Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is also with deep regret that I inform the Senate of the death on 26 January this year of the honourable Thomas Uren AC, a former minister and member of the House of Representatives for the division of Reid, New South Wales, from 1958 to 1990.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Employment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate records its deep regret at the death on 26 January 2015 of the Honourable Thomas (Tom) Uren, AC, former minister and Member for Reid, places on record its appreciation of his long and meritorious public service and tenders its profound sympathy to his family in their bereavement.

The honourable Thomas, or Tom, Uren, AC, was a minister in the Whitlam and Hawke governments and a member of the House of Representatives from 1958 to 1990—some 32 years. Mr Uren was born on 28 May 1921 in Balmain and was educated at Harbord Primary School and at Manly Intermediate High School. He left school, like so many others during the time of the depression, to help support his family. Interestingly, he later in life became a lifesaver, played rugby league and trained to be a boxer. The good news is that somebody else who has those talents, Mr President, is still with us! Mr Uren had all those qualities and he contested the heavyweight boxing championship of Australia in 1941.

Tom Uren enlisted in the Royal Australian Artillery in September 1939, days after the war broke out, and transferred to the 2nd AIF in 1941. He served as a bombardier in Timor but he was captured by Japanese forces in early 1942. Like many others, he was put to work on the infamous Burma-Thai railway and was held at the Konyu river camp, where the Australian commanding officer was that great Australian Weary Dunlop. Later he was transported to Japan and worked at two smelting plants. From his prisoner of war camp he witnessed the sky on 9 August 1945 after the atomic bomb was dropped over Nagasaki. After discharge Mr Uren worked first in the building industry and then in 1949 joined Woolworths as a trainee executive. He was manager at Merrylands and Lithgow before opening his own store at Guildford.

Mr Uren's first ministry was in the newly elected Whitlam government. He was appointed Minister for Urban and Regional Development, and he established new national parks and founded the Australian Heritage Commission and the Register of the National Estate. He oversaw the regeneration and restoration of the inner-Sydney suburbs of Glebe and Woolloomooloo, the decentralisation to Albury-Wodonga, the reclamation of Duck Creek and the creation of the Chipping Norton Lakes Scheme. Mr Uren also opened Australia's first bike path, right here in Canberra, and enjoyed riding to parliament by bicycle, or sometimes by bus. He was a strong champion of public transport.

Mr Uren was one of the few who survived the voter backlash of the 1975 election and he was elected Deputy Leader of the Opposition, holding office from 1976 to 1977. He returned to the ministry in the 1983 Hawke government, serving as Minister for Territories and Local Government from March 1983 until December 1984. He was then appointed as Minister for Local Government and Administrative Services from December 1984 to July 1987. After he left politics in 1990 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1993, was awarded a Centenary Medal in 2001 and, in 2013, was advanced to a Companion of the Order of Australian for his work helping veterans and preserving sites of historic and environmental significance.

There are only a handful of members of parliament who served in World War II who are still living—six members and three senators. The last two to serve both retired on the same day in 1990—Clarrie Miller and Tom Uren. I noted that another distinguished parliamentarian who also endured time as a prisoner of war, Sir John Carrick, though well into his 90s, attended Mr Uren's state funeral last week. They disagreed on almost every area of public policy but they shared an experience that perhaps none of us who did not can fully understand.

I recall being at Hellfire Pass a few years ago—a great privilege and also a very sombre occasion—and being provided with the earpieces and all of the equipment, which I do not know how to describe, but you walk to particular points and you press a button to hear somebody talking you through the various aspects, the historical record et cetera. Then, all of a sudden, along came that rasping voice that I thought sounded familiar. What a great thing it is that in that war memorial the Australians who helped put that together have been able to get a voice recording of the honourable Tom Uren and, a little bit later on, a voice recording of Sir John Carrick—people who served their nation superbly in this place on opposite sides but united in relation to their experience of great depravity as prisoners of war of the Japanese.

The strength of that bond and feeling between these two gentlemen I recall being exemplified by a particular senator making a jibe at a Liberal senator about certain things at the prisoner of war camp. I will not identify but simply say it was a bit of an untidy interjection. When the honourable Tom Uren got to hear about it he marched himself to the offending senator's office. I do not know whether it was his verbal prowess or whether it was his prowess at something else and a potential threat that made that senator come into this place very compliantly and apologise unequivocally. The fact that those two members of parliament from different sides had such a strong bond and that Mr Uren was willing to acknowledge the deprivations that were experienced by both, who were serving on different sides of politics in this nation, I thought was an indication of his great humanity, despite the political conflicts that were engaged in.

