Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with deep regret that I inform the Senate of the death, on 14 March 2008, of the Hon. Clyde Robert Cameron AO, a former minister and member of the House of Representatives for the division of Hindmarsh, South Australia, from 1949 to 1980. I call the Leader of the Government in the Senate.

Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate records its deep regret at the death, on 14 March 2008, of the Honourable Clyde Robert Cameron AO, former federal minister and member for Hindmarsh, and places on record its appreciation of his long and meritorious public service and tenders its profound sympathy to his family in their bereavement.

It was said on the occasion of his retirement from federal politics that Clyde Cameron was not only a giant of the Labor Party and the labour movement but also a giant of the Commonwealth parliament. Today we pay tribute to the life of one of this nation’s great political figures: a shearer who worked his way up to the front bench of the Whitlam government. The ALP and the labour movement were a major part of Clyde Cameron’s life, and over the past 70 years he played an important role in their history and controversies and, in turn, he played a significant role in the history of the nation.

The eldest of four boys, Clyde Robert Cameron was born into a poor family in South Australia in 1913. His father was a shearer, and one of the foundation members of the original Australian Shearers Union, while his mother was the daughter of a wealthy land-owning family.  Clyde left school at 15 to work as a rouseabout and a shearer. He travelled with shearing teams around Australia and New Zealand. However, it was the time of the Great Depression, and Clyde spent much of this period unemployed. When he was working he faced low pay and very tough conditions.

The experience of that struggle affected Clyde Cameron deeply and instilled in him a real class-consciousness and a deep commitment to the labour movement and the ALP as a vehicle for change. He was a true Fabian socialist and, while Australian society and politics changed dramatically over his long lifetime, he always remained committed and resolute in his political philosophy.

Unsurprisingly, Clyde quickly became active in his own union, the AWU, and was a regular stump speaker in Adelaide’s Botanical Park. He got his first full-time union job at the age of 25 when he was elected to the position of an AWU organiser. He was a successful organiser, and only two years later he found himself serving as secretary of the South Australian branch and as federal vice-president of the AWU. In 1946, at the age of 33, he became president of the South Australian branch—then the youngest president in its history.

Under Clyde Cameron, the AWU began a huge recruitment and organising drive that saw its membership more than double, and working conditions in its industry improved considerably by the time he was elected to parliament. A man of very committed democratic values, Clyde was well known for his fight for proper process in the AWU.

At the same time, Clyde was working his way up through the ranks of the Labor Party. From 1946 he served in three separate periods as president of the South Australian branch of the ALP. He was its representative on the ALP federal executive from 1970 to 1972 and was a South Australian delegate to the ALP federal conference from 1948 to 1977. In 1949 Clyde was elected to the House of Representatives as the member for Hindmarsh, in the same election that the Chifley Labor government lost power. He served the people of Hindmarsh for the next 31 years, the vast majority in opposition.

Clyde once recalled how, when he was a young rousteabout, he would dream about making speeches in parliament denouncing man’s inhumanity to man. ‘I was so disappointed when I woke up,’ he said, ‘I wished I could go back to sleep again to carry on the dream.’ But when he finally made it into parliament he soon developed a reputation as one of the finest and funniest orators there, as well as being an aggressive political opponent. Clyde Cameron, with all due respect, hated the conservatives and made no attempt to hide it. As I said, unfortunately he spent 28 of his 31 years in parliament in opposition. But he was a leading figure in the federal ALP caucus, he played a major role in many of the political events that shaped the party’s history and he was regarded by many as a controversial figure but certainly one who made a contribution in every way.

Along with being an excellent parliamentarian, Clyde Cameron was a pragmatist. While he never swerved from his political beliefs, he also understood that in order for the ALP to win government it needed to modernise and to broaden its appeal. Clyde’s support for organisational reform was critical in paving the way to Labor’s 1972 election win and he was thereafter known in the party as one of the principal architects of victory.

At the age of 58, Clyde Cameron was appointed minister for labour in the new Whitlam government, a role he had spent his lifetime preparing for. He later, for a period, was also minister for immigration—one of my predecessors. The legacy from his 2½ years as minister for labour is impressive. He was responsible for pushing through the equal pay cases that brought an end to discrimination against women in terms of their pay. Significantly, it was Clyde who appointed Mary Gaudron to prosecute the cases before the arbitration commission. As senators would be aware, Mary Gaudron later went on to become Australia’s first female High Court justice.

