George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate records its deep sorrow at the death, on 21 April 2017, of Gerry Norman Francis Jones, a former senator for Queensland, places on record its appreciation of his long and distinguished service to the nation and tenders its profound sympathy to his family in their bereavement.

Gerry Jones was born in Roma on 16 August 1932. He was christened Norman Francis Jones, but at his father's insistence he was to be known as 'Gerry', and in fact later in life he had the adoption of the Christian name 'Gerry' formalised by deed poll. He attended St Columba's School in Dalby before taking up an apprenticeship in joinery, starting his own business as a building contractor. As a young man he was a gifted athlete and a talented boxer. In fact, so talented a boxer was he that he trialled, albeit unsuccessfully, to represent Australia at the 1960 Rome Olympics in the sport of boxing. In 1956 he married his beloved wife, Rita, with whom he went on to raise three daughters and a son, and in 1956, as well, he joined the Australian Labor Party.

When I look around this chamber from time to time at the great variety of personalities and points of view represented here, I sometimes feel a little sorry for those who do not come from the great state of Queensland, because, as I am sure my friend Claire Moore would agree, there is a richness and variety in the personalities that Queensland politics throws up that, I am sure, is unmatched by any other state in the Commonwealth. Between the first time he stood for parliament in 1963 and the day he retired as a member of this chamber in 1996, Gerry Jones went on to experience some of the most dramatic events in Queensland political history.

His career spanned, among other things, the period of the Bjelke-Petersen government. It included the 1974 Queensland state election, which saw the Australian Labor Party wiped out and reduced to a cricket team of 11 members. It included, in the late 1970s, the travails of the Queensland branch of the ALP, then headquartered at Breakfast Creek, and the attempts by reformers, ultimately successful but after a great deal of internecine political warfare, to reform and reconstruct the Queensland branch of the Labor Party. It saw the collapse of the state coalition government in 1983 and the Fitzgerald inquiry and all that it revealed in the late 1980s. It saw the election of the Goss government in 1989 and the surprise ending of that government's incumbency only six years later. So Gerry Jones enjoyed a political career rich in the context of history. It was a stage occupied by a colourful cast of notables and rogues—people like Russ Hinze, Mal Colston, Jack Egerton are among those who dominated the political scene in those years.

As I have said, Gerry Jones first ran for parliament—and I think we may mark the commencement of his political career at this point—at the 1963 election for the federal seat of McPherson, which was in those days a safe Country Party seat held by Ceb Barnes. That was the election in which Sir Robert Menzies' coalition was returned with a substantially increased majority over the Labor Party led by Arthur Calwell. While Gerry Jones's campaign in McPherson and the ALP's national campaign was unsuccessful, as those who have been in this chamber for some time and who may have seen political defeat can attest, it proved a formative experience for Gerry Jones which marked the beginning of his long career in Queensland Labor politics.

His rise was not without its setbacks. In 1966, three years after he had first stood for parliament, he suffered a bout of severe ill health when he contracted severe kidney disease and received a terminal prognosis. But, mercifully, his doctor's pessimistic prognosis was wrong and, although he was forced to put his political life on hold for a year or so to overcome his illness, he recovered and it did not dampen his political aspirations. In 1967 he contested the coveted post of ALP State Organiser—long seen as a springboard to elected office, as it still is. He was one among a field of 20 applicants and was successful in being chosen. It was a role in which he served until 1972—along the way once again contesting a federal election, this time, in 1969, in the North Queensland seat of Kennedy against the firebrand Country Party MP Bob Katter Senior, the father of the current distinguished member for Kennedy.

The ALP considered Kennedy to be ripe for the picking in 1969, when the electoral winds were at their back, particularly in the state of Queensland. It had, in fact, been a traditionally safe Labor seat, but Mr Katter proved immovable and Gerry returned, defeated, to Brisbane. At the 1972 Queensland state election he found success at last when he was elected as the member for Everton in the Queensland Legislative Assembly. I remember the 1972 Queensland election; I was a teenager and I had just become interested in politics. I even remember the Labor Party campaign slogan: 'Labor means to get things done Jack Houston's way.' Jack Houston was a gentleman, I might say, of an older generation and an older political style and culture.

It is also notable that in 1972, when he won Everton, Gerry Jones defeated the young Denver Beanland, who would go on to a very distinguished career in both municipal and state politics, being a much-respected and long-serving Deputy Mayor of Brisbane, Attorney-General of Queensland and Leader of the State Parliamentary Liberal Party. Dr Beanland, I might point out, continues to give public service as the chair of the National Archives of Australia Advisory Council.

