Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Schools) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was my very great pleasure to have known Barney Cooney almost all my adult life, and it is a privilege to be able to say a few words in tribute to him and to commemorate him in this place, in a building that he loved and contributed so much to. I also want to pay tribute to all of his family—his wife, Lillian, and all of their children, whom I've had a chance to come across in various capacities. I'm sure this is a difficult time for them and I hope the words that have been spoken already about Barney will bring them some comfort and perhaps the occasional smile as well. I was particularly pleased to be here for the contribution of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the member for Sydney, who spoke typically with charm, insight and real feeling about Barney and captured the man as I knew him too.

Barney Cooney was a barrister and, in that, made a great contribution, building on the foundations of his views and his sense of how the world should be: a very deep Catholic faith, married to a deep belief in social justice and a membership of the Socialist Left—an unusual combination, in my experience, but one that characterised all of his contributions in his work and public life. As a barrister, he did much, but I think most importantly he pulled together the review that founded Victoria's no-fault workers compensation scheme, a scheme of enormous importance to millions.

Beyond his time at the bar, he was elected to Australia's Senate, where he served for 17 years. He brought to the Senate all of his personal qualities and an understanding of the importance of that chamber to this parliament and to our nation, with his passion for human rights, his love of detail and the law, and his absolute commitment not only to his values in politics but to finding ways to express them that brought people together regardless of their philosophical or ideological differences. It was always striking to me how people of diametrically opposed views could love Barney as much as those of us who were closer to him on the political spectrum. I think that's a great tribute to anyone in this place—to have those friendships and that appreciation across the aisle.

He was characterised by three qualities: generosity, decency and compassion. His decency shone through in the way he treated everyone. The member for Sydney made clear that, when she changed her status in this place from a staffer to a member of the House of Representatives, he spoke to her in exactly the same way. I think that is a beautiful shorthand for how he saw people as fundamentally equal. He was, though, deeply compassionate and always looking for those who needed help to find a voice or to find their path through life.

Most of all, I found Barney to be generous. Many of us on this side of the House, on this side of politics, talk about our commitment to collectivism; few practice it in the way that Barney Cooney did, with a profound interest in and respect for the people around them and a desire to always bring them along. I am one of many—and my great friend the member for Bruce may also touch on this—who know that the Victorian Labor Party today is a much better place for Barney Cooney's generosity. There's a generation of people in this place, and in Victoria's parliament, who are there because of his work in the seventies, with people like John Cain, to open up our party and his work through his time in formal politics and, more particularly, after it. They share the benefit of his experience, wisdom, empathy and understanding of the world as it is and his deep belief in the world as it should be.

Barney Cooney was kind enough to move my admission as a lawyer. It's pretty clear I didn't reach the heights he did in that profession. I'm reasonably confident I won't share the appreciation around the parliament that he enjoyed. It was a great honour for me to have him take that step with me in my professional career. It echoes all the steps he led me through politically. I also had the honour, briefly, of working for him. Again, he benefited much less from that arrangement than I did; I am very pleased to put that on the record. There are probably many others who would say exactly the same, the one exception being our mutual great friend, Lidia Argondizzo, former member of the Legislative Council for Victoria, who I know will be feeling his absence greatly.

So too will Lindsay Tanner, the former member for Melbourne, who shared an office and much more with Barney, going back a very long time. I'm sure that if Lindsay was still in this place, he would be first to pay tribute to his dear friend. I know that Senator Carr, in the other place, will be feeling this deeply too, as well as the member for Bruce and the members for Jagajaga and Calwell especially. Another very close friend of mine, Jill Hennessy, the member for Altona and Victoria's Attorney-General, will be deeply affected but a great comfort to the Cooney family. Right across the party that I love, Barney Cooney spread his love. He gave so much to so many. He continued his struggle, and his inquisitive nature, to always find a better path, right to the very end. I will cherish all the time I spent with him but think most often of the last time. Like many others, I'm sure, I wish that I'd visited him more often near the end and told him directly how much he meant to me. Vale, Barney.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have no great words of eloquence—having just seen that this debate was scheduled, I have had only a moment to scribble a few reflections—but I do want to do Barney and his family the honour of recording in the Hansard a few words of appreciation for his life and his service, knowing that these things get passed on. Having listened to the member for Scullin, I was struck by how many of the words he used are exactly the same as the notes that I scribbled; we knew the same man. It is with great sadness that those in the Labor family, and particularly those who knew Barney and worked with him in so many different phases of his life, heard of his passing. I worked casually for Barney for a short time, and I think it's fair to say that he benefited even less from my service than from yours back then, given the nature of what was going on.

