Judith Troeth (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with deep regret that I inform the Senate of the death, on 8 April 2008, of Senator the Hon. John Norman Button, a senator for the state of Victoria from 1974 to 1993. 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 8 April 2008, of the Honourable John Norman Button, former federal minister and senator for Victoria, and places on record its appreciation of his long and meritorious public service and tenders its profound sympathy to his family in their bereavement.

Today we note the passing of a great Australian, Labor Party activist, senator for Victoria for 19 years and one of the most eminent industry ministers in our nation’s history. It has not been a good parliamentary break for the Labor Party, having lost Ruth Coleman and John Button. Although John Button was small of stature, he was a giant of the Labor Party. In tributes to John Button, he has also been described as a rare phenomenon in Australian politics, someone who commanded the affection and respect of people throughout the country and not just in political circles. You certainly got a sense of this at his funeral last month, which I had the honour of attending, along with the Deputy Prime Minister and many other members of the government. The Labor Party generally respects its former leaders and senior figures very well. I think many of the Liberal Party wish that they also did in that regard.

It was a great funeral. I know I should not describe a funeral in that way, but it was a great celebration of a life, a great celebration of John Button’s contribution, his energy and his humour. The church was packed to the brim, with mourners also outside. In this parliament a number of the support staff who worked at Parliament House when John was a minister came and sat in my office to watch coverage of the funeral service on TV. It shows the sort of affection in which he was held, and everyone had a John Button story. As I said, the funeral was a great celebration. The speeches were fantastic and the best was delivered by Bill Hayden, the former Governor-General, former Leader of the Opposition and former leader of the Labor Party. Bill Hayden gave the best speech I have ever heard him give. It was a fantastic speech, full of compassion and humour. It really was a great contribution to the marking of John Button’s life, particularly as their relationship had been remarked upon because of the role John Button played in suggesting to Bill Hayden that he ought to stand down as leader of the Labor Party just prior to the 1983 election. Bill noted in his contribution that, despite the deep hurt and their falling out over that event, they went on to renew their friendship and he was very pleased to speak at the funeral in honour of John Button.

John Button was known for being a straight-talking man. A commentator once gave him the title ‘the Minister for Possum Stirring’. John’s unwavering honesty meant that he never failed to kick up a stir, particularly in government circles. But it meant that he always commanded enormous respect, not just within the ALP but across the political spectrum.

Perhaps what endeared John so much to the Australian people and those who knew him was his complexity. He had a rich and varied life beyond politics, which made him an interesting and lively character to be around. Many of us are accused of being whitebread politicians; no-one ever accused John Button of that. John was a well-respected and very talented writer as well as a lover of literature and theatre—and, of course, a mad Geelong Cats fan, only equalled, I gather, by Senator Glenn Sterle. As Leader of the Government in the Senate, John worked out of the office that I now occupy. I am told that, in between pushing through the Hawke and Keating governments’ legislative program, he would sit at this table, mulling over team selections and drafting letters of advice to Geelong’s coaches. Apparently, he would do this regularly. He was quite forthright in his advice to Geelong coaches as well. He was, as I say, a very committed supporter and he tried to organise his affairs so as not to miss a Cats game. It was a terrible irony that, in the year that John’s beloved Cats won the AFL premiership and the ALP was returned to federal government, John was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which ended his life. But, as John once said, as a lifelong Geelong supporter, he had developed an endless capacity to endure pain.

John grew up in Ballarat, but he left home in 1946 to take up a boarding scholarship at Geelong College. He went on to study combined law-arts degrees at the University of Melbourne, again on academic scholarship. After graduating from university, he spent two years travelling around Europe. He lived in different countries, worked a variety of jobs and even joined the Italian Communist Party at one stage—but, apparently, only so that he could get a free trip to a youth festival in Moscow. He was not regarded as a communist inside the Labor Party in later years. In 1959, John returned to Melbourne and joined the well-known Labor firm of Maurice Blackburn and Co. and, by the time he ran on Labor’s Victorian Senate ticket in 1974, he had become a senior partner.

John first joined the Labor Party in 1952, while he was at university. He said that he was drawn to politics by the Menzies government’s attempt to ban the Communist Party the year before. He lived through the 1950 split of the Victorian Labor Party, an experience that led him to spending the sixties as a party activist, pushing for internal reform. In 1965, John joined with other barristers to form a small independent group called the Participants. I am pretty sure that Barney Cooney was also part of that group. They waged a hard-fought campaign for change and ultimately helped modernise the Victorian branch of the ALP, which was a major factor in making the Labor Party electable in 1972. His role inside the Labor Party, in its reform, was critical and is well appreciated by many of us who have succeeded him.

Despite all these years of political activism, it was not until John was 41 that he stood for election to the Senate. His election marked the beginning of a 19-year parliamentary career. But, after just a brief taste of government, Labor lost power in 1975. John moved across to the opposition benches, where he served as a member of the opposition shadow ministry from 1976, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate from 1977 to 1980 and Leader of the Opposition in the Senate from 1980 to 1983—and, as Senator Minchin is now learning, it is a thankless task.

Much has been written about the influential role that John played in the ALP’s election win in 1983, under the leadership of Bob Hawke. John has spoken about how difficult this was for him, and the Labor Party is indebted to him for the courage, strength of character and honesty he showed in encouraging Bill Hayden to step aside for Bob Hawke. In doing so, he changed the course of Australian political history.

John Button was at the heart of the reformist Hawke and Keating governments. As a commentator noted, the only other people who were as involved as John across all the workings of those governments were Bob Hawke and Paul Keating themselves. In addition to taking on the role of Leader of the Government in the Senate, John had the opportunity to choose his portfolio and, to the surprise of many, he chose industry. John did not have a background in industry; he was a lawyer, and he had to undergo a steep learning curve when he took up the portfolio at what was industry policy’s most critical juncture in Australian history.

John may not have had industry experience, but he brought fresh eyes, a sharp mind and a reformist energy to the portfolio, with remarkable results. The enormity of John’s role in reforming Australian industry policy cannot be overstated. He modernised Australian industry, driving cultural change and implementing reforms that have since propelled it into the 21st century. In essence, John Button was responsible for rolling back the protectionism that was suffocating Australian industry and for opening it up to global markets. He is best remembered for the Button car plan, which saved Australia’s car manufacturing industry, and the Button steel plan. However, John was also responsible for initiatives across a wide range of other key industries, including telecommunications, uranium, pharmaceuticals and textiles, and he made a huge contribution in the IT area.

Not only did John Button oversee the restructuring of Australian industry but also he changed the nature of the policy debate. He was an independent thinker, and that was reflected in his style as the minister. He sought a contest of ideas on industry policy and, while he remained committed to his core social democratic values, he was known for being flexible and innovative as a policymaker. All up, John served as the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister Assisting the Minister for Communications from 1983 to 1984 and he was Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce from 1984 until his retirement.

