Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting on Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

Kenneth Shaw Wriedt, to those who knew him in the Tasmanian community, was known as Ken. I first met Ken Wriedt in 1967. I was a 12-year-old campaigning with my father, Ken, and Bob Poke in the half-Senate election of 1967. It was in the small town of Triabunna. As I was only a 12-year-old at that point in my life, I was not doorknocking; I was sent off to letterbox and come back at lunchtime while the three Senate candidates doorknocked Triabunna. I was sent to buy the pies and sauce for lunch.

My first impressions of Ken were of a man of great physical presence. He had a very deep and resonant voice and was very passionate and caring about his fellow human beings, with strong views on the way the world should be. It was the beginning of a long association and friendship over more than 40 years. Of course, as a consequence of that half-Senate election in 1967, he was elected to the Senate and took his position in this place on 1 July 1968. It was the beginning of a very long and successful parliamentary career, despite some disappointments that I will come to a little later. It was the beginning of a very long and distinguished parliamentary career at both the federal and the state levels.

Ken was not a Tasmanian by birth; nor indeed did he live in Tasmania during the early years of his working life. He grew up during the Depression in Melbourne, as my colleague Senator Faulkner referred to, and he had a very radical political background. He became a merchant seaman. He saw a great deal of the world. He drifted from one sailing job to another until he arrived in Hobart in 1959—quite by accident. Ken would relate how, sailing up the Derwent River—the D’Entrecasteaux Channel—he arrived in Hobart and of course fell in love with the city. He married Helga Ann-Rose Burger on 26 December 1959. They had two daughters, Sonja and Paula. Ken used his seaman skills. He came on shore and became an insurance inspector. He purchased a house on the eastern shore of Hobart, in Tranmere—I make particular note of this because he and Helga and the family lived there all their lives. I enjoyed many cups of coffee and tea with Ken at their house in Tranmere.

He was a very significant contributor to the Tasmanian branch of the Labor Party. He joined the local Howrah branch in 1959, and indeed he remained a member of that branch until the day he died. He was a branch secretary, he was campaign manager in the House of Representatives seat of Denison in 1966, he was treasurer of the Tasmanian branch of the Labor Party from 1970 to 1972, he was a delegate to the ALP federal conference in 1971 and he served on the federal executive of the Labor Party from 1970 to 1980.

His parliamentary career at both federal and state levels was significant. It included two attempts at federal preselection for Franklin. He was a state candidate for Franklin in 1964. As I have mentioned, he was elected to this place in 1968 and became the federal Minister for Primary Industry (Agriculture) after Labor’s victory in December 1972. He was elected Leader of the Government in the Senate in 1975. He was re-elected at the head of the Labor Party ticket for Tasmania in 1975. He was elected opposition leader in the Senate. It was a post he held until his retirement from the Senate in 1980, when he contested the federal seat of Denison against the then federal member, Michael Hodgman, but it was an unsuccessful campaign.

He then contested the state seat of Franklin in May 1982. He was immediately elected. He topped the poll but it was part of a losing team. The Labor government was defeated at that election. He immediately became opposition leader and remained in that position until the state election loss of February 1986. He remained in parliament, however, and on 13 May 1989 there was a hung parliament and an agreement between the Labor Party and the Greens. Under the Field government, he became the Minister for Roads, Transport, Police and Emergency Services. Suffering from illness, he retired from state parliament in mid September 1990. It ended a 22-year career—with that two-year break—in state and federal parliaments. It was a very long and distinguished career in parliament at both state and federal levels and a very long and distinguished contribution to the Labor Party itself.

I would like to make a few personal reflections about the various roles he had over that period. It certainly did not go unnoticed that in his first speech in 1968, amongst other policy contributions, he was a strong advocate of a national superannuation scheme—an issue and project dear to my own personal interests and an issue we discussed on many occasions privately.

He was a child of the Great Depression. He was from a working-class background in Melbourne. His time in the Great Depression and his time as a merchant seaman obviously left him with a very deep, passionate and caring attitude to his fellow human beings. He truly believed in the role of government and the good that government could do in changing people’s lives, in a practical and sensible way. Despite the referred-to radicalism of his father and despite Ken’s well-known commentary about some of the virtues of the former Soviet Union, he did understand that the political approach in Australia required practical and sensible policy.

He was in many ways a surprising choice as agriculture minister. As he told my father and me at the time, he was not the most obviously choice; he had spent all his working life on water and he did not have any background in the rural sector at all. But, as a number of contributors in this debate have said, he was regarded as a very fine minister and one of the great success stories amongst what I would have to acknowledge was a number of significant failures in that period of the Whitlam government, 1972 to 1975.

I referred to his decision, a selfless decision, to retire from the Senate. He could have had a continuing and long career in this place, but he passionately believed that if Labor was to have any chance of being re-elected federally, the Labor Party had to win seats in Tasmania. We had been wiped out in 1975. In a selfless act he resigned from this place to contest the federal seat of Denison against Michael Hodgman—and, as I have mentioned, he lost that campaign. What is little known is not only was it an extraordinarily selfless act but he paid all his own campaign expenses. He would not accept any money from the Labor Party, which I think is a mark of the man and his commitment and dedication to the Labor Party.

As opposition leader, when he was elected to state parliament, Ken was years ahead of his time in many respects and in one key area in particular: he would regularly point out both the massive debt accumulating under the then Gray Liberal government and the irregularities of that government. Unfortunately for Ken, and I think this was a sadder aspect of his career which did at times leave a touch of hardness in his attitude, the electorate did not recognise his critique of the then state Liberal government for at least another eight to 10 years, and that was after he had retired from state politics.

Throughout his career he was a leading voice for moderation, and what is little known is that Ken was a moderating voice during the dreadful circumstances surrounding the expulsion of Brian Harradine, the then Secretary General of the Tasmanian Trades and Labour Council. Ken feared the consequences for the Labor Party of the expulsion of Brian Harradine, and he was a leading figure in urging moderation at that time in the Labor Party. Of course, those events led to a Labor Party split in Tasmania, and Ken was right in his fears about the consequences that would flow from those actions in 1974 and 1975.

Ken was always willing to give advice to and mentor others in the labour movement and in the Labor Party, including me, and I want to place on record that he gave me much sage advice during the early part of my political career. Later, after he retired from state politics, Ken found a renewed activism in managing the successful campaign of his daughter Paula for election to the state seat of Franklin.

I referred in my opening remarks to the fact that at my first meeting with Ken over a pie and sauce in Triabunna he gave me the impression of being a big man. But he was more than a big man physically; he was a big man in every way. He had big ideas and he was big in his passion, in his contribution and in his compassion for his fellow human beings. He was very thoughtful about policy, he was loyal and he was selfless. He was one of the leading figures in the Labor Party in Tasmania for some 20 years and a leading, passionate and loyal person to his adopted community of Hobart and Tasmania. Sadly, his wife, Helga, died just a few weeks ago, and I send my condolences to his two daughters, Sonja and Paula. Vale Ken Wriedt.