Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to pay tribute to two Canberrans who recently passed away: Ann Harding and Radovan Leovic. Ann Harding founded NATSEM, the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, in 1993—over a fish-and-chip shop. She later settled into an $11 million state-of-the-art building on campus, and her legacy lives on in the name of the Ann Harding Conference Centre. Ann worked on microsimulation and was made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 1996 and the inaugural president and co-founder of the International Microsimulation Association. She served as the president of the ACT branch of the Economic Society of Australia and authored or co-authored over 300 books, chapters, articles, papers and commissioned reports.

NATSEM did critical work in policy. Ann was constantly serving on academic and government boards, including the Treasury and the departments of social security, health, housing, and community services. I remember meeting Ann for the first time in the 1998-99 discussions over the introduction of a goods and services tax. I was then working for the late Senator Peter Cook. As I brought her upstairs for the hearings she said to me, 'You know, you Labor people will come to like this tax, because it'll allow you to spend what you need on health and education.' Ann always had a ready wit and a generosity of spirit and helped many in NATSEM, including yourself, Deputy Speaker Payne. She was generous to me as a young economist, too.

Radovan Leovic was born in Yugoslavia in 1927. He yearned to escape and as a teenager decided that if only he could be selected to represent Yugoslavia in the European Games he'd be able to get out. But he wasn't quite good enough, so he did something else. He got hold of a national team uniform, travelled to the north of the country, where the games were held and, wearing a national uniform, cycled with the peloton over the border, where he escaped and ultimately made his way as a refugee to Australia.

He became a regular in the Canberra triathlon scene, receiving the Legend of the Sport Award from Triathlon ACT just last year, at the age of 95. As recently as 2018 he was running, cycling or swimming every day and said he was 'all the time warm and all the time ready to race'. My friend Alex Gosman said of Rad: 'I can remember Rad always being one of the last to leave after a race as he stayed around to help pack up. Rad always gave 100 per cent, never complained, and had a smile and a hello for everyone.' Triathlon is an extraordinarily competitive sport, but triathletes are generous to one another, and Rad was the epitome of a sport that combines endurance and generosity to fellow competitors.