John retired from the Senate in 1993, but he never strayed too far from the public’s consciousness. His breadth of interests outside of politics meant that he slid easily into new roles, most famously as a prolific writer. In addition to his three books, John wrote articles and essays for newspapers and magazines about politics, football and the future of the ALP. The Quarterly Essay he wrote in 2002, titled ‘Beyond belief’, was a powerful exposition of the need for reform in the Labor Party, and he won the 2003 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award.

I discovered at the funeral of John Button that he was an even more prolific writer than I had thought. Apparently, he had a very long career producing great correspondence under a pseudonym; and I understand he did not hold back in his critiques of the people to which he sent correspondence. Immediately after retiring, John took up a position as a professorial fellow at Monash, led a number of trade missions and joined several company boards. He also continued to cultivate his passion for the arts, serving as chair of the Melbourne Writers Festival from 1996 to 2001 and even posing nude as Rodin’s ‘Thinker’ for a portrait that was entered for the Archibald Prize.

John passed away on 8 April 2008. He leaves behind his partner, Joan, and his two sons, Jamie and Nick, who did him proud at the funeral. Tragically, his other son, David, died as a teenager. On behalf of the government I offer my deepest condolences for the loss of a great Australian. We are a stronger, better nation because of John Button’s service. We are a better Labor Party as a result of John Button’s contribution. I think that no-one in public life could ask for a greater legacy than that which he provides.

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

I rise on behalf of opposition senators to extend our sincere condolences to the family of John Button, who died on 8 April this year aged a tender 74. His death has saddened many, right across the political spectrum. The numerous public statements of regret are passing testament to the very strong regard in which John Button was widely held by politicians across the spectrum, journalists and, of course, the communities that he represented as a senator and a government minister. On our side, I think we would regard John Button as something of a legend of the Australian Labor Party—a key player in the turning points of modern Labor history and someone who made a very significant contribution in his only portfolio in government, that of industry.

We join with Senator Evans in his tribute to a great career. He was, as Senator Evans noted, elected to represent Victoria as a Labor senator in the double dissolution of 1974 and then had a year and a bit in government before being plunged into opposition where he served as Deputy Leader of the Opposition from 1977 and then as leader of the Labor Party in this place, both in opposition and in government. I must say that I feel some close affinity with John Button because we do have in common our services as government leader and opposition leader in this place and our service as industry minister.

John resigned just three months before I commenced my first term, together with Senator Evans. But of course my good friend and former colleague Fred Chaney, who was opposition leader in the Senate for seven years when John was leader of the government, publicly commented that John was a man who served Australia well, bringing great wit and grace into politics. Though it would have been a great privilege to have served with John Button in this chamber, only a handful of those here today had that privilege. Fred Chaney stated that he held the same high opinion of John Button at the end of their period as opposite numbers as he did at the beginning. It is a sign of John’s character, his performance as leader and the respect in which he was held by all sides of politics that, even after their many years of facing each other at this very table, such a statement could be made.

Senator Evans has reminded us that perhaps John Button is most notorious for his critical role in persuading the hapless Bill Hayden to step aside from the Labor Party leadership and make way for Bob Hawke, which of course coincided with Malcolm Fraser calling the 1983 election some nine months early. It is poignant for me because I was, at that time, the deputy federal director of the Liberal Party and responsible for our market research and I knew better than most how very popular Mr Hawke was. I tried desperately and unsuccessfully to persuade Malcolm Fraser not to call that election early because I thought we needed at least the nine months available to us to try to diminish the popularity of Bob Hawke. That was not to be and we lost that election quite significantly. So, Mr Button certainly played a significant role in ensuring that the Labor Party was very successful in that year by his very tough, very difficult role in persuading Bill Hayden, who is equally admired and respected on our side, to step aside.

It is also interesting, as Senator Evans has mentioned, that as Senate leader John Button had a choice of portfolio. On thinking about it for a day or two, he chose the industry and commerce portfolio—which might not have been an obvious choice, and a difficult one for a Victorian coming from an industrial state. To then spend a decade oversighting that portfolio from 1983 to 1993 was a tough gig. As I said, I was also an industry minister and I can certainly attest to the challenge of that portfolio, also coming from an industrial state. Indeed, I became industry minister only five years after John had left the job, and the Button legacy was still very strong at that time. Of course, it is an extremely demanding portfolio and he had the challenge of persuading his own side of politics, and the union movement in particular, that the old ways of producing automobiles and of making steel simply could not go on and that the industry in this country had to accept the reality of the need to internationalise and become competitive in their operations. The country and industry, and the people who work in industry in this country, to this day owe John Button a great debt for his courage in ensuring that the Labor movement was mugged by the reality that industry in this country simply had to become competitive or disappear. He was, of course, the longest serving minister in a single portfolio during the Hawke and Keating years and he has left a great legacy. I was privileged as an industry minister to inherit that legacy and continue, in effect, his work.

John Button was also a great parliamentarian and someone who really understood the culture of this place. In his memoirs he spoke fondly of both the Senate and his Senate colleagues, and he talked about the burden of representing both Mr Hawke and Mr Keating in the Senate chamber. As someone who had to represent both Mr Howard and Mr Costello in this chamber, I know exactly what he was talking about. He did understand, I think as most of us do, that this is a different place; it does require a more constructive and conciliatory approach than the more combative approach in the House of Representatives, and he was a master of that.

So, on behalf of our opposition, I express our deep sympathies to John’s family and friends. He was taken early. We regret very much that he has left us prematurely. To his partner, Joan, his sons, James and Nick, and their families, we place on record our appreciation and my own personal appreciation of John’s long and meritorious public service. We tender our profound sympathies to his family in their bereavement.

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Hon. John Norman Button was a senator in this place from 1974 to 1993. I rise to pay my respects to his life and to express my condolences to his family on behalf of the National Party. I admired John Button tremendously, as a political foe, as an Australian and as a friend and colleague. I read his book, John Button: As It Happened, and appreciated and learnt from it.

I do not recall John Button ever being bested in question time when he was a minister. I recall one particular instance when Bronwyn Bishop, who was very combative, decided to take Senator Button on. She asked a question, and then added, ‘Senator Button, I don’t want you to tap-dance around this one.’ I can recall that his response was: ‘Well, Senator Bishop, if I had to tap-dance I wouldn’t have to dance with you.’ That was off the cuff, spontaneous—it was one of the responses he could come up with. He was generally completely across his portfolio and the machinations of the Labor Party, whose faithful servant he was all his life.

