John Hogg (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with deep regret that I inform the Senate of the death on 29 September, 2008 of Dr Glenister Fermoy Sheil, a senator for the state of Queensland from 1974 to 1981 and from 1984 to 1990. 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 29 September 2008 of Dr Glenister (Glen) Fermoy Sheil, former Senator for Queensland and places on record its appreciation of his long and meritorious public service and tenders its profound sympathy to his wife in her bereavement.

Dr Sheil was born in Sydney in 1929 but spent his childhood moving around Australia, attending schools in Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania, before studying medicine at the University of Queensland. In 1955 he married another medical student, Dr Marjorie Sheil. The couple spent the early 1960s living in London, where they both completed postgraduate medical studies. Dr Sheil went on to qualify as a specialist physician, concentrating on cardiology and geriatrics. After returning to Australia, he opened his own private hospital in Brisbane.

In his maiden speech in 1974, Dr Sheil recalled that the catalyst for his participation in politics was his passion for health policy. It seems that he had a strong passion to oppose Labor health policy, but he obviously did it with a great deal of personal commitment and with a strong background in the area.

When he ran for the Senate in 1974 and was placed at the bottom of the Queensland Country Party ticket, he campaigned around Queensland on the issue of Medibank and managed a surprise victory for the 10th Queensland Senate seat. Dr Sheil resigned from the Senate in 1981 to go into project management. But he was drawn back into politics by his strident opposition to the Hawke government’s Medicare scheme and was elected to the Senate again in 1984. Very few of us would contemplate making the same mistake twice, Mr President, but Dr Sheil did. On 20 December 1977, he was sworn in to the Executive Council, having been nominated by Prime Minister Fraser to be the Minister for Veteran’s Affairs—but he did not get there. The Prime Minister subsequently withdrew the nomination, following publicity given to the senator’s views on apartheid, which ran counter to the then government’s policy. His swearing-in as a minister did not take place, and Dr Sheil’s appointment to the Executive Council was subsequently terminated on 22 December. I think he will always have a place in the history of ministerial appointments in this country.

He is remembered for making a very significant contribution to Australian public life as a National Party senator for Queensland. He served on a number of committees, including as the Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Trade and Commerce from 1976 to 1981 and as a member of the Senate Standing Committee on Social Welfare and the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs as well as the Senate Select Committee on Health Legislation and Health Insurance. Dr Sheil participated in parliamentary delegations to China, the UK and Ireland and attended the 1978 CPA conference in Jamaica. The senator served three times as the Country National Party whip in the Senate between 1981 and 1990.

In addition to being a vocal proponent of private health care and a critic of the Whitlam and Hawke governments’ health policies, Dr Sheil was outspoken on a wide range of other issues, including education, wheat deregulation, tax policy and immigration. While serving as a senator, Dr Sheil started up the interhouse tennis competition, I am reliably informed. He was obviously a very talented sportsman, having received the Royal Agricultural Society’s sportsman of the year award in 1956. He represented Queensland in tennis, rugby and squash—quite an achievement. He was a foundation member of the Queensland Rugby Union Club, the Brisbane Tennis Association and the Queensland Cricketers Club, as well as a life member of the Queensland Lawn Tennis Association. He was a very active man in all facets of his life and very committed to public affairs.

Sadly, Dr Marjorie Sheil passed away in 1989, and, in 1990, Dr Sheil retired from the Senate. He continued his work as a medical specialist and proprietor of the Fermoy Private Hospital in Brisbane. He was a life member of the Australian Medical Association—Australia’s strongest trade union—and a chairman of the Australian Leukaemia Fund, raising $1.5 million for a new bone marrow transplant unit. He was also an ardent monarchist and was elected as a Queensland delegate to the 1998 Constitutional Convention, where he led the Queenslanders for a Constitutional Monarchy group. I wonder what he would make of Malcolm Turnbull being the Leader of the Opposition now! He clearly maintained an ongoing strong interest in public affairs. In 2002 he published a book, A companion to the Australian Constitution on understanding the Constitution. Dr Sheil is survived by his second wife, Elizabeth. On behalf of the government, I offer her our condolences on her loss. Dr Sheil was obviously a very significant senator. He made a large contribution both here and in public life more generally. I am sure the Senate will endorse the regret that I have expressed on behalf of the government at his passing.

