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 18 June 2017, of Mary Shirley Walters, former senator for Tasmania, places on record its appreciation of her service to the Parliament and the nation and tenders its profound sympathy to her family in their bereavement.

Shirley Walters was born on 31 August 1925 in Sydney. She was the second of the three daughters of Eric and Mary Harrison. She was, in every sense, a daughter of the Liberal Party because she had a deeply political upbringing. Most of her childhood and early adult life took place in the shadow of her father's significant parliamentary career.

Eric Harrison—or Sir Eric Harrison, as he became—was elected as the member for Wentworth in the other place in December 1931. He was later to become the deputy leader of the United Australia Party and he was the first ever deputy leader of the Liberal Party, serving from the formation of the party in 1945 until his retirement from parliament in 1956, making him, until Peter Costello overtook his record, the longest serving deputy leader of the Liberal Party. Sir Eric Harrison held a number of significant ministerial positions in five non-Labor ministries: The Lyons government, where he was Minister for the Interior; the Page government; the first Menzies government; the Fadden government; and the great postwar second Menzies government, where he held a number of defence related portfolios, among others.

As a young girl, Shirley Walters experienced her first taste of politics by her father's side, campaigning from the back of a truck along the streets of his inner Sydney seat. As a young woman, she witnessed close hand her father's career as a senior cabinet minister. After completing her schooling, Shirley Walters found employment in the accounts department of the Rural Bank, but soon found that work unfulfilling, so she left the bank to begin nursing training at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, where she worked until her marriage to Dr David Walters in 1949. Shortly after their marriage, the couple relocated to Hobart, where Dr Walters established an obstetrics practice.

All her life, Shirley Walters was politically engaged and deeply committed to community service beyond politics. However, it was only in the 1970s she would become active as a professional politician. The 1970s was a decade of rapid and—in the eyes of many—radical social change, epitomised, perhaps, by the election of the Whitlam government, which left many conservative Australians concerned for the future of the nation and most Australians astonished at the folie de grandeur of Mr Whitlam. Reflecting in her valedictory speech on her inspiration for entering politics, Shirley Walters recalled quite clearly that she had had a driving force, and that driving force was Whitlam. We knew that something had to be done at that time, because great changes were occurring very quickly and very radically, and people were frightened. So, in 1975 Shirley Walters answered the Tasmanian division of the Liberal Party's call for preselection nominations for the forthcoming Senate election.

At the double dissolution election following the dismissal on 13 December that year, Tasmania returned five Liberal senators of the 10 Senate places then available. Shirley Walters was elected the fifth. This made her the first woman ever to represent Tasmania in the Senate. Such was her popularity within the Tasmanian Liberal party and the wider community, that, as Senator John Watson remarked on the occasion of her valedictory, it soon became apparent that the No. 1 position was for her. She would go on to lead the Tasmanian Liberal Senate ticket at the 1977 election as well as securing the safe second position on the Tasmanian Liberal Senate ticket for both the 1983 and 1987 elections.

Throughout her nearly two decades long Senate career, Shirley Walters was a forceful and articulate advocate for her adopted state of Tasmania and also for issues of conscience and moral issues, which she held dear. She was proudly, unashamedly, a moral conservative. In her first speech to the chamber she remarked that, 'The people of Tasmania are now looking forward to the Liberal government for the equality that our Constitution affords us.' Although she remained a loyal stalwart of the party throughout and beyond her time in this place, she never shied away from what she believed to be her fundamental commitment to the people of Tasmania, crossing the floor on a total of 14 occasions throughout her career. The Fraser government in particular, was a government notable for a large ginger group of Liberal Senate backbenchers, of which Shirley Walters was one. Most notably, she voted against the Constitution alteration bills of 1977 and, in particular, the Constitution Alteration (Simultaneous Elections) Bill of 1977, which would have required that all elections for the Senate be held simultaneously with elections of the House of Representatives. She believed that that would have diminished the power and authority of the Senate as well as being inimical to the interests of a small state like Tasmania, the Senate being, in her firm opinion, as the founding fathers had ordained it to be, the states house. In the debate on the bill on 24 February of that year she declared herself to be 'totally opposed to this bill' and 'firmly committed to the independence of the Senate and the unhampered voice of the smaller States'. She observed:

The Senate is the most significant part of the federal structure. We remember from the great crisis of 1975 how the Senate demonstrated its power to reject a money bill. That power is fundamental and the way it is used depends upon the judgement of the Senate from time to time. These steps—

that is, the proposed constitutional amendment to require the simultaneous election of both houses—

represent the gradual undermining of the Senate preparatory to its abolition.