John Button was a rare individual in that he could keep the pressure of politics and government in perspective thanks to a sense of humour and of personal humility. I will never forget the private support he gave me during a difficult time in my family life. We both lost sons. I attended his state funeral out of respect for a man who came into this place for the right reasons and stuck loyally to his motivations. It takes courage and strength to avoid being distracted by the trappings of power and fiefdoms. Australia is a better place because John Button entered this place, and you cannot say better than that of any senator.

He was one of the characters of the Hawke and Keating governments, given to more candour than most senior government figures. He was confident and droll. He was a great performer in the Senate. John Button was Labor from head to toe, but he held no illusions or delusions about the party, politics or politicians. He was dedicated to Labor Party reform. As the Leader of the Government in the Senate from 1983 to 1993, he earned the respect of this place as few ever have. Add the three years he spent as Leader of the Opposition in the Senate from 1980 to 1983 and you have a personality who ran the Labor side of this house for 13 years—an achievement that will be very hard for anyone to ever repeat.

Much has been written about him since his passing by many groups from different fields, from sports to politics to academia. From this you know you have been privileged to play on the same field as him, even if on a different side. But, after all, we are all playing for the Australian team in the end. There are several quotes which show better than anything the quintessential character of this man. Of Gough Whitlam, John Button once wrote:

I admired Gough Whitlam, but not as much as he did. I didn’t believe that anybody had all the answers. I was a doubter. But I had a few hopes. I thought politics could at least make a difference in the margins of people’s lives.

And so it can, but John Button was being modest, for his contributions were more than just at the margins. John Norman Button was the centre page in modernising the Australian economy and the Labor Party. In an interview with the Melbourne Herald in 1988, John Button said: ‘I’ve never had any high expectation in life and I have a capacity for suffering.’ In the end, John Button greatly exceeded his expectations of himself. That was perhaps due to his capacity for suffering, which was called upon regularly throughout his life.

When John Button resigned from the Senate, he did it at his press conference and never had an opportunity to give the traditional valedictory speech in the Senate, but he did use the press conference to reflect on farewells. The year John Button resigned, there was also the valedictory of Senator Florence Bjelke-Petersen. I know that former Senator Button and former Senator Florence Bjelke-Petersen had a very great soft spot for each other. They would regularly chat across the chamber. I know that Florence would want very much to be associated with this valedictory for John Button.

So farewell to John Norman Button. If there were a short list of the greatest senators, he would be on it.

John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

John Button was indeed a substantial man. He was a man who thought and wrote crisply, clearly, honestly and independently. He was a generous man, endlessly curious and fearlessly open minded. All his life, he loved and understood the importance of the nation’s cultural and intellectual life as the way in which we come to understand ourselves—that films and literature, history and music are the mirror up to nature. He was passionate about sport and the tribal contest inherent in it. But there was always in him an element of detachment and scepticism. This was part of his humour, his sense of irony. As a member of an Italian delegation to the Sixth World Festival of Youth and Students held in Moscow in 1957, he reflected:

… there was something decidedly Orwellian about 100,000 people fervently chanting the festival slogan ‘peace and friendship, peace and friendship’ with the apparent conviction that it had something to do with the international situation and the prevention of a third world war.

He added:

I met no Russians who thought everything as wonderful as the average Communist visitor did. I find it difficult to resist the temptation to write a few pages on the subject of Communist doublethink.

His loyalty to the Labor Party and to the nation was loyalty in the broadest and best sense of the word—critical and reforming. He held fast to the principles he believed in. He kept his eyes on the prize. As Peter Gebhardt wrote in a poem for John’s funeral, he held fast to the:

… horizon of hope …

never losing sight of it,

or the promise of it.

In the 1960s, on his return from two years abroad, John Button’s analysis of the circumstances of Australia and the Australian Labor Party was that both were a morass of tired and borrowed ideas. He wrote:

I was personally very disturbed by Australia as a nation. I thought, this country is very, very isolated, not taking advantages of the opportunities we’d got. The country’s political leaders exuded the scent of middle-aged grey power. The idea of excellence, where it existed, was narrowly based and shallow rooted. … Australia was easygoing, good natured, sporty and mediocre.

He was nothing if not honest in his judgements—what was dull or outmoded was dull and outmoded; what was ineffective and needed to be changed must be changed. And he had the intellectual capacity to see and understand the trends that were occurring around him. He believed that a man must participate in the life of the nation in ways that worked to the good. And he was a participant, active and practical.

In the 1960s, the Victorian branch of the Australian Labor Party was undemocratic and exclusionary. As the Scoresby letter of 1965 stated, the party suffered ‘declining membership, appalling electoral outcomes, secretive management and exclusive control by a small band of unions’. Its branches were unable to influence policy or preselections. All was bogged down in the preordained positions dictated by the old disputes of the split and the rigid control of the Victorian central executive. Change was clearly necessary—not just to make the Labor Party electable, but to ensure that more progressive, forward-looking ideas were offered for the better governance of the country. This change, for Button, was a matter of structural and organisational change in the party, and it was grounded in ideas about the kind of Australia that he wanted to see.

John Button belonged to, and helped to revive, the Fabian Society. The Fabian Society was about the contest of ideas. Series of lectures were organised: in 1965 there was ‘Australia Fair: a hard look at our visual environment’; in 1966, ‘The Blurred Image’, which asked, ‘What do Australians stand for?’ These lectures attracted, as Button himself reported, ‘considerable attention and an audience of over 800 on each of three nights’. And he believed the series:

… contributed to the changed climate of ideas, something which the Australian political process, and the Labor Party, seemed to be incapable of doing.

For John Button, debating ideas, in whatever forum could be devised, was never a waste of time. His was a life devoted to independent thinking and idiosyncratic views.

But changing the Labor Party was a tough endeavour. In 1965, four members—Richard McGarvie, Xavier Connor, Barney Williams and John Button; ‘the Participants’—set up a nameless, clandestine organisation:

… a loose alliance—the four just men, as Connor jokingly called it—to promote reform of the Party and progressive policies.

It attracted significant and influential support—John Cain, Race Mathews, Michael Duffy, Barry Jones, Jim Jupp and Jim Beggs. They were academics, lawyers, trade unionists and teachers. They worked for four years, writing, arguing, criticising, persuading and lobbying for change. They were supported by, and then they supported, Gough Whitlam in his efforts to reform the party, particularly its processes for selecting candidates. New policies were pushed through at the party conference. But it was federal intervention in 1970 that finally changed the party in Victoria and removed the greatest impediment to the victory of the Labor Party at a federal election. After the intervention, Button, amongst others, was appointed to a new advisory council set up to develop more democratic party rules and processes. It was a case of new blood, new life and a commitment to excellence. And it worked. Labor came to power after 23 years in the wilderness in December 1972.

