stories and always aiming to be first. Yet here was one of the best-known journalists in the country, finished a hectic work day but still happy to make time to share the benefit of his experience with a young journalist. This does not surprise me. He was indeed a very generous man.

He was born in the UK in 1952. He moved to Australia aged 21 after studying literature at Oxford. He was certainly well read, and indeed, as others have said, he was a Renaissance man. He fell into journalism after stint as a builder's labourer. In his early years he worked as a cub reporter on Double J. But his talent was quickly recognised. He was promoted to the ABC's London bureau before he had turned 30. He worked in London and around the world reporting on all the iconic ABC programs, including AM, PM and Four Corners. He was the first host of The World Today when it began back in 1984.

Of course, in his later years Australians knew him as the host of PM. So many of us would end our day driving home or on public transport listening to that very recognisable voice. Throughout the 1980s he covered the biggest stories of his time, including the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland and the break-up of the former Soviet Union.

When he was stationed in Africa in 1984 he picked up a rare virus while covering the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda. The illness ended his career as a foreign correspondent and left him with health problems that continued for the rest of his life. Others have commented about his now famous kidney transplant, which is the subject of a play, titled Mark Colvin's Kidney that is running, and will continue to run.

Mark was also someone who refused to look back. He was a keen music fan and, unlike many people as they get older, he moved with the times, keeping up with the musical trends of the day. With the same spirit he embraced social media. He was a keen Twitter user and described himself in his profile as:

Lifetime Lance-Corporal in the Awkward Squad.

So many people who use Twitter use it to attack others; Mark used it to pass on interesting information or to praise others, consistent with his generosity.

Another close friend of Mark's was the former head of the Australian Security Intelligence Service, Nick Warner. He commented on Mark's passing:

He never took sides, he was interested in presenting the facts, not pushing a particular line.

Indeed, Mark Colvin was universally renowned for being fair, which for a journalist is the gold standard in career achievement.

Mark died on 19 May. I express my condolences to his family, including his partner, Michelle McKenzie, who was a Leichhardt councillor on the former Leichhardt Council in my electorate in Leichhardt, and his sons, Nicholas and William. Vale Mark Colvin.

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to pay tribute to a giant of journalism Mark Colvin. He was one of Australia's most respected journalists. He was one of the ABC's most prominent and esteemed writers. His voice was familiar to people right across Australia as the voice of ABC radio current affairs program, PM. He had a brilliant mind, which was perfectly suited to analysing international affairs that were often complex and not always the easiest stories to write.

Throughout his life Mark managed to capture the interest of, and was cherished by, his Australian audience. His early stories as a foreign correspondent in Africa were groundbreaking for Australian journalism. His dedication to the role took him into the heart of Africa to cover famine and disease, but also hope and strength in the face of adversity. His dedication to the profession had a personal toll as well. Following the Rwandan genocide, while covering the destitution that was rampant throughout the refugee camps in Zaire, he was diagnosed with a rare inflammation of the blood vessels. Throughout his experiences he raised the profile of the very worthy cause of organ donation.

Mark was respected for his passion and his journalistic vigour. He had a wealth of knowledge on international affairs and policy. He would get the heart of every story. He was a serious journalist and he would demand an audience's attention for every story. Mark would have excelled in any field of endeavour and at any media outlet, but he chose journalism and he chose the ABC. I firmly believe that that choice took his career to the next level. We should all be thankful that he turned his hand to public interest journalism with our public national broadcaster. He was never pompous or self promoting. He was a revered voice of journalism. Over many years Mark Colvin became a household name and a name that was raised in conversation right across the nation. Mark Colvin exemplified substantive journalism in his time as a foreign correspondent and in his 20 years presenting PM. In his own words, Mark noted:

I love PM because it has the space to explore a wide range of the day's issues in more details and with more depth than the soundbite sausage-machine.

His professionalism and journalistic prowess were recognised not only by the public, but by scores of other journalists. His integrity shone through in the stories he covered. He is an example of a reminder of the importance of public interest journalism in uncovering stories that need to be told and in telling stories that Australians need to hear.

I pay tribute to Mark Colvin for his vast contribution to Australian journalism spanning more than four decades. When Mark Colvin spoke, Australia listened. We are thankful for his service to Australian journalism and our society as a whole. Vale Mark Colvin.