Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Badu Island is one of the larger central western highlands of the Torres Strait. It is a beautiful place, a high island surrounded by coral reefs and covered in trees. It was a traditional home for fishers and hunters of turtle and dugong, and then it became a pearling and trochus shell centre. Today it is a modern community that is looking forward to dealing with its future on its own terms. It is an administrative centre for the central strait. It has a thriving fishing industry and is working to see if its hydroponic gardens can produce enough fresh fruit and vegetables to supply other islands in the Torres Strait cost-effectively.

The people of Badu Island are an energetic and resourceful group. That has always been the way on Badu and it always will be, I am happy to say. The island has been blessed throughout its history with powerful leaders—men and women who have taken up the challenges of their times on behalf of their community. Today I bring to the attention of the Australian people the passing of one such leader, Walter Nona Senior. Athe, or grandfather, died on Monday. To me and many of my colleagues—including the federal member for Leichhardt, Jim Turnour; the state member for Cook, Jason O’Brien; former state member for Cook, Steve Bredhauer; and Bob and Jenny Scott—Athe Walter was a friend, a confidant and a mentor.

I first met Walter in the late 1980s and we quickly became firm friends. Every time I visited Badu I would go up to the school and we would have a yarn about the state of the island, the state of the nation and world events of the day. Athe Walter walked through the barriers of time, place and culture as if those barriers never existed. He was a vastly credentialled and cultured man and I am proud to list in this place some of those credentials—they stand comparison well.

First and foremost he was a highly respected man in his own traditions as well as being perfectly at home in the western way of doing things. He had a quiet way with words and wisdom in both worlds, being a well-known teller of Torres Strait stories and legends and a font of stories of more modern times. He remained a strong advocate of traditional knowledge and culture. When he retired he went—every day—to the school on Badu where he taught those essentials to the island children. Education was a central part of Walter’s life. Athe Walter was the parents and citizens’ president of the island’s school for more than 30 years. He was a life member of the Queensland Council of Parents and Citizens Associations. He was a past deputy chair of Tagai State College—which he named—and a founding member of the Torres Strait Islanders Regional Education Council. Athe Walter’s community commitments included being a member of the Badu Island Council and serving as deputy chair. He was a member of the Mura Badugal Council of Elders and served as the elders’ representative on the Badu Island Interagency Committee. He was also a local policeman.

Like all of his contemporaries, Athe Walter was a great hunter, fisher and gardener, and a seaman of some repute amongst a seagoing people. By the age of 14 he was already a skilled sailor, working on pearling and trochus dinghies in the Torres Strait. At the outbreak of war in 1939, Athe Walter was working in the trochus industry on the north Queensland coast as a diver, sailor and skipper. Like many, many Torres Strait Islanders he immediately volunteered for the army, serving as a pilot on luggers sailing between Australia and what is now Papua New Guinea, and other vessels, including submarine chasers. Officially, he was Sapper Walter Nona, Q304658, and he was, rightly, proud of his voluntary service to his nation.

In 2000 Australia recognised this singular man’s contribution to the community when the Governor-General presented him with a Centenary Medal. He was also a recipient of the Premier’s Award for Queensland Seniors. In 2005 Athe Walter was selected as one of 20 significant elderly Australians to be interviewed for the book Inspiring, not Retiring. He was the only Indigenous person included. Athe Walter may have been a quiet and humble man but there was no doubting his strength of character, his clear-cut views on morality and ethics, his social conscience and his strong sense of justice. These are the characteristics that made him a natural Labor Party member. He has been a member of the party as long as I have known him.

Walter was born on 1 April 1923 at Wakaid on Badu Island, the 13th and youngest child of Tipoti and Ugarie Nona, a family of Torres Strait and Samoan heritage. He was a man proud of his South Sea Islander background and the fact that his extended family reached from Saibai Island just off the coast of Papua New Guinea southwards throughout Queensland. I might point out to senators that those family links directly extend into this parliament. Two of his grandsons, Dennis Nona and Alec Tipoti, are highly regarded artists and their works are part of the collection that we hold here in this place. Alec’s print is a very large print that you see on the way to the parliamentary cafeteria and Dennis has a number of pieces in our collection. I am fortunate to have one in my rooms, but there is also a very large piece of Dennis Nona’s, in the same corridor as the Alec Tipoti piece, which is a sculpture of Stingrays. It is a very beautiful piece. I share the sorrow that they will be feeling tonight.

I pass my condolences to Aka Harriet, Walter Nona’s wife of 57 years, and their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the rest of his extended family and everyone on Badu Island. I extend my sincere apologies to everyone for not being able to be at the funeral tomorrow. I am really sad that I cannot be with you all. We will all miss a wise and gentle man. He was a true friend and adviser to his family, his fellow Torres Strait Islanders, his state, his nation and us in the Labor Party. He was above all a family man—a loving husband and father, grandfather and great-grandfather. Athe Walter will be remembered with great respect, admiration and affection.