John Button was elected to the Senate in the double dissolution election of May 1974 and began a 20-year parliamentary career, first as a backbencher in the Whitlam government, then as an opposition member and shadow minister during the Fraser government and finally as a minister in the Hawke and Keating governments. He was an active backbencher. He saw committee work as a ‘part of the parliament that worked’. As the chair of the Senate privileges committee during the ‘tortuous’ inquiry into the loans affair in 1975, he was described as a respected chair whose management of the inquiry was ‘just marvellous’. When tabling the report, Button announced wryly that there was a majority report, a minority report and four addendums. He added:

I think I can say on behalf of the committee that we felt that we did well to arrive at that position as a conclusion.

As a minister after 1983, Button was courageous in implementing policy that he believed was necessary but knew to be unpopular. He was described in 1984 as ‘the minister in a no-win portfolio’. Again he was about carrying through reform—reform of what he described as ‘industrial museums’ or ‘industrial relations bearpits’. For Button, the old issues of decline, decay and stultification applied. The country was in recession, unemployment was 10 per cent, the steel industry was in a mess, factories were closing down and the European market had closed off traditional markets. Australia lacked an export culture and entrepreneurial skills. It was a technologically deficient nation and it was uncompetitive in industry.

Industry, unions and the party platform all demanded increased protection. Button came to believe there was greater logic in the advice of experts such as the Industries Assistance Commission, which recommended a reduction in tariffs. The pressure not to follow this advice was enormous. The economic summit of 1983 was to be the basis for economic reform, economic recovery and the kind of structural adjustment that has served Australia well over the subsequent quarter of a century. At the summit, Button argued against short-term responses and that protection was not a panacea for industrial reconstruction. He faced what seemed to be insurmountable problems, such as entrenched attitudes, poor management, truculent unions and mutual knee-jerk hostilities. Button’s response was intelligent, analytical and aimed at long-term public goals. In visits to dozens of businesses, he observed practice and listened to argument. He planned, cajoled, negotiated and finally directed fundamental changes to Australian industry. He saw government’s role not as providing tariffs or subsidies but in facilitating research and development, in supporting new technologies, in training and development and for what Hawke described as the ‘compensating policies designed to spread the burden of change’. He has acknowledged in his autobiography that the government was fortunate that the opposition of the day chose not to oppose them even though they had lacked the courage to pursue such policies.

In two areas of industrial reform the Button approach was known to all: the steel plan and the car plan. These industries were large and significant. On steel, Button negotiated and required obligations and sacrifices from all players: the companies, the unions, the state governments and the federal government. Governments would look to market share and keep government charges low, companies would reduce workforces by voluntary retirements, and unions would abide by dispute settlement procedures and productivity would be improved. The federal government would assist with job creation and structural adjustment. These were signed agreements and commitments, to be valid over five years and for five years only. After nine years, a study by McKinsey reported:

The fundamental long term change that we need to make in manufacturing is starting to happen in a quite spectacular fashion.

John Button felt that his years of hard work were vindicated. Hawke, Keating and Button, through the wages accord, the deregulation of the financial system and industry policy, had modernised the Australian economy and, although painful at times, prepared it for the prosperity it has since enjoyed. John Button’s biographer, Patrick Weller, summed up Button’s career in the following terms:

He seemed to cross difficult terrain and remain unaffected and untouched. He survived as a parliamentary leader for sixteen years without satisfying that pre-condition for a Labor career, a strong factional base. He remained popular with the public, even while introducing unpopular policies.

Reform and regeneration in politics is a constant. In 2002, John Button found himself again arguing for a re-energising of the Labor Party, then six years in opposition and at a low ebb. He likened the condition of the Labor Party to chronic fatigue syndrome. His description in his quarterly essay in that year is reminiscent of the feeling he had in 1965. Through this essay, he was embarking on a similar crusade for party reform with the same affectionate honesty and directness. The Quarterly Essay article ‘Beyond belief’ was a detailed analysis and, as was the case with the participants in 1965, created a huge and, I think, productive debate. On general policy, he said that there was no clear articulation of the position that took account of the real decline in working people’s standard of living. Factions dominated to the detriment of policy development. Members’ discussions were about ‘arithmetic, not philosophy’ and ‘factional allegiances and deals led to mediocrity’. On the Tampa crisis, the party had failed to take a ‘courageous political stand’ in the face of the ‘coalition’s grubby opportunism’.

Button reminded his readers of the basic idealism of the party and its political heroes: ‘integrity and humility’ and ‘a belief in bringing something better to people, better standards of living, greater happiness to the mass of people’. He believed, as he always had, that Labor could maintain its heart and soul but must be contemporary and relevant, that ‘Labor is most electable when it has a strong agenda for change’. He believed in Labor as the party of reform and the party of change. For John Button, power was not an end in itself but a means to a better society.

Finally, in my contribution to the condolence debate, I would like to read a letter that John Button wrote to me on 17 November last year:

Dear John

I watched the policy speech. He did very well. When you came on at the beginning I told one of the nurses here, ‘I know him’, and I felt she was very impressed.

The main purpose of this letter, however, is to thank you for your kind wishes and the get well gift from Kevin and yourself. It was a nice thought at such a busy time.

I think you will win next Saturday. I don’t know what your intentions are, but I hope you will stay on, win a spot in the Ministry, and take on the vexed question of Parliamentary reform, accountability in government, and honesty of Ministers (no snouts in the trough!). I really believe that if the Labor Party makes some serious changes it will benefit greatly, and force ideas back on the political agenda.

Congratulations on your part in the campaign, and best wishes for the ensuing months and beyond.

With warm regards

John

He was a true and a constructive believer to the end. Vale John Button.

Rod Kemp (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the condolence motion on the death of our former colleague John Button. The previous speakers have outlined in quite some detail the achievements of John Button as a Labor Party activist, as a reformer, as a minister, and his work as Leader of the Government in the Senate. I attended the state funeral for John Button held at St Michael’s Uniting Church in Melbourne. Not surprisingly, the church was very crowded indeed and I was pleased to see so many of my Liberal colleagues there in attendance. Dr Francis Macnab, the former state premier John Cain, the former Governor-General Bill Hayden, the former ALP state minister Jim Kennan and Morag Fraser delivered, to be quite frank, absolutely outstanding tributes to John Button. His son James Button spoke movingly of his father, and Nick Button read a poem written by Peter Gebhardt in tribute to John Button.

Our careers overlapped in the Senate by just three years. There was no doubt, as other speakers have drawn to our attention, that John Button was a consummate parliamentary performer: confident, well briefed, and always ready with wit to deal with some troublesome senators—and I bore my fair share of Button’s wit from time to time. He used to refer to me as coming from ‘that rusty old think tank, the IPA’, and occasionally would refer to me as ‘Old Think Tank’.

