Alison Byrnes (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I pay my respects to the honourable Stewart West, who passed away on 29 March 2023. I also would like to acknowledge Stewart's contribution to the Australian parliament and our community. Stewart's wife, Mary Paris, and his family were in the gallery on Tuesday when the Prime Minister paid tribute to his friend Stewart West. Can I also make special mention of Stewart's sister, Shirley, who also lives in Wollongong.

Almost a year ago, I had the privilege to be elected as the Labor member for the Illawarra seat of Cunningham. I love representing our area in the Commonwealth parliament. I am also a successor to Stewart West, who was member for Cunningham from 1977 to 1993. Stewie's love of politics and the Labor Party never diminished. Despite his deteriorating health, Stewart stayed up to watch his good friend Anthony Albanese claim victory on election night nearly one year ago. The broader community knows Stewart as a minister in the Hawke government, but first I would like to talk about him as a local resident and as the member for Cunningham.

Stewart West was born in Forbes, New South Wales, on 31 March 1934. He lived in Tubbul near Young until the family moved to Windang near Lake Illawarra. Stewart left school early, at 15 or 16, and began working at a bank in Nowra. An early sign to Stewart's future occurred at the bank. As Stewart and the bank manager watched the May Day march, the manager said, 'Some day, you'll be leading that march, Stewart.' How true.

In 1953 Stewart began working on the wharves at Port Kembla, the same day as his father, John. Outside his family, Stewart's lifetime passions were the trade union movement, particularly the Waterside Workers Federation, and the Australian Labor Party. Between 1972 and 1977, Stewart was president of the Waterside Workers Federation, Port Kembla branch. As well, he was on the ALP federal electorate council for Cunningham between 1968 and 1977 and was campaign manager for the Hon. Rex Connor from 1966 to 1975.

Stewart's passion for all working families and his local community shone like a beacon throughout his parliamentary career right from the start. Stewart was elected in a by-election on 15 October 1977. This followed the sudden death of long-time member for Cunningham and Whitlam government minister, Rex Connor. In his first speech to parliament as a new MP on 25 October 1977, Stewart focused on the cancer of national unemployment and particularly unemployment in the electorate of Cunningham. Soon after Stewart entered parliament, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser called a federal election for 10 December 1977. Stewart was re-elected in 1977, 1980, 1983, 1984, 1987, 1990 and retired at the 1993 election. In the years leading up to Labor's victory in 1983, Stewart West served as opposition spokesperson on Aboriginal affairs, on environment and conservation, and on finance and trade.

Stewart's role as shadow minister for environment and conservation was at the dawning of the modern age of awareness of the value of the environment and of the threats to its future. It was during this period that federal Labor announced its support for saving the Franklin River in Tasmania and Kakadu in the Northern Territory. Stewart was a lead author of those policies at the 1982 ALP national conference, which were then taken to the 1983 election. Those policies were implemented soon after the Hawke government came to office. When the Hawke Labor government came to office in 1983, Stewart became a member of cabinet and Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs.

These were exciting and somewhat turbulent times. One issue concerned uranium mining in Australia and uranium exports. As uranium was debated again during the first year of the Hawke government, both about the three-mines policy and a proposal to export uranium to France, Stewart West, described by McIntyre and Faulkner, as 'the only left-wing member of the first Hawke cabinet', resigned from cabinet because he could not support the cabinet's decision on these issues. Stewart remained Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs until the end of 1984. In the meantime he rejoined cabinet in April 1984. Stewart's ministerial roles continued through to 1990. During that period Stewart remained in cabinet as Minister for Housing and Construction from late 1984 to mid-1987 and then as Minister for Administrative Services from mid-1987 until April 1990. Working with Stewart through this journey were a great team: Idalina Guerreiro, Michael Samaras and Joan White.

I have talked to Mary about Stewart and her life together. All I hear in her voice is love. Mary and Stewart first met in September 1972 and married in December 1972. As I have said, it's a love story. The memories of Stewart's children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are all about his unquestioning love and support. They all have their own stories about his support and encouragement for them in all aspects of life. I did recognise one other characteristic of Stewart that all of his family fondly recall: Stewart's love of ice cream. They are family stories.

In 2015, Stewart was diagnosed with the early signs of dementia. The dementia progressed and began to dominate Stewart's life. Mary and Stewart moved from their family home in Figtree to Wollongong. Supported by their family and support services, interrupted by a stay in hospital, Stewart spent his final days in their apartment surrounded by love. Dementia denied him the power of speech, but he did have moments when he was lucid. I'm not breaking confidences, but Mary told me a lovely story from late last year. When Mary went to say good morning he said, 'I love you, Mary.' A couple of weeks later he said, 'There she is.' The following week he said, 'You are beautiful.' Then, in classic Stewart style, a couple of days later he said, 'You again.' Mary told me the other day that what she misses most about Stewart is his beautiful smile and blue eyes, along with his renditions of 'You Are My Sunshine' and 'Solidarity Forever'.

