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

It is with deep regret that I inform the Senate of the death, on 10 April this year, of the Honourable Peter Alexander Walsh, AO, a senator for the state of Western Australia from 1974 until 1993.

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 10 April 2015, of the Honourable Peter Alexander Walsh, AO, former Senator for Western Australia, places on record its appreciation of his long and highly distinguished service to the nation and tenders its profound sympathy to his family in their bereavement.

Peter Alexander Walsh was born on 11 March, 1935 at Kellelberrin, 200 kilometres east of Perth. He grew up in the town of Doodlakine and went onto the land, farming in the wheat belt and becoming involved in the Farmers' Union and later in the local branch of the Australian Labor Party. It is said that he had one of the best eyes for estimating the yield of a crop of wheat as it was growing and that he was able to predict the crop very accurately. So he brought that very practical experience to this place. He contested the seat of Moore in both 1969 and 1972 and then entered the Senate at the double dissolution election in 1974 as a Labor senator for Western Australia. He was elected to the shadow ministry under Mr Hayden in 1977 and held a variety of shadow portfolios. In 1983, on the election of the Hawke government, he was appointed Minister for Resources and Energy. He served in this portfolio until the 1984 election and then was moved to become finance minister. As far as the finance ministry goes, it was an inspired appointment.

Peter Walsh had a very healthy disdain for big government. He did not—and he readily acknowledged this fault—have an ear well-attuned to the political consequences of certain decisions, but he was resolute in two tasks: protecting the integrity of the nation's revenue, and scrutinising government spending.

Many ministers of that time have written of the trepidation they felt when facing the expenditure committee of cabinet and the critical analysis of Peter Walsh. This is easy to believe given his robust language in public and in the Senate, especially against my side of politics. This led not only to headlines but also to suspensions from the Senate. I will not provide examples. Suffice to say, it was neither pretty nor rare. The positive aspect of this approach was that no-one was ever left in any doubt as to what he thought. On one occasion, he bizarrely, from my perspective, snubbed Chief Justice Barwick but quickly rose to his feet to acknowledge Justice Murphy—an indication of a set of values with which I personally could not identify but which were indicative of his fierce, tribal loyalties. The sequel to that was media coverage with a picture of Senator Shirley Walters, from our home state, as opposed Senator Peter Walsh, who was alleged to have undertaken this snub. I think that both were as offended as each other with the mix-up by the media.

It is said that he had a four-drawer filing cabinet with the fourth draw simply labelled 'dirt'. It is alleged that that drawer was the most frequently used. Walsh was the first minister censured in 10 years in 1984, and the second in 12 years. Indeed, such was his robust conduct in this place, that a contingent notice of motion was moved by Senator Chaney—if I am recalling this correctly—and Senator Don Chipp from the Australian Democrats, so that he could be readily removed if there was another egregious breach of Senate standing orders. Indeed, as I understand it, some of his robust commentary also led to this Senate allowing private citizens to have a right of reply to that which was said about them in this chamber.

It is as finance minister that we remember him now. One paper reported, on his appointment, 'Walsh finds a new target for his cutting edge.' He recognised the concept of budget repair and applied himself fully to the task, often butting heads with the then Treasurer, Paul Keating. His approach was that reining in waste and unnecessary expense provided funds to do more for those in society who were disadvantaged. He was at the vanguard of governmental economic reform in the 1980s.

After leaving parliament in 1993 he began writing the 'Cassandra' column for the Australian Financial Review, and penned one of the enduring political memoirs of modern Australia, Confessions of a Failed Finance Minister. The current Minister for Finance, also from Western Australia, Senator Cormann, last month described that book as remaining 'the compelling manual of choice for any finance minister today'.

The book is well worth reading, or re-reading. It describes not only Peter Walsh's tough upbringing in rural Western Australia and his introduction to politics, but his angst at what he described as treachery against his leader, Mr Hayden, with whom he remained close throughout his life. It is also frank about the failings of the Whitlam years and the temptations always before government—any government—to spend.

