Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) Share this | Hansard source

I start by wishing Senator Fielding all the best. I was here for only three years of his six years in the parliament, and I would like to extend best wishes to him. More particularly I would like to talk about the two Labor senators who are retiring on this occasion. In a sense it is a pity that we are doing these valedictory statements as a collective, but from my own point of view these two people are quite intertwined because I met both of them in that Orwellian year of 1984. I met Senator Hutchins when the first snowflakes were falling in Boston and together we did the Harvard TUCP course. I met Senator Hurley later in that year at, I think, the first ALP conference she attended in South Australia. That was during the halcyon years of the Hawke prime ministership. My own union in Victoria had reaffiliated to the Labor Party, but we were not well received in certain sections of the Labor Party back then. To her credit Senator Hurley, who had just come back from a bit of inculcation from the much-maligned New South Wales Right, decided to come and sit at the SDA table at the ALP conference. That was a very brave thing to do at that time, but I have never forgotten it. It was so characteristic of her subsequent career and the bravery that she displayed throughout that political career.

With respect to Steve Hutchins, when I met him we were, as I said, at Harvard. It always amazed me that he had such a grasp of all of the subject matter that we were studying. We would spend long hours at the boathouse. I would go into that in more detail, but it would be inappropriate at this particular forum and, like Senator Bishop, I am hopeful that we will get another chance to go into more detail. Senator Hutchins looks very relieved at that suggestion. This was a man with a rugged exterior that belied the sharpness of his mind. Steve's political genius, I would call it, was on display in full at Harvard, and it is no surprise to me that, in the 30 or 40 years that he was battling Senator Faulkner's Left, he always won those battles. This is a bloke who not only read history but also understood it in a way that most people do not. You do not come across many people, even at this highest level of politics, who really understand how history works, how politics works, but this man did understand that. He has talked about his health so I raise that topic. I think that but for the problems he had with his health he would have gone to the very highest levels of the political party.

You could say the same about Annette Hurley. It was not health that caused her problems. She was prepared to put the party before herself in the 2002 election in South Australia. We needed to win one seat, the seat of Light, in order to get government and we knew how we were polling in the other seats. It was a risk that almost no other politician would have been prepared to take, but Annette was prepared to take that risk. It did cost her the deputy leadership of the party and therefore the deputy premiership of the party, and how differently things might have ended up in South Australia had she got the extra few votes that she needed to win that seat—which has now become a relatively safe Labor seat. She was just one election too early in making that shift. One of the greatest tragedies of the last parliament was that she was not given the opportunity to serve in a ministerial capacity, as I believe she was entitled to do. I think that is one of the great travesties that have occurred in this party.

I wish both Senator Hurley and Senator Hutchins all the best. I hope to be able to continue to see both of them, and their families and partners, well into the future. Good luck and congratulations on a fantastic political career.