Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Primary Industries, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be able to make a contribution to this debate. I started my current term on the predecessor to the current Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport back in about 1997. I have probably spent more time on that committee with Jeannie Ferris than anyone else currently in this place. As a result, it is quite natural that my recollections of Jeannie centre around her role on that committee and on the issues that the committee touched. I did not have the privilege of being involved in some of the other very important issues that Jeannie pursued through other committees in this place. We have all been enriched with a recollection of her contribution to those other very important issues, some of very special personal importance to Jeannie in the latter part of her time in this place.

I remember Jeannie as a very competent senator and a very efficient whip. She did have some problems with her colleagues but all whips do; as a former whip I can say that there is nothing unusual about that. Short of chaining people into this place it is impossible to get every senator turning up to every vote at the appropriate time. I have not met a whip or former whip who has been able to boast that they have been able to do that. Frankly—apart from it being unparliamentary to say this—I suspect they would be telling a lie if they said that they had.

I recall Jeannie Ferris as a colleague in that we spent a considerable amount of time together on issues which we shared similar views on as well as on issues where we vehemently disagreed. I remember Jeannie as a fierce competitor, arguing the case that she thought was right; arguing her position within her party and within this chamber on behalf of her party. In that sense she was an unflappable advocate for the things she wanted to pursue. But I also remember her as a person of compassion. Plenty has been said in this debate about Jeannie’s compassion and the way she empathised with the people who came before the committee. That was my experience at least and I am sure there are plenty of other examples. People from rural communities and organisations came before the committee with issues that they thought needed the attention of the parliament, and Jeannie had compassion for genuine people and often expressed that publicly and privately in this place and elsewhere.

But who can forget Jeannie’s engaging smile, that beaming smile that always struck one in conversation? And who can forget her keen sense of humour when things that amused her—and often the rest of us—passed in conversation between us? Those characteristics are things we will probably remember when all else fades a little from our memory. I also remember those evenings in the Senate, at the end of the day—they seemed almost always to be in the middle of the week—when there was some black tie event that coalition senators were attending. Jeannie would be off with that beautiful smile and a gleam in her eye, about to go out and enjoy herself with her colleagues. She was dressed in her very best and always looked as though she belonged there.

I have to also say that I probably will not forget her jousting with Bill Heffernan in private meetings of the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport. It was often about his comments on particular issues during those private meetings. Tut-tutting is not the way I would describe it; it was more like the comments I received during some of my contributions in this chamber. Jeannie would interject with something like, ‘That’s outrageous,’ in her usual tone, indicating that she was displeased that I was attacking the coalition, a minister or a particular policy of the government. That is because one thing you have to say about Jeannie is that, in this place, in public, she certainly was always loyal to her party. She may have had different views—in fact, I know she often did—but in this place she would portray the views of her party in circumstances where sometimes she felt they should have been different from those which had been determined and which were entrusted to her to portray. Sometimes in private she made it plain that the opposition was rightly, and perhaps sometimes even effectively, pursuing the government or some agricultural organisation through estimates, in the community, during inquiries or in the parliament. But it was always in private, and she always indicated a view that I thought derived from her understanding of and long involvement in issues that I had been involved in with the agriculture portfolio.

I also recall Jeannie’s very effective use of her journalism skills. Jeannie would sometimes come to an inquiry, disappear for a while and then come back in when it was her turn to ask a question. She would ask a few very dramatically put, pointed questions and then, surprise, surprise, up they would pop as dramatic grabs on Country Hour. Jeannie always had herself organised. When she wanted to make a point and get it publicised, she knew just how to put it to make sure that the grab she wanted to appear would appear on programs such as Country Hour.

I recall her private criticism of AWB during the 2002-03 inquiry into the performance of our international wheat marketing arrangements. I think some of that criticism flowed over into the way she questioned that organisation during that inquiry, particularly about the organisation’s handling of its responsibilities and about the perception that there was an arrogance in the organisation that was not appropriate. I thought that, whilst Jeannie respected the views of her party, she always had concerns about that organisation. I am sure she was not entirely surprised when things very publicly went amiss with regard to that organisation’s performance.

It has been touched on earlier, but I also recall her pursuit of a rural organisation’s leader—and I will not sully this debate by naming that person. That person was ultimately found—exposed, in part, by Jeannie’s actions—to have misappropriated grower and government moneys, to have acted with nepotism in appointing people to the organisation and to have been engaged in sharp electoral practices within that organisation. I recall her recounting a very threatening telephone conversation she had from that person during the conduct of the inquiry but, of course, took not one step back from her pursuit of the issue that she thought was right.

What has also been touched on is her passionate pursuit of biosecurity issues, with an intent to ensure that AQIS and Biosecurity Australia got it right, and that if they got it wrong the officers who got it wrong were held to account and corrective action taken. I know that many departmental officers were not keen to get on the wrong side of Jeannie Ferris at hearings when we were discussing a variety of issues, including New Zealand apples. The irony of her pursuit of that issue had not come to me before today’s debate, because I have never seen Jeannie as anything other than as a person who pursued the interests of this country to the exclusion of all others in relation to her responsibilities in this place.

My experience of Jeannie Ferris has been substantially limited to those areas in that committee and sometimes to her role as a whip in this chamber. I have always counted her as a friend. It is very distressing that her life has been cut short and that she has not been given the benefit of retirement from this place and the opportunity to reflect on all the good work she has done. I know that she leaves us all with the feeling that our lives have been enriched by her presence here and by our knowing her. I too would like to pass on my condolences to her sons, Robbie and Jeremy, and to her extended family. I feel for their loss, but they should be very proud that Jeannie holds such a prominent place in our hearts.