David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I just want to make a few remarks to join my colleagues in remembering the Hon. Kevin Andrews. I first met Kevin when I came here as a member of the House of Representatives in 2004, when he was a minister in the Howard government. As my colleagues have said, even then he was somebody who was well known and to be looked up to and respected. A point of connection that I had with him was not only being a person of faith but also the commitment to families. When the then Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, appointed me to chair the backbench committee overseeing the implementation of family relationship centres, I found I had a very common cause with Kevin around the value of seeking to empower and enable people to hang in there with marriages as opposed to seeing the rate of marriage breakdown and family breakup rise. We built a good relationship over those issues at that time.

I then encountered Kevin after I left this place after the 2007 election and came back as a senator when he became the defence minister, and I had a fair bit to do with him. Some of the achievements that he had during that time, I think, were things like the naval shipbuilding plan for Australia, which was putting in place a framework to have an ongoing industry base to build ships in a sustainable manner which lowered risk and cost. Some of those sorts of achievements, I think, have been overshadowed by subsequent events, but he had a very strategic mind and sought to make those kinds of long-term changes as opposed to just the quick political wins that so many people accuse politicians of.

It's been mentioned a couple of times that Kevin saw work in the parliament as a vocation and not a career, and I think it's a mark of the character of the man that, when he was not reappointed in the Defence portfolio and went to the backbench, rather than becoming bitter—which I have seen in far too many people in this place—he looked for new opportunities to serve. As the then chair of the parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Kevin indicated that he wished to come and serve on that committee, and he particularly wished to serve on the human rights committee. In that role, he took on, as members have mentioned here, the inquiry looking into autonomous sanctions known as the Magnitsky sanctions, but he also did a power of work looking at freedom of religion and belief. Kevin understood, as one of our former eminent judges has said, that, if you don't have freedom of belief and conscience and religion, you don't have freedom at all. He was diligent to understand the state of freedom of religion and belief in this nation and the steps that we may need to take moving forward. Much of that overlapped with the work that Mr Ruddock and his expert panel did during that time.

Kevin also reached out to many of the diaspora communities in Australia who were suffering persecution, even though they were living here, from agencies from their countries of origin, and he also did a power of work supporting women and girls in the Pacific. I just think it's a mark of the man that, while many would have been bitter and decided to move on and do other things, he continued to look for the opportunity not only to serve the constituents of his seat of Menzies but also to provide leadership in the capacities where he had the opportunity in this parliament.

We have seriously lost a good man in Kevin. I was privileged to have him as a colleague and a friend and a mentor over a couple of decades. My sincere condolences to Margie and the family. Vale, the Hon. Kevin Andrews.