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

I rise to support the motion moved by Senator Evans in relation to a senator I had the pleasure of knowing. As Senator Evans has described, Dr Sheil could rightly be described as having had a colourful career in the Australian Senate as a representative of, first, the Country Party and then the National Party for his adopted state of Queensland. He had a background as both a rabbit farmer and a medical practitioner before entering the Senate. As you can see from the body of evidence, he was often in the headlines during his two terms in this place. As Senator Evans has outlined, he had a very keen interest in sport. He represented his own state in several sports, which is a remarkable feat.

As Senator Evans also said, it was Senator Sheil’s professional career in health which brought him to put his hand up for federal parliament. As Senator Sheil described it, ‘the fiery fingers of the federal government coming between him and his patients’ was enough to motivate him to seek federal office. He first came into this place in 1974 and then again in 1975. Indeed, his original election in 1974 was remarkable given that he was No. 6 on the joint Liberal Party-Country Party ticket for that double dissolution election. At that time, there were only 10 senators per state. It was a remarkable result for the Liberal and Country parties and led to Glen Sheil winning a seat in this chamber. He actually tendered his resignation in 1981, as I understand it, to contest the Gold Coast seat of McPherson for his party. Fortunately, from the point of view of my party, he was unsuccessful, because that seat was held by the Liberal Party. That brought none other than Lady Flo Bjelke-Petersen into this place when she filled his casual vacancy.

Senator Sheil came back into this place in 1984. I imagine there are very few senators who have resigned from the Senate and then been successfully re-elected. That must put him in the history books. That means that, at least, Ron Boswell and Julian McGauran, on our side of this chamber, would have had the pleasure of serving with Glen. He was an active committee participant in his time in the Senate in a range of portfolios. He was also party whip for the Country and National parties in the Senate on three occasions during his two stints in the Senate.

As has been mentioned, Senator Sheil was most famous for his brief appointment to the Executive Council in 1977. As a then very junior research officer at the federal secretariat of the Liberal Party, I well remember the ecstasy of winning in 1977 followed by the drama of losing a minister before he had even been sworn in. Indeed, today in the media section of the Australian, which is now compulsory reading for me in my new role, my good friend Nikki Savva has reminded us all that it was she who, in trying to dig up a story on the new ministry, rang Glen Sheil and asked him, with great friendliness and joy, about his views on some controversial issues. As Nikki has said today, his career ended after three short sentences. As Nikki would put it—and she is of Greek origin—the moral of the story is: beware of friendly journalists bearing gifts! One must be extremely careful of being sucked in by overly friendly journalists—and Nikki was very good at it. Glen, to his credit, said exactly what he thought on the issue of apartheid but, having been published and given great prominence by Nikki’s then newspaper, that meant Malcolm Fraser was in a position where he could not proceed to appoint Glen to the ministry. I guess that compares to the recent case of a New South Wales Labor minister who, I think, lasted some three or four hours in his role.

Two years after nearly being sworn in as Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, Glen Sheil said that he would very much have liked to have been Minister for Veterans’ Affairs but that he suffered ‘death by the media’ and his comments on apartheid were misrepresented. I am not sure that he was misrepresented. I think he stated exactly what he felt. It is to his credit that he was very upfront in what he felt and in what he believed. He never did shy away from very strongly held views. He was very active in this parliament in trying to give force to his views and to alter policy to reflect his view of the world.

It is very unusual in the National and Country parties, but in 1989 he did cross the floor to vote against the Hawke and Keating government’s deregulation of the domestic wheat industry—although that was supported by the then opposition. As Senator Evans noted, Glen’s first wife, Marjorie, died from breast cancer in 1989 at the relatively tender age of 58. They had been married for many, many years. He was very active in his life after politics, going back to his first love of medicine. Then, in 1998—again as Senator Evans mentioned—Senator Sheil was a Queensland delegate to the Howard government’s Constitutional Convention, representing the Constitutional Monarchists group in Queensland. I was the minister responsible for organising that convention, and I am a Constitutional Monarchist myself, so I well remember Glen’s presence and his great contribution to the success of the convention.

On behalf of the coalition I place on record our great appreciation of Glen’s public service and of our acknowledgement of the great honesty and energy that he brought to his role. We tender our profound sympathy to his wife, Elizabeth, in her bereavement.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to add to the remarks of both the Leader of the Government in the Senate and the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate in regard to Dr Glen Fermoy Sheil. My correspondence with Dr Sheil was mainly by phone, generally around preselection time. Being an honorary life member of the National Party, he assured me that I had his vote; I suppose because I am here I must have had it.