I have talked about Stewart West's passion for all working families and his local community. I will finish with words from the then Prime Minister, Paul Keating, to the House of Representatives on 17 December 1992, the last sitting day before the 1993 federal election, at which Stewart was retiring:

My colleague Stewart West was a member of the Cabinet with me …

…   …   …   

He more than distinguished himself … He comes from a working class area, the area of Wollongong, and he has never done or said a thing which he thought or knew was injurious to the people he represented, only always speaking in their favour.

I am proud to follow in the footsteps of Stewart West, the Labor member for Cunningham from 1977 to 1993, and I have truly valued both his and Mary's friendship over the years. Rest in peace, Stewie.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

JONES (—) (): It is my great delight in what is otherwise a sad moment in this parliament to follow the wonderful words of my friend and comrade the member for Cunningham in her very personal and beautiful contribution to this debate.

Stewie West was a comrade, a leader, a trade unionist and a friend. I actually knew of Stewart West before I knew him personally. Like any of us who grew up in the Illawarra, of a morning I'd tune into what was then Radio 2WL—it was AM, Mr Deputy Speaker. You'd turn the radio on in the morning and invariably hear the voices of Labor luminaries, whether it was Nando Lelli, Merv Nixon, Rex Connor or Stewart West. They were the names you heard issuing statements on behalf of the Labor movement—the Labor Party or the trade union movement. It was a daily occurrence, and you grew up with it in the same way that you grew up with Weet-Bix and milk—it was just a part of the culture of growing up in the region. As I entered my teen years, instead of knowing of Stewart I enjoyed the benefit of knowing him, and I campaigned for him and other Labor Party people as I grew up in the Illawarra. He was a giant of the region and a giant of the Labor movement.

Stewart, as the member for Cunningham said, spent most of his life in the service of the working people, in particular the people of the Illawarra. I'm delighted that his wife, Mary, and his daughter, Glenda, could be here in parliament today, and earlier this week as the Prime Minister moved a very moving personal tribute to him. Through the battles of the sixties and seventies he was there as the president of the Waterside Workers Union at Port Kembla. He was president of the Labor Party's Cunningham FEC and the campaign manager for the very good Rex Connor. When Rex died of a heart attack in August 1977, Stewart was the obvious successor. He'd been his campaign manager and he had strong support inside the branches. It was both a unique and an agonising way to end up in parliament—the honour of his election cut across by the very personal grief he felt at his good friend passing away in such shocking circumstances.

Reading Stewart's first speech, all the way back then in October 1977, it is clear that he went to Canberra to do things, not just to fill a seat. He went there to fight—fight for his principles, fight for his people, fight for his beliefs. His language was colourful and combative, which surprised nobody who knew him. It was all straight talk, delivered with a punch. His sentiments, even all these years later, rise off the page. We can all hear him speaking as we read those words. He set out the challenges facing his electorate and the broader Illawarra region of the time: the value of the steel industry—in particular, the importance of the Port Kembla steelworks to the region and to the Australian economy. I can hear myself nearly 30 years later delivering similar speeches on similar subject matter. Within a few paragraphs he was already on the attack, going after the Fraser government for 'promoting industrial troubles as an issue on which to hang an early election' and urging them 'to get down to the job of resuscitating the Australian economy'. In the 16 years that he served in this place, he kept up that fight.

What also jumps out from those days is that many of the fights that he had on behalf of the Illawarra region are fights which the member for Cunningham and I continue to this day. He said back in 1977 that the Illawarra 'should be a great centre for training our youth in the skilled trades we will require in the future'—true then; true today. It's one of the biggest tasks that the member for Cunningham and I face every day in this place. We do so on the shoulders of giants, the people who came before us.

You're a member, Deputy Speaker Wilkie, who represents the great island state of Tasmania. I know you're from down south, and I know you're passionate about everything in the island state of Tasmania. Whether you're a visitor to Tasmania, as many hundreds of thousands of mainlanders and overseas tourists are, or whether you're a native of that state, you know about the famous Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park. Visitors to that state today go walking through the national park and they stare up at those majestic trees, the Huon pines that predate European and, often, human settlement in the area. It's hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, and thousands of thousands of years in some of the trees. Some of them predate the birth of Christ. They're absolutely magnificent. If the thylacine truly does still exist today, it'll be somewhere there. What most people don't know is that we can still do that because of the work of Stewart West.

