Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

I advise Senator Faulkner that the President who leant over to Harry so often might even be in the building again tonight, but whether we hear the same comment remains to be seen! On a personal note, I record my thanks for the advice—as people have said before, the extremely unbiased advice—that Harry gave to me while I was President and throughout the rest of my career over the past 17½ years in this place.

As has been said previously, there are only two people in this place who have served under any other Clerk. Harry is all we have ever known. The thing that always amazed me when asking Harry for advice was that he never had to say, ‘I’ll have to go away and look it up.’ It was always instant advice. The encyclopedic knowledge of Senate practice that Senator Faulkner talked about was something that you could always rely on from Harry. If you were in the presiding officer’s chair asking for advice, whether it was me as President or any one of the temporary chairs who may have leant over to get advice from Harry, the advice was always instant, it was correct and it was always unbiased, and you cannot ask for any more in an officer of this place than to be sure that you get unbiased advice.

During the 17 years that I have been here there has not always been unanimous support for some of Harry’s public utterances outside this place, but that is a totally different issue. Because he is a man of such standing in this place, people sought Harry’s advice on a whole range of issues, and when he was asked to give that advice he gave it in the same fearless manner. In government we did not always like it and in opposition we probably thought it was pretty good, but that is the way of politics. That is why, when you have an independent officer of the Senate with such experience and such knowledge, those utterances, but also the advice, are always taken in the best manner.

There are those on the other side of this building who have absolutely no understanding of what takes place in the Senate. They have very little understanding of the Senate.