Mr Uren was a true warrior in wartime and for his party, the Australian Labor Party. In 1994 Random House published his memoir about his war experience and political activism. It was entitled Straight Left, a suitable pun on his pugilistic days but also an accurate description of his politics and his values. He ended his service in parliament as Father of the House. The length of his term and indeed the length of his long and productive life were remarkable, given the privations of those years as a prisoner of war. On behalf of government senators, I offer sincere condolences to his wife and children.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, as you know, I am making this speech on behalf of Senator Wong, who is wounded in action at the moment. I rise to speak on her behalf on the death of the Hon. Tom Uren AC. Tom Uren died on Australia Day, at the age of 93. He was a true giant of a man, physically, politically and morally. He was a true lion of the Labor Left, courageous, strong, tough and noble. He lived an extraordinary life: growing up in the Great Depression, leaving school early to help his parents make ends meet; fighting in the boxing ring, contesting as we have heard the heavyweight championship of Australia; fighting in the Second World War and being taken prisoner by the Japanese; surviving the hell on earth that was the Burma-Thailand railway; witnessing the atomic glow over the skies of Nagasaki; and joining the Australian Labor Party, and fighting again for the things he believed in, for a better, fairer, more just society, for the environment and for peace.

He rose to become the deputy leader of the federal parliamentary Labor Party under Gough Whitlam, a minister in the Hawke Labor government and one of the most senior and respected figures in the New South Wales Labor Party. He mentored countless young Labor activists, especially those from the party's Left, which has not always had the easiest of runs in our party's New South Wales branch.

After leaving parliament he kept up his political involvement, campaigning for East Timorese independence, Aboriginal rights and war veterans' entitlements. He was even declared by the National Trust to be one of the 100 Australian National Living Treasures.

Tom Uren was born a Balmain boy, in 1921. His family moved to Harbord when he was just five years old. He left school during the Great Depression, at the age of 13, because his father was out of work. He took what work he could find, classing rabbit and kangaroo skins, selling newspapers and caddying on golf courses.

He was devoted to his mother and says that her sense of social justice was one of the main influences in his life.

He remembered her discomfort at being called before a local committee to explain why her family was deserving of charity during the hard years of the Depression.

As a big boy, who excelled at sports, Tom learnt to box at Jack Dunleavy's gymnasium in the Sydney CBD. He joined the Army soon after the outbreak of World War II but was granted special leave to fight for the Australian heavyweight title in 1940. The fight went for seven rounds. Tom was defeated, not by the other boxer, he would later say, but by the flu he was suffering.

He was deployed to Timor in December 1941. In early 1942 he took part in the last stand of the Australian infantry forces, who were defending the island against the invading Japanese forces. Captured by the Japanese then, the Australian prisoners of war were taken to Singapore. At the age of 21, Tom Uren was amongst the POWs sent to work on the notorious Burma-Thai Railway. At Hellfire Pass he witnessed the worst and the best of humanity. It was an experience that shaped everything for Tom Uren, that influenced him for the rest of his life.

He was struck by the contrast between the way the Australian and the British POWs organised themselves. The British maintained the regimented distinctions between officers and enlisted men. By contrast, the Australians, under the leadership of Lieutenant-Colonel Edward 'Weary' Dunlop, adopted an egalitarian approach. Officers and enlisted men treated each other as equals. They looked to help one another and to give one another strength. Tom believed this difference was why the survival rates amongst Australian POWs at Hellfire Pass were higher than those among their British counterparts.

Tom was a strong man and he often interposed himself between prisoners and guards to protect those weaker than himself. But no-one could preserve their strength in the terrible conditions. Tom contracted malaria and amoebic dysentery, losing four stone in four weeks. He was sent to a prison camp in Japan.

In 1945, while working at a lead-smelting plant at Omuta, he saw the sky turn red when the atomic bomb was detonated over Nagasaki, 80 kilometres away. He later said:

We didn't hear any noise, just witnessed that vivid crimson sky.