Early on, he had worked out that my father’s views on industry policy were somewhat closer to his position than my own, and he would sometimes speak in glowing terms about my father in the hope that this would cause some family annoyance and tension. It certainly did not annoy my dad, and my father kept on telling me that I was far too harsh on John Button. He recalled one time—and this gave John Button great amusement—when he said that if my father could hear my views he would roll over in his grave, and I called out that that would be difficult as my father was not dead yet. John Button rather enjoyed this exchange and repeated it to me years later.

Some years ago, I bumped into John Button in Collins Street and he said that we should have lunch together. We had a number of these lunches and, when I asked curiously why he would want to have lunch with me, he said, rather kindly I thought, that he would rather have lunch with an employed Liberal minister than an unemployed, complaining, Labor ex-minister. He was, as everybody knows, just great company, and we had frank exchanges of political gossip. On one occasion we discussed a new book I had published on historic parliamentary speeches and he asked me to send him a copy. I received a very gracious letter in reply, and this is what his letter said:

Dear Rod,

Many thanks for sending me a copy of your book ‘Speaking for Australia’.

You are a strange person. Any politician who keeps his promises can only be so described. And when the promise is made ‘on the wing’ in Collins Street, well what does one say.

The book (on preliminary examination) seems an important collection. Modestly you have omitted some of your own fine speeches and sadly some of mine. In the next edition you should perhaps include a speech of mine on the [siting] of the new parliament house (I think about 1974) or the speech to the 1984 Economic Summit which chilled the minds of rent-seeking industrialists succoured by protection. Your father would have approved.

As for the inclusion of a speech by your good self, any one would do.

Again, thanks and best wishes.

Yours sincerely

John N. Button

I took John Button’s advice and went to those speeches, and they are well worth reading, so perhaps I was in error not to include them in my book. The speech on Parliament House—others will know his views better than mine, but I was not aware of it—was one that John Button made in the Senate on 24 October 1974. John Button would have preferred that this Parliament House were sited elsewhere and made a very passionate speech about that. Among other things he asked:

What sort of parliament building do we want? Again the question arises: Do we want one which symbolises the aspirations of the people as they are ‘on the level’ of people or do we want one which symbolises the aspirations of politicians? Surely there is no quarrel with the proposition that one cannot make statesmen out of politicians by putting them in a castle or by putting them in a prominent parliament house which dominates the capital city of Australia rather than being sympathetic with it. I remind honourable senators of what happened to the residents of the tower of Babel and many other residents of edifices constructed upon hills in the way in which the symbolic view of Capital Hill is expressed.

It was a very passionate speech. He did not win that debate, but it was clearly one which he felt strongly about, and it was one which he drew to my attention. Witnessing his performances in this place, I never doubted that he thoroughly enjoyed being in this Parliament House, but I was also interested in his comments.

The other speech he said should have been included in my book was the one that I think Senator Faulkner referred to, at the National Economic Summit Conference on 14 April 1983. It was a speech of its time, and it was probably bold at its time—it probably seems less bold today. He said, for example:

In dealing with longer term reconstruction issues however, there should not be too narrow a focus on the issue of protection.

Protection was a very controversial policy. He went on to say:

Protection is only one element in an array of policy instruments which Australian governments have at their disposal to assist the various sectors of industry. It is not in itself a panacea for industrial reconstruction.

He went on and asked a number of questions:

Is Australian management adequately trained and flexible enough to cope with change;

What role should union leaders be playing in persuading their members of the need to adjust to changed circumstances ...

It is, again, a speech which is well worth reading, and I think it is appropriate in this condolence speech today that this be recorded.

My colleague Senator Michael Ronaldson hoped to be able to make a contribution today, but he said to me that he would like me to record that John Button was one of Ballarat’s favourite sons, a man who enjoyed for a very long period, and still enjoys, an enormous amount of respect and affection in that great city.

During a speech that I made many years ago on a condolence motion for Sir John Kerr, John Button was very upset with what I was saying and—I think probably for the first time in parliamentary history—took a point of order during a debate on a condolence motion. This led to a vigorous exchange between the two of us. I rather hope that John may be happy with the remarks I have made today.

His speeches, of course, always had very interesting and amusing jokes, and one of the reasons that John Button was such good company was his enormous sense of humour. This story comes from one of these speeches which I have just referred to. He tells the story of a patient who goes to a psychiatrist complaining of an inferiority complex:

After a brief examination he is told by the psychiatrist: ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you. You don’t have a complex, you’re just inferior’.

No-one could say that John Button was not simply a superb senator. No-one could say that he did not make a superb contribution to this country. The affection that is felt for John Button transcends party lines. To his two sons—who, as I said, spoke so movingly at their father’s funeral—James and Nick Button, and their families I send my condolences and hope that in their sorrow they recognise, as I am sure they will, that their father was a man who enjoyed enormous community affection.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to incorporate Senator Carr’s comments to this condolence motion.

Leave granted.

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

The incorporated speech read as follows—

In 1993, I had the honour of succeeding John Button as Labor senator for Victoria.

John and I were supposed to trade places when his term expired on 30 June, but during the election campaign he took me aside and said, “I’m not going back to Canberra.”

He resigned soon after polling day and I was appointed to the casual vacancy in April.

John was tired after a decade as industry minister, and he wanted to get back to his writing.

He had written poetry as an adolescent and continued to write short stories into his twenties. He flirted with drama and in the early sixties co-founded the Emerald Hill Theatre.

He thought that in his autumn years he might “have a go at the novel to out-do Dostoevsky” —an interesting choice betraying both the scale of his ambition and the astringency of his vision.

The books he wrote in retirement – including the wonderful memoir As it Happened (1998) – show what a fine writer he was. He often wondered whether he’d chosen the wrong career. Some good literary judges would say he did.

Maybe I’m just not literary enough, but I think John chose exactly the right career.

He had a vision for the future of Australian industry, and he pursued that vision – often in the face of entrenched opposition – until it had been substantially realised.

John frequently had to fight on two fronts. On the one side were the more atavistic elements of the union movement and industry, who resisted any change that threatened their vested interests.

On the other side were members of the economics club, who opposed any intervention that did not fit their arm-chair theories, no matter how firmly it might be grounded in economic and social reality.

John demanded innovation and a global outlook from Australian business and he practiced what he preached in a series of brilliantly creative industry plans which drew in part on what he had learned from Sweden, Japan and other international exemplars.

Several of these plans – for steel in 1983, the car industry in 1984, and the textiles, clothing and footwear industries in 1986 – were to some extent exercises in crisis-management.

But though they might have been prompted by the circumstances of the moment, they were anything but ad hoc.

One hallmark of John’s policy style was his willingness and ability to meet short-term problems with long-term solutions.

