George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Mr President, 30 June marks a very important moment in the history of the Senate and therefore in the history of Australian politics, because there will be the most significant turnover of senators in the history of the Federation. Some 14 senators will retire. Tonight we commemorate and pay tribute to the work of six of those senators, the six coalition senators who retire on 30 June. Between them, on my calculation, those six coalition senators have contributed almost 123 years of service to this parliament. Three of them—Senator Chapman, Senator Watson and Senator Patterson—began their parliamentary careers in Old Parliament House. When they leave us on 30 June, there will remain only two members of the Senate who saw service in Old Parliament House. So, by any measure, just on my side of politics, not to mention on all sides of this chamber, 30 June will mark a very, very significant loss in the corporate memory and the political and intellectual capital of this nation.

May I say personally that it has been a pleasure and a privilege to serve with each and every one of the retiring senators. These valedictory debates, which very, very few people listen to, are in fact one of the great occasions of the Australian parliament—more carefully observed, I am forced to say, in the Senate than in the House of Representatives—because this is an occasion when we shed the garb of the tribe. It is an occasion when we speak to each other person to person rather than through the prism of party allegiances. If only the Australian people were more conscious of the regard in which we hold one another and the relationships built over many years of work together, not so much in the chamber but in committees and in various other personal associations, they would I think have a better appreciation of the way in which this parliament works. Each and every one of the senators who will retire on 30 June has brought their own unique perspective, background, experience and outlook to this place, and Australian democracy is the richer for it.

Let me say a couple of words, if I may, about each of the retiring coalition senators. Let me begin, as is appropriate, with the father of the Senate, Senator John Watson. I think probably the greatest thing that you can say about a person as they reach the end of their political career is that they were held by their colleagues on both sides of politics in universal respect, and that can absolutely be said about Senator John Watson. It was my privilege to serve with Senator Watson on a number of Senate committees—on the Regulations and Ordinances Committee and on the Senate Economics Committee—and I observed him in those fora, in this chamber and in particular in the party room.

The thing that we all know about Senator John Watson is that he made a particularly important area of public policy his own, and that was superannuation policy. He had other deep interests as well—taxation policy, accounting standards and other aspects of financial policy—but superannuation policy in particular. John Watson spoke with the voice of ultimate and absolute authority. The ultimate compliment to Senator Watson was that his opposite number, who for most of my time in this place has been Senator Nick Sherry, would always, even though they were politically opposed to one another, defer to Senator Watson’s knowledge, learning and erudition about this area of policy. And I can tell you, Mr President—and you yourself will recall this—that there was more than one occasion in the coalition party room when Senator Watson took on the member for Higgins, then the Treasurer, Mr Costello, on an issue of superannuation policy or taxation policy. Mr Costello is a fairly formidable opponent, but when Senator Watson took him to task about a perhaps obscure aspect of superannuation or taxation policy there was no doubt left in anyone’s mind about who spoke with the most authority. Senator Watson has been a great contributor to this Senate, a great contributor to Australian public policy, and we are all the poorer for his retirement after 30 years of service.

Let me pass to Senator Grant Chapman, with whom I served for several years when he was Chairman of the Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services and with whom I served on the Senate Economics Committee for several years. Grant and I worked together on a number of important reports. I remember in particular the report on which he and I wrote the minority report, as it turned out, on the effectiveness of the Trade Practices Act in protecting small business, which, if I may say so, largely thanks to Senator Chapman’s contribution, was the gold standard for commentary on that area of policy and which is had regard to by the new government as it was by the former government in the years since that report was brought down.

May I say—and I do not want to embarrass him—that I think Senator Chapman was very, very unlucky not to have been a minister. I can think of lots of people on my side of politics, and even more on the other side of politics, of much more slender ability than Senator Grant Chapman who served as ministers and indeed as cabinet ministers. But there is nothing fair about the game of politics, and circumstances perhaps conspired against Senator Grant Chapman. He would have been a great minister. He was undoubtedly a great parliamentarian, and he showed that you can be a great contributor to Australian politics as a great parliamentarian—and it is better to be a first-rate parliamentarian than a second-rate minister.

Let me say a word about Senator Rod Kemp. I had the pleasure of following Rod Kemp in the portfolio of the Arts and Sport, when the former Prime Minister, Mr Howard, was good enough to appoint me to that portfolio in January 2007. Transitions from one minister to another are often fraught. Transitions from one minister to another are not universally blessed with harmony and ease. But I have to say that no minister coming into a portfolio for the first time could have had a more generous, a more helpful or a more cooperative predecessor in his portfolio than I had in Senator Rod Kemp. I would ring him for advice from time to time. I would ring him for advice on particular areas of policy within the portfolio. I would ring him for advice on personalities. I would ring him for advice on a topic—if I may put on the record but not elaborate upon a private joke between us: the subject of border protection. Senator Rod Kemp would always give me very shrewd advice and he was very free and generous in his advice.

I think it is appropriate for me to say, in dwelling upon Rod Kemp’s contribution and his generosity to me, that it fell to me during my relatively brief period as Minister for the Arts and Sport to announce the film package—the most important series of reforms to advance the interests of the Australian film industry in a generation. It was a series of reforms, I am very sorry to say, that have been abated and retreated from by the new government and the new minister, who of course has turned out to be a complete flop. Although the credit came to me, because I was the minister at the time that the package was announced in May 2007, in fact almost all of the work was done by my predecessor, Rod Kemp. If anything of the film package survives the new philistines of the new Labor government, and if any enduring benefit to the Australian film industry survives the new philistines, it is Rod Kemp who deserves the lion’s share of the credit.

Senator Kay Patterson, with whom I share a family connection through the Strasser family, has been a good friend. I have enjoyed my association with her enormously. She has always been friendly, sensible and direct. Those features of her personality have, I think, shone through the tributes that have been paid to her. I had relatively little to do with Senator Patterson professionally, but there is one particular episode that I want to record and acknowledge her for, and that is the occasion when she was in the health portfolio and Senator Mason, Mr Ciobo, the member for Moncrieff, and I approached Senator Patterson to seek to persuade her to give her authority to the creation of a medical school at Griffith University on the Gold Coast and she acceded to our entreaties—and, may I say, you did the right thing, Senator Patterson. The Griffith Medical School at the Gold Coast has been a tremendous success.

Senator Sandy Macdonald is a person whom I liked the moment I met him, and I have had a very friendly association with him from the first day I came into the Senate, slightly more than eight years ago. Sandy Macdonald is a rare species in Australian politics today—and, with his departure from the Senate, the species is even rarer. Sandy Macdonald is one of the few Brahmans left in Australian politics, a landed gentleman who, in the Jeffersonian tradition, goes into public life to serve his country. And he has served his country well. He is a perfect gentleman. Nobody could define a gentleman better than to describe Senator Sandy Macdonald. I think his valedictory speech today had all the emblems of the charm and gentlemanliness which we associate with him.

Importantly, Senator Macdonald understood both that politics is very important but also that politics is not everything. There are a lot of people who pursue careers in public life and who fail to keep those two considerations in balance. Sandy Macdonald did not. Sandy Macdonald understood that politics was not everything. As is plain to all of us, he will leave this place a happy and contented man, fulfilled in the knowledge of the conspicuous service he has given to his country but also knowing that there is a very rich life for him in his family and his pastoral interests that lie before him.

Let me turn finally to my friend Ross Lightfoot. Ross Lightfoot is somebody I had not encountered before I became a senator but I had read about him. I had read about his infamous maiden speech. I had read about what were regarded as his as his very right wing political views.