And further:

And we didn't see the mushroom cloud, but we saw the discolouration of the sky and it was that crimson colour, that beautiful sunset magnified about a hundred times over. And you could never really forget that graphic description, colour, of the sky that day.

That experience turned him into a campaigner against nuclear weapons.

After the war, Tom worked at the Port Kembla steelworks as a labourer, then as a manager at Woolworths, in Lithgow. He joined the Labor Party in 1951, inspired to do so by the death of Ben Chifley. He moved to Guildford, won preselection for the seat of Reid, and was returned to the House of Representatives in 1958. Tom held that seat for 31 years before retiring from parliament in 1990, after eight years as Father of the House.

He served as Minister for Urban and Regional Development in the Whitlam Labor government. It was a time of an expansionist vision of the role of the federal government in revitalising the nation's cities and regions. As minister, he used federal resources to rehabilitate large areas of Glebe and Woolloomooloo in Sydney, as well as parts of Fremantle and Hobart. He also opened Australia's first urban bicycle path in Canberra, declared the Namadgi National Park in the Australian Alps, and established the Australian Heritage Commission.

After the fall of the Whitlam government, Tom was elected as federal Labor's deputy leader. After the election of the Hawke government he served again as a minister, from 1983 to 1987, with responsibility for territories and local government and for administrative services. He retired to the backbench in 1987 and from Parliament in 1990. But he continued in public roles, serving as a member of the Parramatta Park Trust, and in political activism, lending his support to causes like Aboriginal welfare and environmental campaigns.

Tom Uren was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1993 and a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2013. His last big political win came in 2011, as he was nearing the age of 90. On Anzac Day that year he returned to Hellfire Pass with three other survivors and the then Governor-General, Quentin Bryce. Prime Minister Gillard announced that the government had agreed to Tom's long-running campaign for a supplementary payment to surviving Australian POWs from the Second World War and the Korean War. This was a final victory in a long life characterised by fierce passion for the betterment of his fellow human beings, unwavering commitment to his political causes, and a strong record of practical achievement and outcomes.

Tom Uren's most important characteristic, I believe, was his profoundly moral approach to public life. He nominated as his principal influences figures such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Weary Dunlop, Mahatma Gandhi, Pope John XXIII, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela.

Before the counter-culture of the 1960s or the identity politics of the 1970s, Tom Uren exemplified the credo that the personal is political. It was in the brutal circumstances of the Burma-Thai railway where he embraced what he called the 'spirit of collectivism'. As he put it in his first speech to the House of Representatives:

We were living by the principle of the fit looking after the sick, the young looking after the old, the rich looking after the poor.

It was in the war-time factories of Saganoseki and Omuta where he encountered the humanity of individual Japanese workers. He learnt that it was not the Japanese he hated, but militarism.

His personal qualities and moral authority meant that anyone who spent time with Tom Uren was changed by the experience. Here is how the journalist Martin Flanagan described it.

When Tom poured his belief into you, it was like standing beneath a waterfall from which you emerged a larger version of yourself.

Tom Uren's life may have come to an end, yet the waterfall of inspiration his life represents still pours forth.

Tom Uren is survived by his wife Christine, his step-daughter, Ruby, and adopted children Michael and Heather. On behalf of the Labor Party, I extend my sympathies to them.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to express the enormous gratitude the Australian Greens feel for the life and contribution of Tom Uren, and we express our sympathy to his family, his extended family and his friends throughout Australia. When asked where he got his inspiration, Tom Uren said that 'life was his teacher'. I think you can see that from his life experience.

As has been said, he was born in Balmain, in 1921. As a nine-year-old, during the depression he witnessed his mother having to explain to a local committee why the family needed charity. That his mother would be put in that position really burnt on the memory of that young boy.

He went on serve in Timor during the Second World War and experienced the horrors of being a prisoner of war, between 1942 and 1945, alongside Weary Dunlop, involved in the Burma-Thailand railway. In 1944 he was transported to work in a copper smelting plant in Japan. There he witnessed the bombing of Nagasaki and became an anti-nuclear activist from that point. During the time in Japan he found his Japanese fellow workers comradely. He said that it was not the Japanese he hated; it was militarism. That is something he stuck to for the rest of his life. When asked what kept him alive on the Burma railway, he said it was the 'spirit of collectivism', of people working together to look after one another in the face of the atrocities they had to endure.