Because everything he did was strategic, there isn’t really that much to distinguish his salvage plans for steel, cars and TCF from his development plans for shipbuilding in 1984, pharmaceuticals in 1987 and information technology in 1988.

The same could be said about measures he introduced for other industries such as telecommunications and aerospace.

All involved similar solutions – and those solutions invariably included a judicious mixture of carrot and stick.

As industry minister, John was essentially a deal-maker, a horse-trader – applying the skills he had acquired in the backrooms of the labour movement on a much larger stage.

It was all about give and take:

• production bounties in return for keeping factories open
• tariff reductions in return for export facilitation
• productivity improvements and wage restraint from the unions in return for a commitment to protect jobs
• anti-dumping measures in return for investment in modernisation product rationalisation in return for R&D funding
• marketing support in return for employing more apprentices.

And always – always – an emphasis on building resilience by building skills.

That might mean re-training workers who lost their jobs as a result of structural adjustment.

It might mean schooling small-business operators in business planning and management techniques that would help them stay afloat on stormy economic seas.

It might mean cajoling captains of industry to lift their eyes to the horizon and consider their place in the wider world.

John never forgot the lessons he learned on a visit to Sweden in 1984.

As John wrote much later, this was a country where “Government funds were spent on research and development, venture capital for small firms, export incentives, and training and re-training of workers.”

Most of the industry plans had an R&D component. The car and shipbuilding industries received funding for R&D, while pharmaceutical and IT companies had to meet R&D targets to qualify for other forms of assistance.

But the most important fruit of John’s belief in research and development was the R&D tax concession introduced in 1985.

It revolutionised industry attitudes to innovation. Business R&D spending as a share of GDP grew 8.8 per cent a year in the ten years after the concession was introduced.

This momentum was halted in 1996 when the past triumphed over the future and the conservatives reduced the concession from 150 to 125 per cent —this at a time when most other OECD countries were maintaining or increasing their R&D support.

In the following decade, business spending on R&D as a proportion of GDP grew by an average of just 2.5 per cent a year. In several years it actually fell.

By 2005-06 we had tumbled from eighth to fifteenth in the OECD rankings for this measure.

What John understood – and what the Howard government did not – is that industry policy is first and foremost about cultural change.

It is about creating what John called a “culture of innovation”.

This is a phrase I use myself. It’s an ideal I find myself explaining and defending just as John did. That’s how little progress we have made in the last decade of squandered opportunities.

We need innovation to increase productivity and exports. Innovation has the capacity to transform Australian industry, and with it the Australian economy. It is the only basis on which a country like Australia can compete in the global marketplace.

The OECD tells us that “Most of the rise in material standards of living since the industrial revolution has been the consequence of innovation. New or improved products and services – and new and improved ways of producing them – have for a long time been the main motor of economic growth.”

John understood this better than any politician of his generation – with the possible exception of his colleague and occasional sparring partner Barry Jones.

But he also understood that there was more than one way to innovate.

Innovation may mean wiping the slate clean and starting afresh. But more often it means looking for ways to do things just that little bit better – harnessing creativity to make the most of what you’ve got.

John’s interest in science and technology can be traced back to his work with the Fabian Society in the sixties and culminated in his forward-looking decision to add technology to the industry portfolio in 1984.

But his view of science—like his view of most things—was essentially pragmatic. He firmly believed in the transformative power of science and technology, but he wasn’t going to wait around until they delivered us into utopia.

“Protection offered hope from the past,” he once wrote. “Sunrise industries offered distant hope for the future.” His concern was with the here and now.

He was not about to let the allure of the next big thing blind him to the importance of existing industries —industries that account for the bulk of our output and employment now, and that still have enormous scope for growth and innovation in the future.

John was often accused of being too disengaged, and some thought his detachment bordered on disloyalty.

Yet this detachment was precisely the quality that underpinned his success. It granted him the independence to see and think for himself, and to act as an honest broker. It liberated him from the prevailing orthodoxies and enabled him to develop highly original solutions to seemingly intractable problems.

It allowed him to find ways around entrenched positions without attacking them head-on. It was the source of his candour and directness – qualities that sometimes infuriated his colleagues, but which endeared him to just about everyone else.

In a life otherwise full of purpose, the Geelong Football Club allowed John to express his quixotic side.

As a minister he was besieged by proponents of hare-brained schemes, but that didn’t stop him maintaining a one-sided correspondence with the club setting out his ideas for winning the flag.

He tried to impress Margaret Thatcher by dropping Gary Ablett’s name and Ablett by dropping Thatcher’s, even though he was pretty sure neither knew who the other was. Last year’s premiership came just in time.

We are fortunate that John agreed to be interviewed by the doyen of Australian political psychology, Alan Davies, while the two were in London in 1959. John appears in Davies’ Private Politics (1966) disguised as “Tom Barrow, Union Lawyer”.

Davies noted how class was central to the young Button’s worldview —as a child of the manse and the squattocracy trying to make his way in the labour movement, he was acutely conscious of class differences.

But as far as John was concerned, it was values rather than interests that divided the classes. His account of class relations was entirely free of what Davies called “struggle imagery”.

This may have disappointed old-school leftists, but his refusal to see the interests of employers and employees as eternally and irreconcilably opposed was obviously critical to the design and success of those give-and-take industry plans.

John may have been more interested in the contest of values than class warfare, but there was never any doubt about which side of that contest he was on. His values were progressive, humane, and unapologetically social democratic.

He recognised that equality of opportunity was a liberal ideal – there is nothing wrong with it, but it’s a long way short of what social democrats should be aspiring to.

He knew it was unrealistic to demand strict equality of outcomes, but he was never afraid to argue for a fairer distribution of wealth and what he called “all those services fundamental to human security and development.”

For social democrats, he argued in 2002, “The emphasis is on rights rather than opportunity.”

It is the duty of social democratic governments to honour those rights, and to address the many problems and fulfil the many needs and aspirations “for which markets provide no answers.”

Alan Davies describes the lonely migrants and pensioners for whom John did pro bono legal work early in his career. Davies suggests that John idealised these outsiders as Forgotten Men, and may have seen himself as one of their number.

John Button was an insider during some phases of his career and an outsider during others.

Either way, he is never likely to be forgotten.

Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

John Button was elected in 1974 and served as senator for Victoria until 1993. I would like to take this opportunity to reflect upon his career in his capacity as minister for industry and commerce. He is remembered as the architect of Labor’s industry and tariff reforms, as well as for his good humour and wit, which we have heard a little bit about today. Much is being said and written about his great contribution to Australian public life, and I note that the Parliamentary Library has included in its collection of biographical information on John Button a selection of his writings on topics ranging from politics to travel; an Australian republic, which he supported; and the AFL football team Geelong, which we know he strongly supported. I commend this biographical collection to senators. He was a principled politician as well as an entertaining writer.

