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

I rise on behalf of the opposition to acknowledge the passing of another member of the Labor family, the Hon. Gordon Glen Denton Scholes AO, who passed away in December 2018 at the age of 87. At the outset, I convey the opposition's condolences to relatives and friends of Mr Scholes. I particularly acknowledge in the gallery his daughters, Anne and Kerry, who have travelled to be with us here today—proud daughters of a great Labor man and a wonderful Labor parliamentarian.

Gordon Scholes served for 2½ decades in the Australian parliament, a period which coincided with a period of enormous economic and social change, and in many ways he came to symbolise that transition. Like Ben Chifley, he entered the parliament after a career driving trains and left the parliament having held some of the highest offices in the land. Gordon Scholes was the member for Corio in the House of Representatives from 1967 until his retirement in February 1993. Although he had contested the seat against the renowned cyclist Sir Hubert Opperman in 1966, he didn't win the seat until Oppy, as he was known, was appointed as the High Commissioner to Malta in early 1967. His campaign was strongly supported by Gough Whitlam, and the win by Mr Scholes on the back of a swing of more than 11 per cent was seen by many as the beginning of the way back for Labor after the disastrous split.

From his election until his retirement, his principle policy focus was the welfare of working-class people, who had to battle to sustain a reasonable standard of living, and this was evident in his first speech. Unlike the contemporary practice, where first speeches are often replete with noble sentiment and high aspiration, first speeches at that time addressed the more practical legislative issues of the day, yet Mr Scholes found a place in his speech on the 1967 budget—delivered, of course, in Old Parliament House—to advance his view that a primary role of the parliament was to legislate the social services that protect the nation's standard of living and to restore the economic and political liberties of the nation's First Peoples. He was an early advocate Aboriginal rights. In his final speech—delivered in this house—Gordon Scholes again addressed the need for parliament to improve the processes that enable it to deliver on its primary function, legislation.

Gordon Scholes became Speaker of the House of Representatives in February 1975, guiding the House through the tumultuous events of November 1975 and standing down from the position in February 1976. He was also Minister for Defence in the first Hawke ministry from March 1983 until December 1984 and Minister for Territories until 1987. It was from that office that he laid the building blocks of self-government for the Australian Capital Territory. A man of integrity, humanity and humility, Mr Scholes filled each of these roles with a quiet, purposeful dignity, and although he had left the federal parliamentary Labor Party caucus almost a decade before I took my place in the Senate, his reputation was his legacy, and I am proud, as are others on this side, to belong to a great Labor tradition of which he was such a loyal and hardworking member.

Gordon Scholes was born into the Great Depression, the global economic disaster that affected virtually every family in this country, and his family was no exception. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather all worked for the Victorian Railways: his father as a ganger and his antecedents as station masters. Being a ganger meant his father was always on the move, and this led to Mr Scholes spending long periods of his childhood living with uncles, aunts and other family members. His disrupted family life and uneven educational opportunities meant that by the end of 1939 he had undergone little more than two years education but at five different schools. He then attended a number of Catholic schools, including St Ambrose's in Brunswick, which had the distinction of including John Curtin and BA Santamaria amongst its alumni.

By the time he had finished school at age 15 he had attended some 16 schools, but he wasn't awarded the merit certificate, as it was then called, on the completion of grade 8 because he had not attended each of the previous two years continuously. He had spent several months in the children's hospital in Melbourne. Mr Scholes was determined that the same disruption would not affect his own family. He and his wife, Dell, worked together to ensure that their daughters, Kerry and Anne, enjoyed the stability, the lack of which he lamented.

After a short stint at the Daylesford Technical High School, he took his first job at the woollen mills. And his final exposure to the education system formally was the Ballarat School of Mines in 1948, where he did a night course in fitting and turning. But the railways were in his blood. It wasn't long before he joined the Victorian Railways to become, first of all, a locomotive fireman, shovelling some 40 tonnes of coal into the steam locomotives between Melbourne and Wodonga and finally earning his drivers ticket to achieve his childhood ambition to stand on the footplate as the driver of the Spirit of Progresswell named!

