Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the valedictory for my colleague and friend Senator Kate Lundy. When Kate arrived in the Senate following her election on 2 March 1996, she was 28 years old, John Howard had just been elected Prime Minister and Australia had recently lost the cricket World Cup to Sri Lanka. In better sporting news, and something Kate will probably remember, later that year in Atlanta the Oarsome Foursome would win their second Olympic gold medal.

Unfortunately, then as now, Labor was in our first term of opposition. We had been heavily defeated in the 1996 election. One would have thought that a new and energetic young senator, full of enthusiasm, might have found it hard to arrive in this place following such a devastating defeat. However Kate has spoken, since she made her decision to leave us, about how excited she was and that her excitement and enthusiasm was somewhat out of place when compared to the sad faces of the remainder of her colleagues. She probably felt somewhat conflicted at the time because she was also surrounded by people who had just seen the door close on 13 years of government.

I have had a look at Kate's first speech, and it is often said that first speeches are probably the most honest speeches people give in this place. Kate's reminded me of how consistent she has been since she arrived here in both her values and her interests. They are also reflected in the speech she gave today. In her first speech, Kate spoke about the importance of the enduring Labor 'social and political values of equality, democracy and freedom'. She said these were the principles that she brought to the Senate, and those were the principles she again articulated today. In that speech she said this:

In September 1984, at 16 years of age, I found myself employed in an industry largely unexplored by women. No, I am not talking about the parliament; I am talking about the building and construction industry.

She certainly started being a trailblazer early, not only in the career she had prior coming into parliament. It is worth again reminding ourselves of the situation in which she and many others of that era—it makes her sound old, I am sorry—found themselves. At the time Kate came into parliament four out of 49 members of the Labor Party in the House of Representatives were women and there were nine women out of 29 senators. Now we have some 14 women in the Labor Senate team—certainly considerably more than at the time Kate entered the parliament. I pay tribute, as another Labor woman, to the work of Kate Lundy, and for being courageous and persistent in those years when she first arrived here, when there were very few women in our caucus. The fact that we have so many more today I think is something we honour but we also recognise and honour the work of the women who have gone before. Kate is a courageous Labor woman. In November last year, when Kate made public her decision not to nominate again for the Senate, I said at the time how significant it was, for me, that she was one of the women who was in the Senate when I first came to parliament in 2002. At that time she had already been a senator for six years.

During Kate's career she has been an outstanding senator and an outstanding representative for the Australian Capital Territory and for the Australian Labor Party—a parliamentary career that has spanned 19 years and 22 days, during which Kate Lundy has been a Labor minister, a front bencher, a senior backbencher and somebody who has made a contribution in many areas. I particularly want to speak briefly of her contribution in the areas of information technology, sport, multicultural affairs and industry. It was in information technology that Kate first made a name for herself. She has quoted from her first speech, and I thought it was quite prescient when I went back and looked at what she said about information technology at that time. She said :

Information and how it is communicated are major determinants of power in our society …

By the year 2000 the information sector will be the world’s second largest industry.

She went on to talk about disruption, and continued:

… I am not yet convinced that we have sufficiently analysed and discussed the societal and community effects of this shift in our economic base.

These words seem self-evident today, but at the time they were spoken they were indeed prescient.

It is fair to say that Kate Lundy has been one of the most influential parliamentarians in leading the way towards the embrace of information technology not only in the parliament but also as a matter of public policy within the parliament. She was also an influential politician in foreseeing the impact that technology would have not only on public policy but also on the economy more broadly. She certainly was one of the first of the internet generation to enter the parliament, and to enter the Senate. Her story of the—and she has been very polite and not told us who it is—very kindly person who told her to do something else with her career reminds us that at the time she was somewhat out of the ordinary in her interest in this area. Appropriately, she served as Minister Assisting for the Digital Economy in 2013 and, prior to that, had spent time on the opposition frontbench, with particular responsibility for IT, from 1997 to 2004.

