Kay Patterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with a very heavy heart that I rise today to speak about my friend and colleague Jeannie Ferris. I hope I can get through it. Others have spoken about her early life, her education, her career as a journalist, her passionate interest in agripolitics, her roles in the CSIRO and the NFF and her work as an adviser for state and federal members of parliament, so I will not go over all of those again. Jeannie came to this place with a wealth of life experiences and a range of skills that I would hope many others would come to this place with, and she used every one of those fully. If it was about transport, Jeannie was there. If it was about rural issues, Jeannie was there. If it was about Indigenous affairs, particularly Indigenous women, Jeannie was there.

When I was shadow minister for women’s affairs, Jeannie became interested in that area and got involved. When I became minister for women’s issues, Jeannie was there backing me up, running meetings and organising various groups to give me information about particular issues, particularly with respect to Indigenous women. As has been mentioned, Jeannie took a particular interest in youth suicide and, more latterly, in gynaecological and women’s reproductive issues. I was very glad Jeannie was on my side on the stem cell bill. I needed every skerrick of her skill. I know that some people in here disagreed with her, but she conducted herself in that debate with great aplomb and with a great understanding that other people felt very strongly in other ways. It was Jeannie’s calmness and control that helped that debate to be carried out in the best manner possible given the difficult circumstances everyone faced in that debate. She set a tremendous example.

I remember bumping into Jeannie in a shop in Sydney. She was with a very good friend of hers, Lisa, and they were on a shopping spree. Jeannie was passionate about shopping sprees. Jeannie caused me to do a lot of damage to my Visa card that Saturday. Afterwards, we were a bit tired and we sat and had lunch. The next day—I think it was a Monday—Jeannie rang me and said, ‘I’ve got an awful cold. How are you?’ I said, ‘I’m so sick, I’m not going to China.’ So Jeannie and I texted each other for two weeks, detailing the progress of our flu. Jeannie thought it was the flu, but that was the beginning of Jeannie’s feeling unwell. I recovered from that flu. I remember seeing Jeannie here one night walking from the dining room on the second floor and she was holding onto the wall. I said, ‘Jeannie, you need to go home,’ and she said, ‘No, the Senate hasn’t risen yet.’ That was the depth of her dedication to this place. I would have gone down to the whip and asked for leave, but she was the whip and she was still here.

It was, I think, Alan Eggleston who encouraged her to seek further medical help. It was due to her determination in insisting on having a CAT scan that that insidious and, in fact, terminal tumour was discovered. She used the knowledge and understanding of how she felt to say to other women that they needed to listen to their own bodies. Jeannie took this adversity and turned it into a triumph—and there was no greater triumph than when she got the inquiry into gynaecological cancer in Australia up. I remember how pleased she was to get up and speak when the Gynaecological Cancer Centre was announced. I hope that all of us, on both sides of the chamber, will be pushing to ensure that that is just the beginning, not the end—that Jeannie’s challenge to us will be to continue fighting for the causes she believed in.

Jeannie set herself goals. She said that she would be back in the Senate after her chemotherapy in December-January 2005-06; that she wanted to be back here for the beginning of February. Jeannie also set herself the goal to take off her wig on the first day of September. Jeannie always called me ‘Patto’, though I think she may have called me ‘Kay’ on one occasion when I missed a division. She rang up and said, ‘Kay, I want to see you,’ and I trembled. I got the same treatment as everybody else received for missing a division, and I duly apologised and was forgiven. As people have mentioned, Jeannie was a friend but she was also firm with us. She could divide that line when she needed to. Senator George Campbell mentioned Jeannie wagging and pointing her finger. I was on the end of her finger one time when she pointed at me and said, ‘Don’t do it again!’

The thing that humbles me is Jeannie’s incredible courage in the face of enormous adversity and enormous difficulty. Jeannie sat through those hearings of the Senate committee inquiring into gynaecological cancers and she heard about what her future would more than likely be, and yet she stuck it out. I am not sure I would have had the courage to do that; in fact, I know I would not have. The Prime Minister asked Jeannie to go to Iraq. As people have said, she had a deep interest in rural issues. She had not long got over her chemotherapy treatment, and I said to her, ‘Don’t go Jeannie; it is madness.’ I used every excuse I could come up with for her not to go—‘You would be on planes where people have got germs’—but it was a waste of time. Jeannie had been asked by the Prime Minister and she felt it was her duty to go, and so she went. I will always remember those photos of Jeannie getting off the Hercules in Baghdad. I asked her, ‘Weren’t you scared?’ She said, ‘No, it was nothing compared with what I have just faced’—and she was right. That was Jeannie: there in the middle of a war zone doing her duty.

