Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the passing of a great Australian. Last week, at the age of 74, Ray Evans passed away. My friend John Roskam, in The Financial Review, wrote that Ray:

…had more influence on politics and policy in Australia than 95 per cent of MPs who have been in the federal Parliament, and 99 per cent of MPs who have ever been in a state Parliament.

I am not sure whether Ray would have agreed with that distinction, for he was a committed federalist.

Ray was a true public intellectual. He was involved in every major policy debate we have had for several decades: dismantling protection, the end of arbitration, Indigenous affairs, the republic and federalism, to name just a few of the areas to which he devoted his energies. He argued and campaigned for causes absent public subsidy, support or control, utilising those resources and people that he could muster in the support of ideas. His passion, intellect and organisational capacity would ensure he was the driving force behind a range of groups, all comprised of volunteers who came together for no reason other than belief in a cause. Time tonight gives me the opportunity to mention only a few.

Ray had a range of policy passions in his life, but first and foremost, the issue the drive him to national attention was Australia's labour market. Its advocates argued that our system of industrial arbitration was unique to Australia. Ray agreed with this assertion; he just disagreed on its impact. He outlined that it was a unique cost, that it imposed a unique burden on the productive sectors of our economy and on those locked out of work. As one of the four founding members of the HR Nicholls society—along with John Stone, Peter Costello and Barrie Purvis—Ray led the intellectual battle that eventually saw arbitration at least partly dismantled. A small group, founded on nothing more than the powerful idea that there is dignity in labour and in a person's right to sell it, would transform eight decades of regulation and control.

Ray never minced words, and he always had a pointed turn of phrase, especially about this arbitration regime, and particularly in reference to those upon whom it imposed the greatest costs. I quote Ray:

And thus we have, as Higgins' legacy, a huge regulatory apparatus, in which employment contracts are regulated to an extraordinary degree; but, most importantly, employment contracts, which would benefit the least skilled, the least qualified, the least physically and intellectually endowed, are declared unlawful by our regulators, because the wages which would make these people employable are deemed by the regulators to be inadequate …

He would not restrain his comments regarding those others accused of being his friends, either, saying of the Howard Government:

The particular group most affected by this regulatory insanity are men with few skills, no qualifications, and who are over fifty. And they have no one to speak for them. Not ACOSS, not the churches, not the unions, not the ALP and, regrettably, not the Government.

To Ray, the imposition of the costs of our labour market regulation on those denied the opportunity to sell their labour—denied a job by rules we imposed—was as much a moral issue as it was an economic one. In this area like all others, he was governed by his arguments, based on fact and reasoning and as well-researched as any others in his chosen fields. But he played as hard as anyone, and never pulled his punches from those on this side of the chamber.

In intellectual debate, Ray did not play the man, he played the ball. For Ray was about the idea, not the tribe. Ray was not afraid of announcing inconvenient truths, an apt phrase given his work in the Lavoisier Group and his long campaign against unilateral actions of economic self-harm by Australia by what he described as 'imperium viridis'. But he was also motivated by more than that; he was proudly committed to these decisions being taken democratically, without authority being ceded to unaccountable international authorities.

The place where I knew Ray best was through the Samuel Griffith Society. Ray was always a committed federalist, he understood that federalism has two practical advantages. First, it allows the states to be laboratories, both good and bad. As a Victorian, in the space of the single decade of the 1990s I often had cause to support this argument with examples of both: while the excesses of Cain and Kirner were confined to Victoria, the radical liberal reforms of Kennett and Stockdale were enacted in the teeth of national opposition. Second and more importantly, federalism constrained power.

Ray exhibited that trait most uncommon in many so-called public intellectuals—that of humility. Whether it was about the labour market, Indigenous policy or environmental policy, Ray's was always a voice for reminding politicians and bureaucrats of the limits of our knowledge and power. Ray would remind us that many problems would be avoided if we simply stopped assuming we could solve problems with the stroke of a pen, a conspicuous declaration or even an international conference of the self-declared good and worthy.

I can imagine that last week's High Court ruling in the second Williams case would have brought a small smile to Ray. I do not know what he thought of the chaplaincy program, but I can imagine that anything that constrained the power of the Commonwealth to unilaterally spend would please his federalist tendencies.

I can only say to those who knew Ray on this side of the chamber at least that there is a stronger federalist voice than there has been for many years, and part of that is due to the work of the Samuel Griffith Society he helped create. I will not be as arrogant to claim I was a close friend of Ray, but I can claim to have been inspired by him and to have been a student of his efforts. In that I am not alone, for there are many who walk in his footsteps, particularly on labour market reform—many unknowingly.

Ray was always generous of his time to those who shared his interest in intellectual inquiry and debate. I will conclude on an anecdote I have of Ray, a friendly argument I know that others have had with him. With a large smile and a few laughs at the futility of his cause, he would engage in an attempt to convince some of us that the imperial system was easier to use than metric. While it was unimaginable to someone like me, born in the 1970s, he brought to this argument the extensive historical knowledge and good nature he brought to all others.

To Jill and the Evans family, my best wishes during this time of mourning. Thank you for sharing him with us all these years. Rest in peace, Ray Evans. The nation is poorer for your passing, but immeasurably wealthier in every form for the manner of your living.