Gordon Scholes was a keen sportsman, a passion he pursued throughout his life. He was an Australian Rules footballer and an avid Cats supporter—but we still like him. He was a low handicapper and pennant golfer, and a king of the snooker table. He won the Parliament House championship at Old Parliament House in 1981, but I understand he was most renowned as a boxer. I'm not sure how many members of parliament have made it to the Melbourne Sporting Globe, a famous, but now defunct, pink tabloid. But he did in 1949, when he won the Victorian amateur heavyweight championship. A short quote from the Globe gives you the flavour of the journal: 'As soon as he felt that Green, his opponent, was anchored, Scholes started a right from behind his heels that landed in Green's dining room. I feel for Green.'

Mr Scholes had an unusual and rather vivid knowledge of world affairs that would resonate in the contemporary world of electronic media and constant visual images. During his layovers in Melbourne between driving the Spirit of Progress down from Wodonga then back up again, he would sit in the old Century Newsreel Theatre in Swanston Street or the Tatler Newsreels Theatrette in the basement of the Australia Hotel in Collins Street watching Movietone newsreels—no bars, but rather continuous self-improvement, and his memory for detail was amazing.

While stationed in Wodonga, Gordon Scholes joined our party, the Australian Labor Party. He had been active in the AFULE, the Australian Federated Union of Locomotive Employees, the world's oldest railway union, founded in 1861. Moving to Geelong in the late 1950s, he joined the local branch and then, as an AFULE member, became a delegate to the Geelong Trades Hall Council. He was vice-president from 1964 and President from 1965 to 1967.

His path to federal politics began in the early 1960s with a local issue—the survival of a kindergarten. Even though they hadn't funded it, the local council, controlled by the conservatives, at the time decided to close it down anyway. They ignored the pleas of the local community, but they hadn't reckoned with Gordon Scholes. They reversed their decision, he was elected to council and, two years later to the day, he was elected as the federal member for Corio.

The parliamentary career of Gordon Scholes was one of dogged determination; a determination to represent his electors and to anchor, to the best of his ability, a stable and progressive Labor government. That became increasingly trickier as 1975 unfolded, though his steady hand on the tiller of the Speakership certainly protected the dignity and proper functioning of the House of Representatives. The terrible events of 11 November 1975 have been recorded many times and I don't propose to rehearse them today; suffice to say Mr Scholes could never bring himself to forgive the profound discourtesy shown by the then Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, to the parliament. Kerr pointedly refused to meet the Speaker when Mr Scholes called on him to inform him that the person whom he had appointed behind the back of the elected Prime Minister had lost the confidence of the House and, hence, had no right to advise an election. He was kept waiting for over an hour, during which time the writs were issued.

In the first Hawke government, Mr Scholes was a diligent and hardworking minister, serious to the point of diffidence. His proudest achievement, in many ways, was to have persuaded Whitlam to establish Deakin University, which transformed Geelong into a university town, allowing local students to attend university close to home rather than having to board in Melbourne to attend Melbourne, Monash, RMIT or Swinburne. I also am advised that, in his life after politics, he was an avid stamp collector and a recognised expert on what are known as 'Australian colonial covers' and what are known as 'half lengths', which those who have his interest and knowledge of the philatelic world will know is impressive. It's a kind of historical echo which, in his understated way, Mr Scholes particularly enjoyed. Following his retirement, he remained active in our party, mentoring a number of aspiring politicians at both the state and the federal level. Of course, he was a devoted family man, showering his family with the love, affection and stability that may have been absent for some of his own peripatetic childhood.

Gordon Scholes was an honourable man. He had an abiding care for people, especially those who were down on their luck. He knew what hardship was like and he worked tirelessly for the betterment of working people and their families. Paul Keating summed up his career succinctly when he said, on the last sitting day of 1992, that Mr Scholes had acquitted himself 'with great dignity, thoughtfully and carefully'. Dignity, thoughtfulness and care make a fine epitaph for a fine man. I again express our sympathy to his family and friends.

Question agreed to, honourable senators standing in their places.