Clyde also oversaw the improvement of pay and conditions for the Public Service, which, given some of his stances on the role of public servants, might be surprising. But he did do an awful lot to improve Public Service conditions, including increasing annual leave from three weeks to four, as well as the introduction of paid maternity leave and of flexitime, although he later claimed to have regretted that particular initiative. His other achievements as labour minister included wage indexation and, of course, trade union training. The Trade Union Training College at Albury-Wodonga was named after him, and he made an enormous contribution to the labour cause in that role.

His time as minister, like that of the Whitlam government he served, was marked by controversy. In 1975 he was transferred—I think that is the polite word—to the portfolio of Science and Consumer Affairs, after strongly resisting Whitlam’s attempts to move him out of the Labour and Immigration portfolio. Following the loss of the Whitlam government, he retired to the backbench. He stayed there until he left federal politics in 1980.

In 1982 he was awarded the Order of Australia and in 2006 he was awarded life membership of the Australian Labor Party. Unsurprisingly, Clyde Cameron remained active and outspoken well into his later years. He became an important political historian. He was particularly passionate about the history of the ALP and the period around the 1975 dismissal of the Whitlam government. He wrote several books on Australian political history but he also, importantly, recorded more than 600 hours of conversations with his contemporaries from both sides of politics that are currently stored in the National Library. Clyde Cameron once said, ‘I feel confident that the things that I write will be more important to history than anything that I said in the 31 years I was in parliament.’ Perhaps that is a lesson for us all.

I think history will show that Australian politics lost a rare character the day that Clyde Cameron retired from parliament—the sort of character we do not tend to see in Australian politics these days. He was from the old school of Labor politicians who had worked themselves up from the—in his case, shearing—floors. He became involved in politics at a time when there was a fierce and palpable class divide in this country. He had a very deep passion and empathy for working people. Throughout his work as a shearer, a unionist, a politician and, finally, as a federal minister, Clyde Cameron was always a committed fighter for workers’ rights. Australia’s working class has indeed lost one of its true champions.

Clyde Cameron passed away on 14 March 2008. Aged 95, he was Australia’s oldest former parliamentarian. On behalf of the government, I offer my sincerest condolences to his wife, Doris, his children, Warren, Tania and Noel, and all the grandchildren. Clyde Cameron had a remarkable life. He made an enormous contribution to Australian politics. He will be sorely missed by his family and friends.

Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on behalf of the coalition to support the motion moved by Senator Evans and to extend our sincere sympathies to the family of Clyde Cameron upon his very sad passing on 14 March, last Friday, at the great age of 95. It is particular poignant for me to be doing this, as a fellow South Australian and someone who knew Clyde and greatly admired him and all that he had done for his state, for Australia and for his party. I think it can properly be said that my state of South Australia has indeed lost one of its greatest sons. As Kim Beazley Sr might have said, there is no doubt that Clyde Cameron represented the cream of the working class and certainly not the dregs of the middle class. It was quite a remarkable political career: for someone like Clyde to spend nearly 31 years in parliament representing the one seat, of Hindmarsh, and to spend nearly 28 of those in opposition is extraordinary. To have only three years in government, and a very turbulent three years at that, showed an extraordinary tenacity and commitment to his cause.

I was here at the Australian National University doing economics and law when Clyde and Gough and the rest were in government and it was quite fascinating almost every day to follow the saga of the then Whitlam government in which Clyde Cameron featured so significantly. Many of us thought that many of the things that he was trying to do in the labour portfolio, which might have been good for workers, would end up destroying the economy. Having spent so long in opposition, the government was desperate to try to do everything it could as quickly as possible.

But, as a human being, it was very sad, frankly, that someone like Clyde Cameron could have only three years in government. As I said, he was the member for Hindmarsh for nearly 31 years and we in the Liberal Party in South Australia regarded Hindmarsh as a great Labor stronghold. I must say that one of my proudest achievements as state director of the Liberal Party was the day we won Hindmarsh from Labor in 1993. In an election that was otherwise a disaster for the Liberal Party, we actually managed to take from the Labor Party the seat of Hindmarsh, that great bastion of the Cameron Labor Party.

My connection to the Camerons was formed through not only knowing Clyde but also becoming a good friend of Terry Cameron, who was my counterpart when he was state secretary of the Labor Party while I was state director of the Liberal Party. Terry and I were of course combatants but we actually got on very well behind the scenes, and there are some stories to tell there. As is the way sometimes with the Labor Party, Terry, Clyde’s nephew, fell out with the Labor Party and then sat as an Independent, having been elected to the Legislative Council as a Labor member.