To his great credit he was a campaigner for East Timorese independence. It was as a result of his efforts that at the 1977 ALP national conference the party put the resolution for East Timorese self-determination. As a result of his experiences—his depression experience as a social justice advocate, as an advocate for a fair go for everyone, and his war experiences—he became a strong advocate for collective action, for the anti-nuclear cause and for East Timor. His anti-war activism led him to oppose both the Vietnam War and conscription. His was the first parliamentary voice to question US military intervention in Vietnam.

As his friend Sister Josephine Mitchell, of the Sisters of St Joseph, said of him, 'The thing that seemed to impress Tom was that when he went to Japan later in the war he got to know the Japanese people more and he realised it was not the people who were involved in this sort of action and cruelty, but it was the regime.' Tom had no bitterness and no feeling of hatred. In fact he said, 'Hate distorts the personality and scars the soul.' It is more injurious to the hater than the hated.

On his return he joined the Labor Party in 1951 and in 1957 won preselection for Reid, which, as we know, he held for 32 years, retiring in 1990. In 1959 he became the ALP spokesperson for the environment. Martin Flanagan asked him when he became an environmentalist. He said it was when he went back to Thailand and he found that the jungle had been cut down.

He built the first Department of Urban and Regional Development and helped establish the heritage conservation movement in Australia, protecting large areas of suburban Sydney from developers. The department's national estate program funded the preservation of historic buildings and the acquisition of open space. It provided the first significant funding for public transport from a federal government.

In 1972 Justice Hope was appointed chair of a committee of inquiry into the national estate. It reported in 1974, saying that:

… uncontrolled development, economic growth and 'progress' to that time had had a very detrimental effect on Australia's national estate … and called for … prompt action and public education to prevent further neglect and destruction.

As a result, in 1975 Tom Uren set up the Australian Heritage Commission. He set it up as an independent statutory authority. It then established the Register of the National Estate on which 13,000 places around Australia were listed.

He helped to preserve and rehabilitate parts of the Sydney landscape in his time as Minister for Urban and Regional Development in the Whitlam government and he is credited with rejuvenating certain Sydney precincts, including Glebe, Woolloomooloo, Parramatta and the Sydney Harbour foreshore. He worked tirelessly to secure heritage listings for many sites for the public to enjoy into the future.

In setting up the Heritage Commission, he recognised there needed to be an inventory of those places defined as being:

… components of the natural environment of Australia or the cultural environment of Australia, that have aesthetic, historic, scientific or social significance or other special value for future generations as well as for the present community.

I really want to pay tribute to that because there are many, many places around Australia of cultural and environmental national significance that would have been destroyed had it not been for the foresight then in setting up the inquiry into the national estate and then the Australian Heritage Commission.

At the weekend I had the good fortune to meet David Yencken, who was the first chair of the Heritage Commission. He was talking about those years and what a challenge it was but also the enormous pleasure that he takes from the fact that many, many places are now saved because of the efforts of people like Tom Uren and others in the Whitlam government of the day.

When Tom Uren became deputy leader of the opposition in 1975, he used his influence to campaign for land rights for the First Australians and he also campaigned against uranium mining. After leaving parliamentary life in Canberra, he still continued campaigning for the environmental protection of Sydney Harbour and wilderness areas. He said after his retirement in 1994:

I want to help build an environmentally sensitive, beautiful and more tolerant world.

He spent much of his retirement fighting for the protection of those precious places. When asked in 1996 how he would like to be remembered, he said: 'As a person of goodwill, a giver, a fighter for peace.' I think he well and truly deserves those accolades as we remember him.

He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1993 and was awarded the Centenary Medal in 2001. In 2013 he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours List. That was co-sponsored by Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Bob Brown. I think that commendation shows the level of respect that he had from right across the political system. It was for his work helping veterans and preserving sites of historic and environmental significance. I note also that he was awarded the Order of Timor-Leste medal, which is the highest accolade from the government of East Timor. Vale, Tom Uren. You made a great contribution to Australia.

Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution on the condolence motion for the honourable Thomas Uren AC. A Balmain boy, Tom Uren served his country in war and in peace. His young life was divided among the sports of lifesaving, rugby league and boxing. Following enlistment in the Australian Army, he served as a bombardier with the 2/1st Heavy Battery in Timor where he was captured by the Japanese and sent to work on the infamous Burma-Thai railway. Then he was a prisoner in Japan and a witness from afar, as we have heard, to the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. These were, as you would expect, formative events in the life he went on to live. The Prime Minister stated that he taught a generation of Australians to forgive and to forge new friendships with our former enemy.

When Tom Uren returned from the war he was a rubber worker in the building industry, then he joined Woolworths as a trainee executive, before eventually opening his own store at Guildford. He became the Labor member for the New South Wales seat of Reid in the 1958 general election and held the seat until his retirement in 1990, when he was the Father of the House. A leading member of the left faction, he served as a minister in the Whitlam and Hawke governments as well as Deputy Leader of the Labor Party from 1976 to 1977.

An inveterate campaigner, Tom Uren threw his energies into issues such as uranium mining, the Vietnam war, Indigenous issues, environmental issues and urban renewal issues as well as compensation for former prisoners of war. He pioneered the protection of Australia's historic and natural heritage. Tom Uren was the first Labor MP to question support for US intervention in Vietnam in August 1962. He was in fact jailed for refusing to pay a fine over a Vietnam march protest in 1971. The opposition leader has described Mr Uren as the keeper of Labor's conscience in trying times. He was their moral centre.

Tony Stephens wrote an obituary on Tom Uren in TheSydney Morning Herald on 27 January. He wrote:

Like most Labor leaders of his time, Uren paid scant attention to the economy. He lost more economic arguments than he won in the last 25 years of the 20th century …

Uren was made an officer of the Order of Australia in 1993 and then a commander in 2013. Following a visit to Hellfire Pass on Anzac Day in 2011, then Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced that the government would meet Uren's long campaign for a supplementary payment to Australia's 900 surviving prisoners from World War II and the Korean War. In an op-ed that he wrote in November 1988, Tom Uren said:

During my years under Whitlam as Minister for Urban and Regional Development and later as Minister for local government under Bob Hawke, I have been involved in most regions of the country. I am most proud of our achievements in saving old parts of Sydney such as Woolloomooloo and Glebe, of our sewerage works, the redirection of freeways away from living areas, the creation of the Australian Heritage Commission and the development of the regional centre of Albury-Wodonga, as well as many parks in the west of Sydney and along the Georges River. … I have had a very exciting life and many great opportunities.

I would like to conclude my comments about Tom Uren by quoting from his maiden speech:

We have a wonderful country with a magnificent future as long as we do not put it in pawn to foreign capital.

On behalf of the Nationals in the Senate, I extend to Mr Uren's family our sincere condolences.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia is a better place as a result of the life of the Hon. Tom Uren AC. There have been many tributes paid to Tom. He has been described as a 'true believer' and 'a proud man of the left'. Tom has been a constant in Labor politics for longer than I can remember. Tom was still attending Labor Party conferences when he was in his late 80s. He was a figure who you could see and everyone knew him in the Sydney Town Hall during Labor conferences. Everyone knew Tom: his bush hat, his massive frame and his commitment to progressive politics, which made him such a significant physical and intellectual presence.

The breadth of Tom's contribution to Australia was demonstrated by the attendance of three former Prime Ministers, the Governor-General and the Governor of New South Wales at his funeral. I want to particularly acknowledge the presence at the service of former Prime Minister John Howard, along with the former Liberal minister Sir John Carrick, a fellow prisoner of war with Tom on the notorious Thai-Burma Railway. This demonstrates that Tom Uren commanded respect despite his tough and unequivocal views on many issues.

Tom's son, Michael, said his father carried into later life the lessons he learned in prisoner of war camps:

… the strong should look after the weak, the young look after the not-so-young, the fit look after the sick.

Michael said Tom spent his life in the service of the working people. He remembered his father as:

… one of the most determined, arrogant, egotistical, opinionated, loving, humble and genuine men I have ever met.

Tom was also tough. He took on Frank Packer and Fairfax in a defamation case. It was a big call to take on Fairfax and the Packer organisation at the height of their powers. Tom won those defamation cases and he called his first house that was built after that—the 'Fairfax Retreat'—and his second house was called the 'Packer Lodge'. I think that was quite appropriate.