Glen was born in Sydney on 21 October 1929, the son of William and Agnes May Sheil. His father was CEO of Mount Morgan Mines and he attended a range of schools including Benalla High, Hutchins School in Tasmania and the Southport School in Queensland. Later he attended the University of Queensland, where he attained a degree in medicine. He was also a very prominent rugby player—in fact, he played rugby for Queensland. Apart from practising as a doctor he was also the owner of the private hospital at Auchenflower and a company director.

Dr Sheil was good friends with—and had as a patient—Sir Robert Sparkes, a long-term president of the National Party, and this assisted in his attaining preselection for the Senate. Dr Sheil was elected to the Senate in 1974. As Senator Minchin pointed out, he won the final 10th position in a battle with Mal Colston and a gentleman from the DLP—Condon Byrne, I think it was. He lived in interesting times. He resigned in 1981 to run for the seat of McPherson on the Gold Coast. There were discussions at the time about a certain preselection and preferences deal, but Dr Sheil and the Nationals stuck to their guns rather than do the deal. As a result they lost the seat. This goes to show, I hope, the consistency in beliefs of who you deal with and who you do not. As part of his campaign for McPherson he was known for walking the whole length of the Gold Coast. After his failure in McPherson he did, however, manage to make it back to the Senate in 1984, as No. 4 on the National Party Senate ticket. He was part of the pinnacle of the National Party’s representation in the Senate, when the Nats sent four senators, just from Queensland, down here: Lady Flo Bjelke-Petersen, Dr John Stone, Senator Ron Boswell—who is still with us now—and Dr Glen Sheil.

Dr Sheil was a fanatical sportsman. He loved rugby, squash and tennis, and he was—as has been pointed out—the Royal Agricultural Show National Fitness Sportsman of the Year in 1956. He was a foundation member of the Queensland Rugby Union. It would be wrong not to mention some of the colour that made up Dr Glen Sheil. He was known for having strong views and for not being at all afraid to express them—sometimes repeatedly. This is a time that may have passed from us in politics, which is a shame. One such view was his belief that the starvation of the Bantu people in Africa could be averted by a diet of rabbits, something which he knew a lot about, owning, as he did, a rabbit farm called Thumper Industries. Glen was the shortest-serving minister in the history of the parliament, after endorsing apartheid and suggesting its merits for Australia. In fact, Glen never actually got sworn in after his appointment. He was—as was pointed out—part of the executive council, but he was never actually sworn in as a minister. This is part of the colourful tapestry of politics. We are here in varying philosophical shapes and sizes. Though we may not agree with the views of others we know our nation is truly free when such views are extolled and the only cost is to ministerial prospects.

Glen was known by his colleagues as being a good doctor. He never had children but was married twice. His first wife, also a doctor, Marjorie, passed away in 1989 after suffering breast cancer. Glen then married a second time, to Elizabeth, the daughter of the VC winner Lieutenant Colonel Charles Anderson. Dr Sheil believed in the right of gun ownership—that it was vital for the freedom of Australia. In early political speeches he managed to do other extraordinary things, such as read the Lord’s Prayer in nine different South African languages. Dr Sheil voted with the Democrats against the deregulation of the domestic wheat industry, but he was also National Party Whip from 1980 to 1981, 1985 to 1987 and for a short period in 1990. Dr Sheil was the first chairman of the Southport School Foundation—it is one of the oldest private schools in Queensland, and possibly in Australia. Dr Sheil was highly energetic, and a capable and colourful character who will long be remembered. In true National Party form he was contentious, articulate and not scared of being forthright in his views, or of accepting the costs that his convictions and views brought.

In a day when preselections are scripted, views are sanitised and we are delivering pallid, boring exposes so as not to cause any waves, Dr Glen Sheil could not have survived. But in an environment where Australia had broader political shoulders and people had more fortitude to truly present their views as they held them, regardless of the consequences, Dr Sheil flourished. Such was the colour of this person. Dr Sheil’s passing gives further passage of Australian politics into the sanitised, boring, pallid porridge of predictable views and predictable lines out of predictable people from a central office run by pimply little boys who have never had a job away from politics.

I did not share all of Dr Sheil’s views. Dr Sheil was a pro-choicer; I am a pro-lifer. Obviously on that one we had vastly different views. Dr Sheil was a monarchist, gun lobbyist, pro-choice advocate, doctor, senator, husband and rabbit farmer. I do not agree with all that Dr Sheil was but I hope that the better aspects of his character have found favour with God.

Question agreed to, honourable senators standing in their places.