Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment and Water (Senate)) Share this | Hansard source

I rise humbly to associate myself with the remarks in the chamber this afternoon of other senators and pay my respects to the work of this marvellous man, Gordon McIntosh, in this place, in East Timor, on nuclear disarmament issues and as a proud member of the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union. I pass on my sincere condolences to his family and children. He was an important part of history in the Labor Party and in the union movement in Western Australia, being there at a time of union amalgamations, when the Australian Engineering Union amalgamated to become part of the new body, the Amalgamated Metal Workers' Union. Indeed, the branches that he was a member of were the very same branches that I was a member of. Although I was a generation just after Senator Sue Lines in becoming a member of the party, that legacy of activism is something that brought me to this place. Gordon McIntosh's work as a political activist combined trade unionism with industrial rights, with advocating for the industries that he supported, the industries that he was a part of. It combined with other passions, like human rights in Timor-Leste, anti French nuclear testing, nuclear disarmament, trade and the rights of working people, and it is truly a shining example to me and to many other people in the Labor Party and the labour movement of what our labour movement is about.

His vision was of a number of things. He said that union amalgamations were inevitable, and perhaps indeed they are, and he described a 35-hour working week was also inevitable—if only; I hope that is something we can wish for for the people of our nation. Indeed, I agree with his remarks where he once described the legislation proposed by the Fraser government that would have prevented the families of workers involved in strike action from receiving social service benefits as 'one foot on the ladder of fascism'. As senators in this place have highlighted, he was a man of deep values and deep principles that he stuck to until the end. I would very much like to associate myself with this condolence motion today.