Jeannie also went on a study tour late last year. When I was in San Francisco in March I met some of the people she met there. They said: ‘We were so impressed with Jeannie that we asked her to come and speak at a stem cell conference in San Francisco.’ Jeannie asked me if I would go; she used the excuse that she had something else to do in the Northern Territory, but I suspected she thought that it would be best if I went for a whole lot of reasons. I went and gave that speech to an audience of about 400 people. The reason she wanted me to go was because she knew there would be a lot of investors at the meeting, and it would have an impact on Australia and encourage people to invest in Australia. So I went—a little reluctantly as I was not particularly keen to go on a plane. I asked her if I could have some leave and she said, ‘No, you get back here on time.’ At the conference, a number of people talked to me about how impressed they were with Jeannie on that visit, and why they had invited her. I felt it was important that I went and I realised that she thought that it was important too. There has since been significant interest from some of those people about investing in Australia. Jeannie was all the time working at doing the best and at how we could put Australia at the forefront in as many areas as possible. She had a global view, she had a local view and she had a very personal view as well. She set us an enormous example. I came back and reported to her about the stem cell meeting and she said, ‘Good on you, Patto, you should have gone.’ I do not think anyone will ever call me ‘Patto’ in the same way.

I remember too the last phone call I had from her when she was in hospital. She finished it by saying, ‘Just imagine I am putting my arms out and giving you a hug.’ I said, ‘A virtual hug’, and she said, ‘No, a real one.’ That was a very special hug.

Jeannie loved shopping; she had an absolute passion for scarves. I remember once, when I was a minister and I was going to New York, I was commissioned to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to find one with roses on it, because she had not bought one when she was there. So I traipsed off in the very few minutes I had to go to the museum and I came back with trepidation hoping I had bought the right one. Fortunately, I had.

She loved being with friends, and she loved life and lived it to the full. We talked about some of the incidental things in life—but that is what made Jeannie. She was a person who had a lot of energy, she exuded friendship, she exuded love and she exuded a love of life. It is a tragedy that she has been taken from us so soon.

There was the serious Jeannie—when you had not turned up for a division—and there was the Jeannie who was passionate about the issues that concerned her. When she was passionate about a rural issue, or a medical/social issue or an economic issue, she had a breadth and a depth that many of us wish we could have. Others will say other things about Jeannie; we cannot cover everything in a very short time.

I want to take this opportunity to extend my condolences and deepest sympathy to her family and friends. Jeannie’s compassion and care and concern extended well beyond her immediate family. There are many whose futures have been changed for the better because of her personal sacrifices, both emotional and financial. To Robbie and Jeremy, losing one parent prematurely is an absolute tragedy but to lose both your mother and your father in the same week is to be delivered an almost unbearable blow. She talked about the boys often. They should be very proud of her. Today will put an indelible imprint on their minds of what a wonderful person they had as a mother. I hope that the comments made today help them to appreciate that even more, and to appreciate just how much she was valued as a colleague and friend.

To Pam, her sister in New Zealand—I know that when she went to New Zealand, it was a time of respite, a time of joy and a time of renewing her relationship with her sister—I extend my deepest sympathy.

This job is a demanding one. We spend a lot of time with our colleagues—more time than sometimes we choose to spend, and more time than we would spend with colleagues in a normal job. But we also spend more time with our staff than you would normally spend. Often those staff become lifelong friends. Jeannie has had some very loyal and dedicated staff over the years. Today I want to acknowledge the loyalty and love extended to her by Robin, Bronte, Simon, Vicky and, more recently, Angela. They extended to her the love and loyalty that she gave to them. I know how much she appreciated all that they did for her. Sometimes friendships are almost as deep as families. I know that Lisa—her very dear friend who went on that shopping spree with us when we bumped into each other in Sydney—was there with Jeannie in some of the darkest hours. She shared those hours with her; and it is not always easy to confront with somebody their deepest concerns and their deepest anxieties. To Lisa, thank you for all that you did for Jeannie.

She was a magnificent mum, she was a fantastic friend, she was a courageous colleague and she was a sensational South Australian senator. She was fair and she lived her life to the full and with flair. She said to me once, ‘You have got to live your life, Kay, with no regrets.’ No regrets: that was her policy. Iraq was an example of that no regrets policy. I would have caved in—I would not have gone. But no, Jeannie was going to have no regrets. As I said, she lived it to the full with no regrets. But we do, however, have one regret, and I am sure I can say that on behalf of every senator in this chamber: we regret that we have lost a wonderful colleague and a very good friend.