That was her warning. It is not to be forgotten that in those days the abolition of the Senate was the longstanding policy of the Australian Labor Party. The referendum was held on 21 May 1977, and although the yes vote was strong across the nation, with 62.2 per cent of ballots cast in favour of a yes vote, it was defeated by its failure to achieve the double majority required by section 128 of the Constitution. It was narrowly defeated in Queensland and Western Australia, but in Tasmania, where Shirley Walters led the campaign against the proposal, it was defeated by a whopping 158,818 votes to 82,785 votes—a margin of more than 30 per cent. So, we may say of Shirley Walters that one of her very important legacies was to be at the forefront of the salvation of the Senate, or at least the power of the Senate, from that obnoxious proposal of Mr Fraser's government.

In her maiden speech, Shirley Walters spoke of Tasmania's unparalleled natural beauty but equally of the acute economic challenges facing what she called the south island of Australia. Although many remember her for her staunch social conservatism and her defence of traditional family values, she could just as powerfully hold forth on an immense variety of diverse issues, from health policy to the complexities of the Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme and rising cost of living pressures. Indeed, such was her capacity to speak on a wide variety of topics that former senator Cheryl Kernot, teasingly no doubt, once referred to Senator Walters's unparalleled ability to speak on anything, for any length, at any time, the later the hour the better.

Senator Walters quickly established a reputation as a formidable and hardworking participant in the Senate committee system. She was chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Social Welfare from November 1980 to February 1983, and thereafter served as a deputy chair of that committee until her retirement. During her tenure as chair and no doubt drawing upon her experience as a nurse she was instrumental in the production of landmark reports on youth homelessness, children in institutional care and drug abuse. She also served as chairman of the Library Bicentenary Publications Committee and as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes.

From 1986 to 1988 Shirley Walters served as the appointee of the then Leader of the Opposition, John Howard, to the board of the Bicentennial Authority, established to oversee community activities commemorating the 200th anniversary of European settlement in Australia. However, she was perhaps best known for her efforts to address community concerns about the depiction of violence and the degradation of women in modern media, including through her ultimately unsuccessful Regulation of Video Material Bill, which sought to prohibit the sale and hire of X-rated content in Australia. Notwithstanding her independent streak, in 1988 Shirley Walters was appointed to the then opposition front bench as shadow parliamentary secretary to the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Howard.

When Shirley Walters retired from the Senate in 1993, she did so as a trailblazer for Liberal women. She remained active in the Liberal Party in her home state for the rest of the life. She had served as a member of the Tasmanian Liberal Party state executive in 1981 and 1982. She continued her activism within the Liberal Party branches in Tasmania well into old age. In 2003 she was awarded life membership of the Tasmanian division, the Liberal Party's highest honour. She regularly attended branch meetings well into her 91st year and would often, I am told, telephone her branch president between meetings to provide her knowledgeable input on a broad spectrum of policy.

I met Shirley Walters. I cannot claim to have known her well, but I can well understand why the word often associated with her was 'formidable'. She was a formidable advocate kept for conservative causes, but through her kindness and intelligence she won the respect of her peers from every section of this chamber. She entered politics, as I have said, in reaction to the Whitlam years and in defence of the great values: love of country, of family, of individual freedom, of respect for the constitution, of small government, the values which had inspired the Liberal Party over the generations. As her opposition to the 1977 simultaneous elections referendum showed, she had a very healthy respect for the powers and constitutional status of the Senate.

In her valedictory speech to this chamber, Shirley Walters said, 'I decided that I really loved my country and that I was going to do something about it.' So she did. She will be sadly missed by all who knew her, but most particularly, of course, by her four children, Rob, Pam, Susie and Jim, her 13 grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, to whom, on behalf of the government, I offer our sincerest condolences.