I would like to pay particular attention to the role that he played with respect to the development of policy that saw the support and growth of Australia’s information technology industry. This might seem a little specific for a condolence motion, but, having paid serious attention to our IT industry over many years, I could not count the times that people from both the private and public sectors have reflected on the contribution of John Button’s policies towards the growth of IT in this country.

There were two major public policy programs: the partnerships for development associated with public procurement and the partnering of local IT companies with multinational companies, and the fixed term arrangements program, which again created relationships between large and small companies and saw the growth of the Australian IT industry through a period of time when it would have been pretty easy to just rest on our laurels. Senator Button did the opposite. He took the opportunity and applied his intellect to some extremely clever policies that gave Australia a greater capacity to create growth from innovation and the applied use of technology. He understood the global market, and we all know so many of his policies were about improving Australia’s engagement with the global economy. Labor’s leading policies in this regard have certainly stood us in great stead with respect to our credentials on industry policy ever since.

I will not speak longer, but I am here on behalf of people and businesses in the IT industry in Australia who I know would like me to acknowledge the contribution that Senator Button made to that particular aspect of industry policy. I take great inspiration from his work and I would like to convey my condolences to his family at this time.

John Watson (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I had the honour to call John Button a colleague in the Senate for the first 15 years that I served as a senator. My memories of him will never fade as he was one of those outstanding contributors to the business of this chamber and to the government of Australia. His passing has removed from our presence a character whose wit and repartee was matched by very few, whose dedication and sheer ability stood out amongst his party colleagues and whose positive contribution as a minister will long deserve the praise of those who benefited from his leadership and listened to his speeches. He will be sadly missed.

John Button had a connection with my stamping ground of Northern Tasmania as his mother came from Strathroy near Launceston. His contribution to the stability and the future of one of Launceston’s largest employers—and I refer to the ACL Bearing Company—depended greatly on his ability to guide Australia’s motoring industry into a firm future, at least in the middle term. The ACL Bearing Company, as well as many other businesspeople in Launceston, held John Button in very high regard and fondly remembered him for his motor industry plan and the investment regime that it fostered for many years.

Like so many in this parliament, John came from a legal background, but he was also deeply immersed in ensuring that his beloved Labor Party rose again from the troubles of the 1960s. He was an active contributor to its strength during the Hawke-Keating years—as has been demonstrated today—when he was minister for industry for a decade. John Button was instrumental in guiding much of Australian industry into the modern global world economy and ensuring that many of the tariff barriers and artificial protection systems were shed so that Australians could find out where they were competitive and where they were not.

He was not particularly silver tongued or diplomatic at all times and I suspect that he may have told some home truths to his party colleagues and to Australian businessmen in a style they may not have previously heard. However, in his role as industry minister John Button was often required to speak to groups of foreign visitors and to travel overseas promoting Australian interests. His diplomacy was certainly evident on all these occasions. I remember being told by an interpreter that he was particularly aware that his well-developed sense of humour, which served him well amongst Australians, needed great care when applied to audiences from different backgrounds and different languages. He was careful to ensure that the interpreters of his talks fully understood the nuances of his jokes so that there could be no risk of offending his foreign-language-speaking audiences with jokes which might have had a particular Australian bent.

Among his other qualities, John Button was also a practical reformer, not just for reform’s sake but because he could see that it was vital for Australia’s economic future. His genuineness just shone through. He was a politician who also lead a very busy life outside the protected walls of the parliamentary arena and who benefited from regular contact with that we sometimes call the ‘real world’. I include in this his down-to-earth love for his beloved Geelong Football Club.

We will remember John Button not only because he appeared to be honest but also because he was honest and he made no pretence of the issue either in his daily life or in his politics. People believed that what they saw was what they got, and with John Button this was certainly the case. John Button had unusual titles for many of us in this place. Senator Kemp referred to one—I think it was the ‘rust bucket think tank’, I suppose because he came from Victoria. In my own case, he referred to me as the ‘refugee from the textile industry’ and maybe that was because I had a particular sympathy with certain protection issues that he disagreed with.

John served this parliament as a leader of his party, both in opposition and in government, in this Senate for a period of nearly 13 years and as a minister for 10 years. During his 19 years as a senator, he showed a great strength of will, a uniqueness of character and a determination to make a difference which can be seen in only very few senators who pass through this place. He grasped opportunities as they came and he certainly did make a difference. So, to John Button’s family, I wish to offer my sincere condolences at the loss of a great man and the family’s great loss. My prayers are certainly with them during this period of deep sorrow. Be assured, though, that those who knew him will fondly remember John Button. Vale John Button.

George Campbell (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also seek to make a contribution to this condolence motion for John Button, albeit hopefully a brief one. John Button has been described in many forums in the past few weeks as a minister of the Crown, a senator, an industrial barrister, a letter writer, an author, a creative thinker, a Geelong Football Club lover and a Parliament House sunbaker. I am glad I never met him in that role, but I did meet John in the role of a government minister, senator, industrial barrister and certainly a creative thinker.

I first came across John Button some 38 or 40 years ago when we were both active in the Labor Party in Victoria. He worked for the legal firm that did the legal work for the shipwrights union in Victoria, where I spent a period as state secretary. I was quite a young, green union official in the early 1970s and I had a case before the full bench of the industrial commission, seeking a 35-hour week for shipwrights who were working on the Melbourne waterfront, subsequent to the waterside workers winning that condition in the mid-1960s. I went to John for some advice—we could not afford to pay for it, because we did not have that many members—and he sat down with me and painstakingly took me through the processes that I would have to follow in the commission to present the argument and make sure the argument got heard. As a consequence, we actually won the case. So that was a successful contribution that John made to the wages and working conditions of shipwrights in Victoria at that time.

I knew John as a senator during the period of the Whitlam government and in the period of Labor opposition consequent to the election of the Fraser government in 1975. I met him on a couple of occasions when I appeared before Senate committees dealing with industrial relations issues, in particular the amendments to the Industrial Relations Act that were pursued by Ian Viner in the late seventies and early eighties in order to enshrine company unions in the act. It was a forerunner of the type of structure pursued by John Howard in Work Choices. Most importantly, I had a great deal to do with John in the 1980s when he was industry minister.

The nature of the man was shown when, in a television interview with George Negus, he said that politics causes brain damage and that the dosage is worse in opposition. For those of us who have spent 10 years in opposition, we can attest to the truth of that statement. Certainly the period in opposition that John spent in the late seventies did not seem to do much damage to him, as he appeared to be unaffected by that period in opposition.