Clyde had the remarkable capacity to have strong friendships across the political divide, and as I say, there was his nephew Terry. One of my most vivid memories was being up at Alexander Downer’s home and seeing Lady Mary Downer, Alexander’s mother, sitting on the sofa with Clyde, having a whale of a time. There was quite an extraordinary bond between Clyde Cameron and Lady Mary Downer. They were the deepest of friends, yet they came from quite different political and other spectrums. It was a measure of the man that that sort of divide meant nothing to him and he formed very strong friendships right across the divide.

I look forward to representing the federal opposition at Clyde Cameron’s funeral on Thursday and also in my role as the senior South Australian Liberal federal member. It will be a time to celebrate a great life, albeit of someone on the opposite side of politics from me. He was someone who made an extraordinary contribution to public life. He had great dedication to his party and his cause and he was a person to be admired by everybody. To his wife, Doris, and to Clyde’s children, I place on record the opposition’s appreciation of Clyde’s long and meritorious public service and we tender our profound sympathy to the family in their bereavement.

Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to support this condolence motion on behalf of the Democrats and make some personal comments of my own. This condolence debate does indeed relate to what is literally the passing of an era. Clyde Cameron was the last surviving member of the parliament that was elected in 1949. He had the misfortune to enter the parliament at the very outset of 23 years of unbroken opposition. For those in the ALP who have felt it was fairly tiring being in opposition over the last 11 or so years, Clyde Cameron had it literally twice as bad over a 23-year period before he finally spent just a few years in government as a minister. He did play an important role as minister for labour from 1972 and it is apt in some respects that this week we will be having further significant debates around labour laws, now called workplace relations laws. He also took over the equally important role of minister for immigration. This was an era when the immigration ministry and law were still very much developing. He took over that role after the 1974 election.

In other ways also Clyde Cameron represents the passing of an era. He had many experiences that few of us in this parliament, or indeed few of us in the wider community, have had. Fewer and fewer people have had such direct and visceral experiences of the Great Depression. It is just a phrase that is mentioned with a wave of the hand almost these days and it is easy today not to fully appreciate just how extraordinary the Depression era was, just how incredibly destructive it was for many families and just how enormous the depths of poverty and difficulty were that many people went through. There is no doubt that that experience through the Depression era was a strongly formative experience for Clyde Cameron. I often wonder when I read a little bit about what the Depression era was like—the enormous queues for the unemployed, the more limited support that people received when they were unemployed, the meagre support that families received and the huge areas where unemployed men lived in quarters on their own, travelling from place to place looking for work—how our society would cope if we did experience such depths of economic difficulty again. Of course we all hope that that will never occur. But it was a formative experience for many people including of course Clyde Cameron, and it led, at least in part, to the very strong political feelings he had.

Another historic era in which Clyde Cameron was heavily involved was the split of the Labor Party in the mid-1950s. A couple of people have already mentioned his ability to have friendships across the political divide, despite the fact that he was known as and commented on as being a very strong ‘hater’. Of these friendships that developed over time, the most remarkable, perhaps even more so than the example of Lady Downer, was the one he ended up having with Bob Santamaria, who was very much a pivotal figure on the opposite side of the extremely bitter split in the Labor Party in the mid-1950s.

It is interesting to read some of the things that Clyde Cameron wrote in his eulogy on Bob Santamaria, particularly since he very strongly and stridently disagreed with the views of not just Santamaria but also others on the side of the Catholic Social Movement, or the Movement, as it was known, in the 1950s. Clyde Cameron stated that, whilst he strongly disagreed with Santamaria, he believed that he was ‘honestly wrong’ in the views he held, and that he preferred a person who honestly held their views, even if they were wrong, over somebody who held views that he agreed with but who held them ‘dishonestly’ because they felt it would favour their advancement. From what I have read in the past and over the last few days, the part of his character that sticks out most strongly is that commitment to intellectual honesty, to what he believed was right rather than just how the political winds were blowing.

It is an interesting exercise, obviously completely hypothetical, to ponder how things might have panned out if that huge split had not happened in the 1950s. It is a reminder that political and ideological fault lines can shift over time—so much so that, in the final decade or so of Clyde Cameron’s life, many of the concerns that he expressed were very similar to those expressed by those on the opposite side of the split in the 1950s. I particularly note a letter he wrote to the newsletter of the National Civic Council in 2001 praising them for publishing a special edition ‘against economic rationalists who favoured the globalisation of corporate capitalism’ and who were supportive of foreign multinationals shifting Australian industries to other areas with cheap labour costs. He also had strong concerns about the ‘globalisation of corporate power’, to use his words, which aligned with the views of Bob Santamaria, who voiced similar concerns for a long period of time. Indeed, he went so far as to describe Santamaria upon his death as an idol to those who held on to their belief in the traditional principles of the Labor Party.

