Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the opposition, I would like to convey our condolences to Barney Cooney's family. I had the great pleasure of knowing Barney over many, many years. I offer these remarks in the context of that knowledge and will concentrate on the areas of work that we did together. I don't want to take away from the work that he did in so many other areas. It's the nature of these types of discussions that one invariably concentrates on aspects of people's lives and, without meaning to, neglects so many other areas of their lives that are very, very important. I don't often contribute in condolence debates, so this is a particular exception. Because of the nature of Barney's contribution, I made a particular point of seeking to make this representation to the Senate.

Barney was a prominent member of the generation of Labor politicians who, I think, played a critical role in casting off the legacies of the 1950s split in the Labor Party. He joined the Labor Party in 1964. He was in fact made a life member in 2004. His contribution and that of his generation were that they paved the way for the return of the Labor Party to power, nationally under Gough Whitlam and in Victoria under John Cain.

Barney was also a very proud member of the Socialist Left in Victoria. Some people regarded this as ironic. I never did. He was at heart a democratic socialist who upheld core Labor values, but he was also deeply religious. He remained a devout Catholic throughout his life. And Barney himself saw no contradiction between his faith and his politics. Many people once saw that there was this fundamental gap. I trust that few do today. The fact that they have seen this change is a legacy of the work that people like Barney undertook—that is, to overcome the sectarian nature of the split. Those who thought that way of Barney's belief paradoxically failed to grasp that there are more paths to a vision of a better Australia than those shared by those of the doctrinaire views of the Left. You don't have to be a card-carrying member of the atheist brigade to appreciate the fact that tolerance and respect for others are not confined to one particular variety of views.

Many on the Left have thought that bigotry was the preserve of the churches. It's not. It can be found in many groups of people who adopt a very blinkered view of the way in which the world works. Barney was one of those people who are able to encounter that blinkered view and overcome it. I think it was because of the way in which he was able to interact with people that he was able to get on so well with people of so many different strands of thought. People like him, Catholics who remained in the Labor Party rather than joining the DLP—Arthur Calwell might be thought of as another—endured a hostility not just within sections of the Labor movement but within the church itself. It was in large part because of the example set by people like Barney that they were able to overcome old animosities and consign that view to the past. The golden thread, as I saw it, in Barney's work was his commitment to social justice and the defence of working people—and Senator Cormann outlined that in his contribution today. From the very time Barney entered university, in his training at Newman College, it became consistent with his understanding of the Catholic faith; indeed, it may well be argued that it arose from it. He believed that all people had an inherent dignity because, as he would put it, they were made in the image of his god.

Barney never chose to wear his religion on his sleeve, but it is important, if you are to understand his politics, to understand his deep religious conviction. For Barney, the implications of this belief were absolutely clear. He was never afraid to stand with those that had been socially ostracised or those that had been consigned to the margins of society, and that included some in the industrial wing of the Labor movement whose militancy and fondness for plain speaking did not always endear them to others in the Labor Party, let alone to conservatives. These were people that were unashamedly Barney's comrades. They were his close friends: people like Wally Curran, the secretary of the meatworkers union, for instance, with whom he had a very, very close personal relationship. There were people like Tom Ryan, the long-serving secretary of the Food Preservers' Union—people like Peter Marshall, secretary of the firefighters union.

Even if he had never served in this chamber, Barney would be remembered as a great defender of the union movement and as an advocate for workers' rights. That's evident not only in his cases as a lawyer but in his working with people like Graham Bird from the meatworkers union or Jenny Doran from the Australian Council of Trade Unions. Barney chaired an inquiry into workers' compensation, and that work led to a comprehensive overhaul of the workers' comp laws in the state of Victoria. That report—along with a fair bit of political struggle, I might add—became the basis of the present WorkCover system in Victoria.

Barney was widely respected across the Labor movement, and I mean widely respected across the Labor movement, for a combination of these qualities. And, of course, these are the same qualities that made him stand out in this chamber. He was conspicuous for his grace as well as his courage, for his courtesy and his generosity of spirit, and that was shown to all.

Late in his time here, he wrote:

Courtesy and grace are forever needed in debate. A civil society cannot be at its best unless its constituents treat each other civilly.

That Barney lived this prescription was acknowledged by those who reported on this parliament and by those who served in it. Alex Kirk, the ABC journalist, described him as a man 'who never descends into vitriol, who bears no grudges and doesn't say a bad word about anyone'.

Senators on the other side of the chamber tended to agree. Amanda Vanstone, who was noted, I think, for her ability to come up with a quick barb, seemed in an interview with Alex Kirk to have a soft spot for Barney. She said:

I think the real reason is all of us in Parliament have got a mixture of politician and parliamentarian, and Barney's got the highest portion of the latter that I've come across.

Barney's courtesy and respect for others was learned early in life, and these points have been made. He was born on King Island in Tasmania with his father, Bernard, a branch manager for the Commercial Bank. The family's Irish forebears were connected in Tasmania dating back to the 1820s, and in 1937 they were transferred through to the Mallee in western Victoria.