Gerry Jones embarked upon what he thought would be a career in state politics but, as we know, fortunes in politics can change very rapidly, and nowhere more so than in Queensland. Only two years later, at that famous 1974 Queensland election, Mr Jones—along with 21 of his Labor colleagues—was swept out of office. Nothing deterred, he again set his sights on the Queensland Labor Party's party machine, rising quickly through the ranks during the period which, as I have said, was marred by the internecine warfare between the factions. At the time there was a significant push from the party's national executive and from elements within Queensland to reform the governance of the Queensland branch. So it is a testament to Mr Jones's ability and political skill that, as part of what came to be called the old guard of Queensland Labor—that faction that was the target of the reformers—he was nevertheless appointed state secretary in 1976, an office in which he served until 1980.

He was a vocal opponent of Premier Bjelke-Petersen, emerging as a prominent and forceful advocate against his government and its policies. For example, in 1971, he and his wife, Rita, helped to organise and lead demonstrations against the tour of the apartheid-era South African rugby union team, later claiming that, as a result, he had been subjected to vicious personal propaganda and abuse. Those were dark days in Queensland. There is no doubt that the state's special branch at that time was, on occasion, used as a political weapon against those who had a dissenting view from the Bjelke-Petersen government. Much later in his career, as a senator for Queensland, he would address this chamber on the subject of the Queensland gerrymander, something that, as the state secretary of the ALP and one of its campaign managers, he was no doubt very well informed of. In those days, of course, the Labor Party and the Liberal Party were victims of that particular gerrymander.

At last, Mr Jones secured a safe spot on Labor's Queensland Senate ticket. He was elected to this chamber in October 1980, at the 1980 federal election, taking a seat on 1 July 1981. He was re-elected in the 1983 double dissolution election, again in 1984, again at the 1987 double dissolution election, and again in 1990, retiring at the conclusion of his term on 30 June 1996. It was an impressive period, as I said, of 33 years between the time at which he first ran for parliament and the time at which, after 15 years of service in this chamber, he retired.

In his first speech in this place, Gerry Jones expressed strong opposition to uranium mining. He also focused on the problems of homeownership, health policy and single parents. Amongst other causes which he championed, he was passionate about the need to reduce gun ownership in Australia and for uniform laws on the ownership of firearms. Senator Jones served as Deputy Government Whip between August 1985 and September 1987, and then as Chief Government Whip from September 1987 until 1996. It was a role he relished, once describing the Whip's duties in the arrangement of debates as being 'like the director of a play'.

He was the first person ever to chair the Selection of Bills Committee when it came into existence in 1990, an office he occupied through to April 1996. He was convinced of the merits of the Senate committee system. Throughout his 15 years in this place, as well as serving on other committees and in other capacities, he served as Chair of the Science, Technology and the Environment Committee; Chair of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee; and Chair of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee. Amongst other contributions, he chaired an investigation into incidents of alleged sexual harassment toward female officers in the Australian Defence Force. His interest in foreign affairs saw him serve as parliamentary adviser to the United Nations General Assembly in 1990. In 1995, he won the unanimous support of his Senate colleagues from all parties to call on France to cease its nuclear test program in the South Pacific.

The memory of Senator Jones, as he then was, remains with some who served in the Senate with him and still serve on the government benches. My colleague Senator Ian Macdonald, who began his Senate career in 1990, particularly asked to be associated with my remarks. On Gerry Jones's retirement from the Senate in 1996, senators of all parties spoke, with warm gratitude, of him as a cheerful, gentle, friendly colleague who had served with distinction, in particular as the Chief Government Whip. They spoke of his willingness to assist other senators across party lines, his decency and his calmness. Baden Teague, a Liberal senator from South Australia who had worked closely with him on the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, said of him:

It has been a superb experience for me to have a great Australian involved with me in all those undertakings.

He was an adept parliamentarian, a shrewd politician, a forceful advocate and a conscientious senator, both in his contribution to the running of this chamber and through his advocacy of the Labor cause as a Labor man of the old school. Gerry Jones's contribution to the parliament, to political life and to the fate of his party as well as his contribution to the life of the nation was considerable. For this, we owe him our gratitude.

On behalf of the government, may I offer condolences to his family. On my own behalf, may I in particular offer condolences to his daughter, Angela Drysdale, and her husband, Michael Drysdale, whom I am proud to number amongst my friends.