Tom championed many issues: peace and the anti-war movement, antinuclear engagement, opposition to the Vietnam War, support for East Timorese independence and environmental issues. The establishment of public parks in Western Sydney was a key issue that Tom Uren pushed. One we can all be thankful for if we live in Western Sydney is the connection of sewage. The connection of sewage in Western Sydney was due to Tom Uren. He increased public housing. The decentralisation and the development of Albury-Wodonga was Tom Uren's doing. Tom was a key player in the Whitlam and Hawke governments. Tom continued his political activism following his career as a politician: he campaigned for improvements to the Sydney Harbour foreshore and he succeeded in achieving compensation for the surviving prisoners of war, an achievement that he was extremely proud of.

The complexity of Tom's character and politics was epitomised by the fact that, as a former boxer and soldier, he became a pacifist. As a former practising Christian, he became an atheist. In recognition of the bravery and sacrifice of the armed forces, Tom had the Last Post played at his funeral—this is a pacifist. In recognition of the commitment and work that Tom has done, Sister Josephine Mitchell, a catholic nun, said that:

Tom Uren may not have believed in God, but God sure believed in him.

In recognition of the struggles of the trade union movement, Tom had the Sydney Trade Union Choir sing The Ballad of 1891. I am sure I saw former Prime Minister John Howard clap along!

Tom was held in high regard and rightfully so: a man of principle and a man of courage. Vale Tom Uren, it was an honour to work with you and to know you. My condolences go to Tom's family and friends and to Albo and Tanya, who were so close to this great politician, this great Australian.

Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to pay tribute and respect to the late Tom Uren and, in doing so, give my sympathy to his family and his friends. Tom was to me and to so many in the Labor Party a leader, a mentor, an inspiration and a friend. Indeed, I agree with Senator Cameron that Australia is a better place thanks to Tom Uren. The contributions by Senator Cameron, Senator Moore and so many here certainly outline exactly why Australia is a better place.

Yet through all the hardship that he endured throughout his life, he was a man of compassion, a man of peace and a man of love. Tom Uren served Australia, served the Australian Labor Party, served the left and served the good people of Reid with all that he had. He made Australia's environment and heritage important—notions to be preserved, conserved and celebrated. He was not satisfied with utilitarian cities where Australians merely existed; instead, he made real the concept of beautiful, breathing urban spaces where Australians could live.

I first met Tom in my home city of Hobart, a place he had a connection with through his friend, and artist, Lloyd Rees. It was at the Hobart bookshop where he and his friend Martin Flanagan were sharing their journey of writing the book The Fight. I had a few moments with Tom after he signed my copy to talk about his prisoner of war experience, his experience on the Thai-Burma railway, about his time as a Labor minister and about the things that he loved in life. I felt such a warm feeling, so privileged to have just met this great giant of a human being, a true Australian legend, I thought, who had witnessed some of the worst of life yet was full of peace and love and kindness and who still held such a strong fighting instinct for fairness and justice under the Labor cause. He certainly made an impact that day on my life that would continue for many years thereafter, just like he did on so many in the Labor Party. I remember one day when I was talking to him on the phone, here in Parliament House. I was seeking his wisdom and advice on a particular matter. Tom, like always, simplified the solution down to values and what we, as Labor people, believe in. He said to me, 'Like a strong tree, I sometimes have to sway in the breeze, but I always keep my roots healthy among people.'

Tom was indeed a strong tree. He was an authentic Australian. He knew what it took to survive the worst of life—the fit must tend to the seek; the young must look after the elderly; the rich must look after the poor—and carried that philosophy throughout his life. Yet he knew how tough we must be to make the most of life: tough enough to abjure hate, yet still compassionate, still with a sense of beauty. Tom's achievements of preserving things and places of great beauty live on around us today.

Last week, at Tom's state funeral at Sydney Town Hall so many people came to pay tribute to this great man. Anthony Albanese, who emceed the service, gave a beautiful service and summed up Tom when he said:

You couldn't walk down the street alongside him without feeling the warmth that people had for him. People truly loved him.

Tom was a generous man and a genuine man, a people's man of people's principles. Tom was a man of passion for life, for people, for beauty in our environment and for love, a fighter for peace and for social justice, a man who lived out his beliefs every day of his life. I join so many in the Labor Party and in Australia in saying, 'We will miss you, Tom.'

Question agreed to, honourable senators standing in their places.