Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to associate myself and my National Party colleagues with the remarks of many people in the chamber today about Robert Ray. He has long been the father of the chamber and, with the influx of new senators, I probably knew him for longer than almost anyone here. I suppose if you could describe Robert Ray you would say he was a hard man. He played it very tough and he played it hard but he played it fair. He was an inspiration to many people and certainly he would have been an inspiration to the Labor Party. When I came here, there were people like John Button, who we will honour later today, and Peter Walsh and quite a number of hard-hitting members of parliament who were not from the ranks of the unions or the Labor Party but who did have a wide coverage—