George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Minister for the Arts and Sport) Share this | Hansard source

I also want to associate myself with the condolence motion and the remarks of senators who have preceded me in this condolence debate. We mourn today but also celebrate the contribution of a great Senate figure. Jeannie Ferris’s career and the impact that she made in this chamber serve to remind us that you do not have to be a minister to make a very big impact, particularly in the Senate. There are many who go through the Senate and, I dare say, many who sit on the front bench in the Senate who will not be remembered for very long after they have left this place. If I can pick up where Senator Ferguson left off, one thing you can be sure about Senator Jeannie Ferris is that she will be long remembered as one of the great personalities of this place, certainly in our time here. In fact, so palpable was her presence that, even in speaking in this debate now, I almost expect to see her marching purposefully through that door to reprimand an errant senator, find out why the debate was taking so long or, otherwise, do the many jobs that she had to do as a whip.

She was a feisty and formidable politician. I think the Prime Minister, as he so often does, captured her perfectly in his condolence statement when he described her as a two-fisted political fighter. She had an unsentimental view of human nature and was a close student of human frailty, but at the same time—and this has come out in so many of the tributes that have been paid to her—she was also an extremely warm-blooded person. She was an extremely humane and a very compassionate person. She was a person you felt that you could talk to when you had troubles. I have been trying to think of the quality which struck me as the most outstanding of Jeannie Ferris, and from my point of view it is that she had the gift of empathy. You could talk to Jeannie Ferris and she would understand you. She would understand a human situation perfectly because she read personalities so well, and, because she was such a capable and adept politician, she read the play of politics so well. As a result of those two skills—the personal skill of understanding people and the professional skill of understanding political dynamics—she had a very empathetic personality. That is what I will remember her for in particular.

As a whip, I think she was exemplary, because she was very fair. One of the great qualities that a whip must have, as those of us who are professional politicians know, is to make sure that everybody feels that they get a fair go, and I felt this all the time that I was on the back bench and Jeannie was the whip. She would take the utmost pains to make sure that everybody got a fair go. If there was a senator who felt a bit marginalised or a bit disengaged, she would do what she could to bring them back into the fold. If there was a senator who was getting perhaps a bit too big for their boots or being selfish in their use of the speaking time, Jeannie would make sure that that particular person was also brought back to the field. She understood the need to keep the balance and to keep everybody involved and everybody working together.

As whip she had many challenges. I will till my dying day remember her frequently expressed exasperation about certain colleagues whose indiscipline on occasions vexed her. I am trying to say this gently, but I think all senators will know what I mean when I say that I can see Jeannie right now in my mind’s eye expostulating, ‘Bloody Bozzie!’ when one of our esteemed colleagues had transgressed—and I am sure he was not the only one.

Jeannie was very kind to me. I remember—and I will not say more about it than this—about three years ago, when I was experiencing a great deal of grief from a particular colleague, that she was the model of diplomacy in trying to heal that breach, and she devoted an enormous amount of emotional energy and time to healing that breach.

A couple of times over the years, I lent Jeannie my beach house up at Peregian on the Sunshine Coast and she would have a week’s holiday there. Twice that happened, and each time she left a thoughtful gift, by which I will remember her. In fact, so enthusiastic did she become about the beautiful Sunshine Coast of Queensland that she bought a place of her own there, at Noosaville—one of her many astute investments. One of the things which I will miss is the occasional, rather astonished conversation Jeannie and I would have about Sunshine Coast real estate prices.

When Jeannie died, we were all taken aback by the suddenness of it, because, although I think many of us at least had a sense that she was not long for this world, we thought that we would have her until the natural expiry of her Senate career in the middle of next year, when she would have retired. But she was taken with awful suddenness, as her illness accelerated through March and she died at the beginning of April.

When she died, the newspapers appropriately published a lovely photograph of Jeannie that captured the radiant smile of which so many have spoken. But there is another press photograph of Jeannie Ferris which I remember and which in a sense summed up the other side of her personality and was in a sense more revealing. It was not a portrait photograph; it was a photograph of Jeannie in action. She had come back from her chemotherapy and had bravely, with an enormous sense of duty and personal courage, agreed to accompany the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Vaile, on his mission to Iraq about a year or so ago to try to save the Australian wheat contract. There would not have been anyone better to accompany Mr Vaile because of her deep knowledge of agricultural issues, as other senators have said. You will probably remember it, Mr Acting Deputy President: it was this very evocative photograph of Jeannie—I think it was on the front page of at least some newspapers—literally and metaphorically in full battledress. With battle helmet on, she was marching determinedly down the back ramp of an Orion which had just landed in Baghdad, unsmiling, with that fixed, purposeful expression on her face, her lips clenched together. That was the other side of Jeannie Ferris: a very determined lady, a person with a tremendous sense of duty, a person who meant business and was very effective in securing the outcomes she sought to secure.

So Jeannie and I had a great friendship in this place. She was always somebody I could talk to. As others have said, she was always up for a gossip. The exchange of—let me put it gently—the latest news and the latest reflections upon personalities in this place is one of its small and naughty joys, and Jeannie was a great aficionado of those arts.

I will always remember the twinkle in her eye, her wicked sense of humour, her ready smile, her infectious laugh and her sheer joy of life. She left such an affectionate legacy in the hearts of, I think, all of us, even those who may have crossed her from time to time or whom she may have crossed in political competition. I am sure that, although we were friendly, she did not always advance my interests, but I am also sure that she always protected my interests, and I think the difference between the two tells you all you need to know about the complex nature of relationships and friendships in an intense political environment.

And she left behind a standard by which future whips will be judged. Senator Parry—I do not think this has been officially announced yet but I hope he will forgive me for saying so—is going to be the new Government Whip in the Senate, and I am sure Senator Parry and generations of whips subsequently will have ringing in their ears from time to time, ‘Now, if Senator Ferris were here,’ or ‘Jeannie would never have put up with this.’