John was an extremely effective industry minister. It is interesting, as others have said, that he chose his own portfolio when Labor won government in 1983. He chose the role of industry and commerce—a role which surprised many of his friends and supporters, given his strong involvement and keen interest in issues of civil liberties and social justice. At the time, Paul Keating asked John, after his swearing-in as industry minister, ‘What are you going to do with this job?’ John’s response was: ‘I dunno; something! God knows, something needs to done.’ He was immediately thrown into a crisis because, around the time of the election of the Hawke government, BHP had announced publicly its plans to shut down the steel industry, with a loss of some 30,000 jobs in Newcastle, Port Kembla and Whyalla. John set about working through the issues of that industry with the company, the unions and the membership in the industry. As a consequence, the steel plan was born. He played a significant role—a role he was thrust into—and he assiduously worked his way through the process and came up with a plan. The plan certainly cost jobs but it created the foundations of a steel industry in this country that has continued to thrive since 1983.

John did a lot for industry in this country. He was a reformer, both in the Labor Party and as a member of the government. He was instrumental in reforming the Australian economy and the manufacturing industry. He was one of the key ministers in the Hawke government, all through the 1980s, that pursued and put in place the processes of reform that opened up the Australian economy. As we in this place all know, John is perhaps best known for the Button car plan—a legacy that helped the car industry in this country survive for decades. He was also responsible for the TCF industry plan. It is a tribute to his foresightedness that both those industries still exist in this country today, and with significantly less assistance from government than they were receiving in the eighties.

We should not ignore John’s role in putting in place the steel industry plan, which saved that industry at the 11th hour, and we should note that that was an industry on the verge of closing when he became industry minister and was thrown in at the deep end in terms of putting a plan in place. But there are many other industries in this country that survive and prosper today because of John’s support for and revitalisation of the Australian Manufacturing Council, which during the 1980s carried out a massive collaborative effort between capital and labour that renewed and revitalised many industry sectors. The shipbuilding industry is one example. The shipbuilding industry in this country was ‘gone the goings’, for all intents and purposes, in 1976 under Malcolm Fraser and Peter Nixon. When John took over the industry portfolio, the industry was floundering. Most of the big shipyards had shut down. There were a number of small shipyards around the place, but the industry was pretty fragmented. He put in place a shipbuilding consultative group, of which I happened to be a member, that worked assiduously for four years with the industry to redevelop its attitudes and views about its future. It became outward looking and got into the export market, and that was the forerunner of the industry we have today, which is building the fast aluminium ferries that we are exporting all around the world. That industry has been actively surviving in the export market with no assistance and competing effectively and maintaining its levels of employment.

The work that was put in in the eighties through the Australian Manufacturing Council laid the foundations for the significant growth in manufactured exports that occurred during the first half of the nineties and, in fact, for the broadening of our economic base, which was part of the strategy adopted by the Hawke government in the eighties. In the early nineties, we saw significant growth in our manufactured exports—elaborately transformed manufactures, or ETMs, as they are more commonly known—from about three per cent to something like 17 to 18 per cent in 1996 when Labor lost office. That position, unfortunately, was squandered under the previous government. The export of manufactured goods is back down to about two to three per cent of our total exports. It has all been squandered. All the activities, efforts and structural change that occurred during the eighties and the early nineties were squandered under the Howard government and we are back effectively to where we were when Labor first came to power in the early eighties.

John Button’s efforts, for example, in revitalising our heavy engineering industry laid the foundation for subsequent government decisions to source defence purchases in Australia and significant projects such as the Collins submarines and the frigates for the Australian and New Zealand navies, and very effective defence shipbuilding industry activity and the consequential subsidiary operations that support that in electronics and equipment and so forth.

While the car plan and the textile, clothing and footwear industries dominate discussion on John’s role as industry minister, we should not see his role in a narrow sense but in the broader sense of the effect he had right across the whole of our manufacturing industry sector, in all its facets, including improvements that were made in that sector during his period as industry minister. I have to say that if those ministers who follow him, particularly Labor ministers, achieve half of what he achieved as manufacturing minister, then the future of manufacturing in this country will be bright indeed.

There was one thing about John Button that you could not help but notice: whilst he was a small man he was born with a huge dose of scepticism. It continually flowed in comments he made from time to time on issues that were going on. I can recall two, which I think are examples of John’s wit. The first one occurred at a meeting in Old Parliament House in the cabinet room, during a discussion between a number of senior ministers and members of the national executive of the party about the direction of the government’s policy in early 1987, prior to the election that was held later that year. There was concern about the direction the government was going in a number of areas. As anyone involved in such discussions would know, they are pretty wide ranging. In the midst of that conversation, Paul Keating, then Treasurer, started to wax lyrical about the fact that he had been named as the world’s greatest treasurer by a meeting of the Socialist International that had occurred just before the meeting. I happened to have been sitting beside John Button and John said, ‘The only thing wrong with this is that they do not get a vote in our elections, otherwise we would not have a worry in the world.’ I said to him, ‘What are you drinking?’ Aussie, as we now know him, kept bringing drinks to the table for the ministers who were there—not for the visitors. John said: ‘It’s whisky. Why? Would you like some?’ True to his word, about 30 seconds later, Aussie turned up with a glass of whisky. I did not know at the time that there was a button under the table that you pressed and they would bring you your favourite beverage—tea, coffee, Coke or whatever. John was enjoying the whisky, and he and I had a very pleasant evening in the corner of the cabinet room listening to the discussion from that point on.

The second example was in relation to a proposal I had worked up in my role as deputy chair of the Manufacturing Council at the time. It involved putting a package together to promote technology diffusion across our manufacturing sector. A lot of the small companies in this country were not aware of the technologies that were available and being developed by some of the industrial giants around the world. The proposal was for a package of $20 million to fund an office of technology diffusion. You had to be careful about how you used words when you had a discussion with John Button, as many will attest—you used your words very carefully. In the middle of the discussion, I happened to say, or it might have been the person with me, ‘The problem is we don’t have anyone in this country who understands the technology and can promote it, so we need this fund to get it going.’ He said, ‘If I give you $20 million, who will you appoint?’ We said: ‘We don’t know. We’ll have to think about that.’ He said, ‘I’m not giving you $20 million until you come back with someone who you know can actually do the job.’ It was interesting that not long after that when I became a senator, I noticed there was a line in the budget papers in the department of industry for technology diffusion and a budget of $20 million. John adopted the idea, but he was not going to be sold on putting the $20 million on the table before he knew that it was capable of being used in the way in which it was promoted.

One could go on for a long time talking about John Button and his role in the Labor Party, about John Button as a human being and our experiences with him. Suffice to say, I wanted to ensure that the breadth of the role he played was on the record in terms of his support for manufacturing as minister for industry during the Hawke and Keating governments. I think his role in that area will probably remain unsurpassed. I wish to convey my condolences to his partner, Joan, and to his children on John’s passing.

Question agreed to, honourable senators standing in their places.