On this period, points have been made. I think that Senator Cormann drew upon the notes that were distributed on this matter. In the wake of the Depression there were still many, many people wandering the back roads of the Mallee, and they'd often visit the family home asking for food. Barney's political awakening was found in this experience. He said that the courtesy and kindness shown to the itinerant men by his mother, Corrie, formed a lasting impression on him. In this interview with Alex Kirk, he remembered it this way:

They'd come to the door, knock on the door, and ask for something to eat and something to drink. The sort of thing, I suppose, that Henry Lawson used to describe in his story. She would always give them work if she could, chopping the wood, that gave them dignity and she'd always give them supper, no matter who they were, because they were human beings and in many cases they were return soldiers from World War I and many of the younger ones were going to be soldiers in World War II. That was always a lesson to me, that no matter who you were, you were entitled to be treated in a particular way.

The Cooney family later moved to the city, and they ran a milk bar in South Melbourne. Upon Barney's father's death, Corrie kept up the business until her own death in 1968.

Barney attended St Kevin's College from 1947 through to '52, and he won a Commonwealth scholarship—I think that's important: he actually won a Commonwealth scholarship—to study arts and law at the University of Melbourne, where he did his national service and took up boxing. Active in undergraduate life, he was particularly active in the ALP Club and the Newman Society. Barney was admitted to the bar in 1961. He remained on the bar roll throughout his political career and after his retirement from politics, when he continued to do pro bono work. I can tell you there were many people who simply could not afford a lawyer who turned to him and received that legal assistance.

Within the Victorian ALP, Barney was originally a member of what was known as the Participants, which became the Independent faction after the intervention in the Victorian branch by the ALP federal executive in 1970. The Independents came to hold the balance of power between the Left and the Right in the 1970s, including many who were associated with Labor's return to power: John Button, John Cain, Michael Duffy and Richard McGarvie. Barney was elected to the ALP state Administrative Committee as an Independent, but didn't stay that long with that faction. He joined the Socialist Left in 1994, and, of course, remained with that to his death.

He was by then a member of the Senate. He was elected in 1985, with a No. 3 on the ticket. He actually had been selected on the Socialist Left spot on the ticket. It's a measure of the high regard in which he was held that he won preselection after an intense battle between two leading members of the Left, Bruce Hartnett and Bill Hartley. Each of them was vying for that spot.

Barney was a widely-welcomed compromise candidate—I say that in the very best sense of the term. At the time of his election he was 50. He came equipped with more than 20 years experience resolving workers' legal problems. In his first speech, Barney quoted the often abused term from Lord Acton, the famous dictum of 'power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely'. He turned that on its head and he said: 'If power corrupts, then the lack of power corrodes absolutely.' Barney said that those in Australia who lack power to give at least minimum expression to their needs, included Indigenous people, the unemployed and the non-English speaking migrants, especially women:

The more they can be effectively equipped with power the more likely it is that their social distress will be abated and the community as a whole benefit.

From that fundamental commitment, he never wavered in the 17 years he was in this chamber. I think he regarded this Senate as actually the best place to check the abuses of power, particularly because of this chamber's committee system.

Barney chaired seven committees, and he's best remembered for his outstanding work on the Scrutiny of Bills Committee. We should all remember that that committee's primary function is to guard against legislation which would trespass unduly on personal rights and liberties, and that, of course, reflected his own deepest personal instincts. Barney was not afraid, however, to criticise people in authority, even in the Labor Party—particularly when he felt they'd transgressed on those fundamental principles. In caucus, he opposed the Hawke government's proposed national identity card, which he described publicly as an Orwellian measure. He said, 'You should never need a licence to be a citizen.'

During his final years in the Senate, Barney was greatly disturbed by the increasing amount of legislation under the Howard government, particularly on asylum seekers and on measures against terrorism, that he regarded as curbing the rights of the individual. Speaking on various antiterrorism measures, he warned:

What happens with legislation is that it creeps. You cannot look at legislation simply in terms of what is happening now, you have to look at what might happen later on. Once you proscribe an organisation, people say ‘that’s how things are done’. What was put in as an exception originally becomes the precedent for more and more power to be given to the executive, and that is a real problem.

Barney was so well regarded across this parliament. I think that will become apparent if others speak on this matter, but there is ample evidence of that. He was noted for his loyalty, not just to his caucus colleagues but particularly to staff. I want to emphasise this point. Many people who worked on this side of the chamber and who are now quite senior politicians have said to me that his courtesy, in terms of the way he treated individual staff members and officials of this parliament, has to be acknowledged. I must say: all too often in this place we hear of examples where members of this parliament fail to fulfil their obligations in that regard. During his valedictory speech, as has already been indicated, he made the point of tabling the phone directory in case he forgot anybody.

Barney's goodwill was also the source of some frustration.

Senator Jacinta Collins interjecting—

Yes, it's true, Senator Collins. I'll relay this story: he was not the person to be trusted with an attack question. From time to time, as we all know, the opposition will choose to seek out a minister who's weak or in trouble and make the point politically. Barney was, on occasion, given such an attack question, and I recall—