As someone outside of the Labor Party I am not passing comment on all the different battles and perspectives going back over so many fascinating decades, although I do have some insight from the outside of that split in the fifties; I simply want to highlight the enormous spectrum of events that Clyde Cameron’s life encompassed and the strength of his views over such a long period of time. It is, I think, worth while noting these things, not just as a way of describing milestones in certain people’s lives or various things they said at various times but also as a way of learning from their lives. For me that is part and parcel of the importance of condolence motions. The benefit of looking back at a person’s life is seeing what lessons we can learn from it, what things we can apply to the modern era.

Whilst many things have changed dramatically since Clyde Cameron’s era, many of the lessons are still the same—such as the strong concern he had, as he wrote:

… over the way politics have deteriorated to a position that is now a contest between the rich and the poor; the privileged and the underprivileged; the exploiters and the exploited; the tax avoiders and the taxpayers; the greedy and the needy; the buyers of labour and the sellers of labour, with the odds always stacked up in favour of the first party …

It is fairly clear from his words that Clyde Cameron’s sympathies lay very much with the second party in each of those examples: the underprivileged, the exploited, the needy, those who are in most need of support. That was a constant strand throughout Clyde Cameron’s life, and I think is important to look at that consistency. Political currents shift over time, but maintaining that consistency of principle and intellectual honesty is an important lesson for all of us when we look back on what was an extraordinary life, including but not limited to a very significant period of 31 years in the federal parliament.

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on behalf of the National Party to acknowledge the extraordinary contribution to public life made by Clyde Cameron. Mr Cameron, a cabinet minister in the Whitlam government and a member of parliament from 1949 to 1980, died at his Adelaide home at the age of 95. That was 31 years in parliament, 23 or so of which were in opposition—I do not think anyone would envy that. Obviously, this was a man of incredible capacity, passion and commitment. He was the son of a Scottish shearer and a shearer himself before entering the union movement, where he was the most influential South Australian Labor powerbroker. During his time in politics, he achieved the position of Minister for Labour and Immigration. Mr Cameron won the West Adelaide seat of Hindmarsh in 1949 and retained it through 13 consecutive elections before retiring. During his 31 years in parliament, Clyde Cameron, as I said, spent 23 years or so in opposition. To continue to make an impact on politics throughout that time is, I think, the envy of the people who find themselves on this side of the chamber.

Clyde Cameron was a legend amongst the true believers of Labor politics. He left school at the age of 14, on the eve of the Great Depression. He found work in the shearing sheds across south-east Australia and in New Zealand. Someone leaving school at the age of 14 and later becoming a federal minister is, I think, just an absolutely extraordinary achievement. He lived through two world wars and deployments in Korea, what was then Malaya and Vietnam. These were of course the subject of significant discussions in parliament and public life, and history records that he made an incredible contribution to those debates.

He worked as a shearer and in the shearing industry through the Great Depression. That time was obviously fundamental in cementing Clyde Cameron’s beliefs in the deficiencies of capitalism and his path towards a leading role within the Australian Workers Union. This prominence led to Clyde Cameron being acknowledged as the most influential figure in the South Australian Labor Party and ultimately being elected to the House of Representatives in 1949.

He achieved striking advances in the areas of wage justice and trade union reform during his 2½ years in charge of industrial relations in the Whitlam cabinet. He pushed through equal pay for women in 1973 followed by an increase in the female minimum wage a year later, and he won better pay and conditions for Commonwealth public servants, knowing their gains would flow on to the private sector.

Clyde Cameron was also known to be a hard man, and he fell out with many ALP figures, including Gough Whitlam. I read a description that said the softest part of Clyde Cameron was, in fact, his teeth. I can understand that a man who had come through so much, and because of his upbringing, would have some absolutely fundamental beliefs and that whether he was arguing with the Prime Minister of the time or anybody he would stick to those beliefs. That character of a man has to be admired by the wider Australian community.

He was also a very compassionate man and believed passionately in building the social fabric of Australia. Clearly Clyde Cameron was a man who brought to this place a series of priorities—as many of us like to do—and those priorities were for those in the most need. It was the most needy in the community that he spent his time focusing on.

Clyde Cameron was most likely not the best friend of many of the Nationals or Country Party members and voters, certainly at that time. But he will be remembered as either a loyal friend or a formidable enemy, depending upon which side of the argument you found yourself. On behalf of the National Party I extend my condolences to the family of Clyde Cameron and acknowledge the extraordinary contribution he made to Australian public life.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I understand that other senators wish to make contributions to this condolence motion at a later hour of the day. With the concurrence of the Senate I propose to call for further speakers after motions to take note of answers.