As young, bright-eyed, overly active activists, we only had to meet Barney to see immediately his decency, his humanity and his extreme good manners. Barney was one of those people who would never talk over anyone. His generosity meant that he was never too busy. His door was always open. He was never too busy, no matter what he was dealing with, to have a word with young Labor people—who were trashing his office and unwashing the dishes and all the rest of it. His great compassion was overwhelmingly clear.

When I was a staffer from 1995 to 2000 in this place for Alan Griffin, Barney was always held up as the archetypal serious senator, if you like, someone who relished his role as a parliamentarian and took it very, very seriously. If you wanted a piece of policy work done and done thoroughly but understood the risk that you might not get the answer you were hoping for, because Barney would follow the evidence and apply his values to whatever came before him, then you knew to take it to Barney or one of his committees. As I think has been said by others who worked more closely with him, at times he could be frustrating, and furiously so, because of his adherence to process and his determination to follow his values and speak out, even against his own party, when he felt moved to do so.

My predecessor spoke in his valedictory of different types of people who are called to serve in this place: the parliamentarian and the politician. Some are both, and some are one or the other. I think Barney overwhelmingly was a parliamentarian, someone here for service, to legislate, to evaluate, to pass good laws and to advocate for and represent the people he felt he was here to represent.

I'll just put a personal note there that I was also very good mates with Justin Cooney, his son, at university. He is a few years older than me—although he seemed many years older than me, now I'm not so sure, as the years pass! I texted Justin when I heard of his father's passing, and he texted back not long after with a wry reflection. He knew exactly what was on my mind. He said, 'Yes, I'm just glad that he died without ever knowing what we all got up to at his beach house at Anglesea,' which he was so generous as to share with hordes of young Labor people. It was, 'Yeah, there'll only be three of three of us,' and 25 descended on the house. He was generous in that way.

As has been said, he brought to his role as a senator a lifetime already of service and commitment to social justice, to unions, to collectivism, to human rights and to the Labor Party. He was 50 years old when he was elected, so he was already mature in his career, and it certainly wasn't a pay rise for him. He did it out of a sense of service.

Barney also was a deeply religious man—deeply, deeply religious—and not always associated with the ratbag left wing of the Labor Party. I'm not a religious person, and at times I have worried about, if you like, the muscular religiosity in our public sphere. I don't mean people expressing their values but those taking that one step further by forcing them on others or expecting others to live by their particular set of values or beliefs. But Barney's convictions were deep and personal, probably more so than those of people who I think at times preach these things to others. His religious convictions certainly shaped his values and how he lived his life without ever preaching to others or expecting others to conform to his way of being in the world and certainly informed his Labor values.

I just want to read into the Hansard, in closing, from a beautiful press release—a statement, really—put out by Senator Kim Carr, his very dear friend of many years. I want to read two quotes. Firstly, on Barney's attitude to power, I'll just quote from Kim's release for the Hansard:

In his first speech, Barney turned Lord Acton's famous dictum "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" on its head: if power corrupts, he said, "lack of power corrodes absolutely". Those in Australia who lacked power "to give at least minimum expression to their needs" included indigenous people, the unemployed and non-English-speaking migrants, especially women. "The more they can be effectively equipped with power", Barney said, "the more likely it is that their social distress will be abated and the community as a whole benefit".

From that fundamental belief, he never wavered in his 17 years of service in the Senate, which he was called to, he felt, as 'the chamber best equipped to check abuses of power'.

I'm told that those of his colleagues, Labor, Liberal or otherwise, who came before his committees always knew that he had a set of values that were applied ruthlessly and consistently to legislation before him. But—to close—Barney was also held up on both sides of the chamber because of his courtesy, which he displayed when expressing his own views and responding to criticism. He wrote:

Courtesy and grace are forever needed in debate. A civil society cannot be at its best unless constituents treat each other civilly.

In remembering Barney for his love of life, his love of family, his love of Labor and, indeed, his love of humanity, I'll forever remember those twinkling eyes that he had when he sat down to listen to whatever mad scheme or idea you'd come up with, as he did so patiently and graciously. Vale Barney.