It was in the lead-up to the 1983 election. Stewart West was the shadow minister for the environment. He was passionate about the Gordon-below-Franklin region, he was passionate about Kakadu and he was passionate about Daintree. It was Stewart who wrote into the platform of the Labor Party as we approached that election that a Hawke government, if elected, would prevent the Gordon-below-Franklin dam. We succeeded in government, and that policy was enacted when the Hawke Labor government was elected. Stewart wasn't the minister when we came into parliament, but he was the bloke who made certain that that occurred. As it is so often with us in this place, there's not a name plaque that exists for some of our greatest achievements, but those who know know, and I hope those who read these tributes afterwards will remember the tremendous service that Stewie had and the things that he leaves behind.

He served as the Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. Then, as now, these matters were often very contentious. He served as the Minister for Housing and Construction. Then, as now, he just wanted to build more stuff. He thought the Commonwealth had a role in building stuff, and he did that as the minister. As I said earlier today in my condolence speech for the late John Kerin, another great man from my area who served in that magnificent government, the source of the strength of that government was the strength of its caucus and the principle, intelligence and drive of its ministers, and Stewart was one of them. It was a mark of his character that he was willing to resign from cabinet on a matter of principle within the first year of the new government. Despite the risks to his career and the personal pain that it caused him, he put principle before position. With the same sense of principle that took him into cabinet, out of it and back in again, he continued his push for good things, through his beliefs and his principles, in parliament and when he left.

As the member for Cunningham mentioned in her contribution, in Stewart's later years dementia got hold of him. It was one of the great honours of my life—I don't know how conscious he was of what was going on at the time; I suspect he was very lucid at the time—to present to Stewart when his was awarded life membership of the Labor Party. The then Labor Party leader, Luke Foley, came down to Wollongong for the event, and we were able to present him with his life membership. He was a good mate, a good comrade and a wonderful human being. Vale, Stewart West.

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Assistant Treasurer and note that, indeed, no one has proven that the Tasmanian tiger does not exist. Indeed, it may well be found there in those deep ravines.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I feel very privileged to rise to make some brief remarks in this important condolence debate, following those made by the Prime Minister and my friends the member for Cunningham and the member for Whitlam. Mine will be a less personal contribution. I never met Stewart West, but I hope that it is of interest to some that I recognise the wider significance of his contribution. I think his is a life and career that deserves to be recognised in this place and for that recognition to go to the totality of his contribution.

When I think of Stewart West's contribution, he can only be described as a giant of the labour movement. He is a person who made an extraordinary contribution as a unionist, an activist, a local representative in this place and, of course, a minister. Notably, he is someone whose involvement in politics can be characterised only by an unerring adherence to principle, but not abstract principle—a sense of principle that was anchored in the concrete in being true to one's values whilst ensuring that those of us who are in this place use every minute we are here to make a difference.

Stewart West was also the only member from the left of the Labor Party to be a member of Hawke's first cabinet. That is something that I think is very significant in our political history, and his role has been very significant in the evolution of our politics since then. That is something that has been underrecognised in our party, as well as more broadly. Also underrecognised, and my good friend the member for Whitlam touched on this, is the fact that it is well known that Stewart West did a quite extraordinary thing. He resigned from the ministry. He resigned from the cabinet. And he did so by choice, over a matter of principle. But he did that and subsequently returned. That says something both about his standing with the Prime Minister and his colleagues, and, again, about his commitment not to principles in the abstract but to the responsibility of those of us who have the power to act for good to act for good, and he continued to do so.

Stewart West was the minister for immigration. He had a slightly different title than mine but very similar responsibilities, again, in circumstances that can be described only as challenging. The way he went about them is a template. His example of principle and pragmatism is something that I hope to emulate to some degree, because I don't think I will live up to his example. His lifelong concern for refugees is also something that I find inspirational. It was a concern that he gave expression to as a minister and through every moment of his time in active politics and, indeed, beyond it, as my friends from the Illawarra are better placed to attest than me.

His contribution more broadly in his other portfolios, but perhaps most significantly in terms of his role within the Labor Party and as the shadow minister for immigration, might be his most enduring public legacy. The decision to prevent the damming of the Gordon below Franklin is fundamental in its impact not only on the great state of Tasmania but also on our country's relationship with our precious and beautiful natural environment. It also, ultimately, radically reshaped the relationship between the Commonwealth and the states. It's hard to think of a more significant individual decision than the decision the Australian Labor Party made in that platform to that critically important act, and I think that is something that is worth restating and reflecting on.

Ultimately, it is true that if Stewart West's life was defined by contributions and achievements, it would have been a great life of service. However, for some of the reasons I've outlined, I think his contribution is greater than that by the power of the example he set about the power of collective action, the power of the union, the power of the great movement that I'm proud to be a member of, and the power of all of us in this place to make a difference in our communities and to our country.

My thoughts are with all those who knew him and loved him, and particularly his family. Vale.

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the minister. I understand it is the wish of honourable members to signify at this stage their respect and sympathy by rising in their places, and I ask all present to do so.

Honourable members having stood in their places—

I thank the Federation Chamber.

Alison Byrnes (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That further proceedings be conducted in the House.

Question agreed to.