Kate has had a long interest, in a parliamentary sense, in sport. She served variously as shadow parliamentary or shadow minister in sport for about a decade, and that was prior to becoming minister in the portfolio at the end of the last government. That period encompassed both the Olympic Games in London and some significant challenges, which she has referenced today, involving drugs in sport. In a statement, federal Labor leader Bill Shorten acknowledged Kate following her announcement that she would not be recontesting her seat in the Senate. He said she had:

…steered through the most significant changes to the Australian Government's funding of high performance sport since the Australian Institute of Sport was established in 1981.

Congratulations, Kate, for that work. Kate has also been a consistently strong advocate, and again today, for the profile of women's sport. We thank her for that and we hope other senators in this place will take up that cause because, unfortunately, even after 19 years and 22 days it appears we still need to argue for it.

Kate said today that Australia's multiculturalism is the best in the world. I agree with you, Kate. More importantly, I want to thank you—as somebody for whom this has a personal edge—for your work as a minister. In this country we often do not speak of how important multiculturalism is and how valuable it is to who we are. I am of the view that, like many other progressive social policies, if you do not argue for it you often go backwards. Kate always argued for it, and I know from personal experience that the ambassador program was such a worthwhile initiative. There were such wonderful people working with community and doing that real work of building community and building bridges and communication between different parts of the Australian society. It was a really worthy program, and one of which I know Kate is rightly proud.

As Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Kate had responsibility for progressing Australia’s multicultural policy and responding to the needs of our diverse community. She recognised the connection, in many ways, that multiculturalism in Australia has to the foundational values of our nation. She had oversight of many programs, including the National Anti-Racism Partnership strategy and, of course, Harmony Day, which we have just celebrated. I have spoken about the People of Australia Ambassadors Programme and I put on record, again, Kate: thank you for that. We had fantastic people, including in my own state of South Australia, who did such great work whilst appointed as ambassadors.

Today, again, we saw the extent to which Kate Lundy is a passionate representative of the ACT. She spoke today of the special place the ACT has in our democracy, describing people from the ACT as being 'the collective custodians of our national democratic institutions'. This is consistent with her tireless advocacy and support for the people who elected her from the day she arrived until the day she is leaving. She also spoke of the challenges that the ACT is facing with the cutbacks that we see from this government. It is a somewhat sad irony that those are the same issues she addressed when she arrived here in 1996, when the Howard government was implementing wide-scale changes and cuts to the Public Service.

Throughout her nearly 20 years in this place Kate Lundy has always fought for the people of the ACT. She has always represented them passionately and with integrity within the parliament and on the committees on which she served. On a personal level, I want to thank Kate for her work. She has spoken about our fantastic rowing career together. She did remind me somewhat—'caustically' is perhaps too strong a term—wryly that that was, in fact, the last time she managed to get me into a rowing boat with her, which is true. It was probably because I felt outclassed, to be frank.

There are a few things I want to say about Kate in closing. Kate is someone who has stayed real. Not for Kate the sorts of airs and graces and pretentions that we sometimes see in this place; Kate has always been somebody who has stayed grounded and stayed real. Perhaps it is having three children and two stepchildren that requires it. I suspect it is also the nature of who she is. She is someone who has stayed grounded and someone who has continued to demonstrate her humanity throughout her political career.

We remember that Kate arrived in this Senate as one of the youngest members, having been a builder's labourer as well as a union official, and she will now leave the Senate as one of our most senior senators. But, as Senator Abetz said, she has the benefit of doing so while she is still pretty young. So while she is leaving the Senate, I am sure retirement is the last thing on her mind.

So, as you depart, the Labor Party wishes you well. We hope you go on to your fulfilling next stage in your career. We thank you for all your service to the ACT, to the Labor Party; and, as a senator, we wish you all the best and we hope that what you said today will continue to be true for you: you believe in having a full life. I have no doubt that will continue to be true.