Famously, he reprints a letter he sent to Prime Minister Hawke, in 1989, following a routine request by the Prime Minister to all ministers for ideas to save government expenditure. The letter was, as he writes, prepared entirely by him and not his department. It showed two things—that he hated sectional interests, and that he had no care for the political effect of some decisions. Just for a taste, the letter suggests cutting immigration; recovering nursing home costs from deceased estates; opening up all of Kakadu for mining; abolishing the Law Reform Commission and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission; ending cabotage; reforming the waterfront; cutting local government grants to larger cities; and stopping funding so-called public interest groups, who were sabotaging government projects such as the third runway in Sydney. That is only a selection of his suggestions, many of which, I must confess, I find quite appealing.

In his valedictory speech, a good friend of mine who was himself an impressive Minister for Finance, former senator Nick Minchin, said that the honour of the best finance minister in Australia 'rightfully belongs to Peter Walsh', the Labor identity whom he most admired.

In 1996, Peter Walsh was appointed an officer of the Order of Australia for his service to the parliament, particularly as Minister for Finance, and to journalism. I do question whether his contribution to journalism was for the copy he provided during his career, or the columns he wrote after his parliamentary career.

In 2009, Peter Walsh co-authored a booklet about the Rudd government's proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme for the Lavoisier Group. The booklet is called Back to the 19th Century, and the cover photograph depicts a 1930s farmer driving a horse-drawn plough. In his foreword, Peter Walsh was brutal in his assessment of the CPRS, which he declared would send Australian agriculture right back to the 1930s. He was, of course, correct. Given his political allegiances, it was a brave position for him to adopt, but he did so without any compunction. It is clear that he held that very strong approach to all of his views right through to the end. The honourable Peter Walsh AO was respected for his legacy of rigour in spending that stands as a guide to us all.

On behalf of the government, I offer to his wife, Rosalie, their four daughters, Karen, Shelley, Anne and Deborah, and their 11 grandchildren our sincere condolences—and, if I might also say, to his son-in-law, whose presence I recognise in the chamber.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support this motion of condolence and to pay tribute to the Hon. Peter Alexander Walsh AO. The wheat belt in Western Australia may seem an unlikely place from which to send a Labor senator to Canberra, but the life and career of the late Peter Walsh was not one that was made to fit any established mould. Born in 1935 in Kellerberrin, Peter Walsh was elected to the Senate in 1974. With the election of the Hawke Labor government in 1983, he served as Minister for Resources and Energy and then as Minister for Finance. He relinquished that position in 1990 before leaving the Senate in 1993. In his post-ministerial career, he wrote regularly for publications such as The Australian Financial Review. He died on 10 April 2015 at the age of 80.

Peter Walsh came to Labor from a farm, with a much-detested stint of national service and a loathing of the economic policies advocated by the Country Party defining his politics. Walsh's experience with national service was characterised by what he described as 'its functional uselessness, especially in peacetime; its—admittedly moderate—dehumanising ethos; and its denial of civil liberty'. He went on to say: 'Such beliefs helped to take me into the Labor Party.' In relation to the Menzies government's policy of conscription that was in place in the early 1950s, he also saw it in an economic light, viewing it as 'a serious waste of manpower' at a time of labour shortage. Whilst not opposed to conscription on any grounds, his hostility intensified when conscripts were sent to fight in Vietnam, which he described as 'the most criminally insane war in history'.

In his first speech, he observed:

Perverted logic also enables conservatives to pose as champions of civil liberty and individual freedom while simultaneously voting for conscription, sometimes with enthusiasm and apparently without embarrassment.

On the farming side, he spoke of the positive influence of his father, whose views on taxation in particular were an encouragement in the Labor direction, although neither his mother nor his father were lifelong Labor voters. It was during many hours spent on the tractor at Doodlakine, and following some exposure to agricultural economics through the University of Western Australia in the 1960s, that he came to particularly recognise the detrimental effect the policies of the Country Party had 'not just on the Australian economy and agriculture but on farmers themselves'. Walsh saw that protectionism, through a myriad of policies including bounties, tariffs, import prohibition, quotas and subsidies, was not strengthening Australian industry but causing it to decline, with the costs passed on to those who could least afford them.

Peter Walsh saw the Country Party's policies as being not about farmers and regional communities but about keeping 'bums on Country Party seats'. He described its members as 'frauds and drongos'. Walsh's views were formed well before he entered the Senate. His election to this place gave him an opportunity to advance his case in closer quarters to the enemy. Much of his first speech is dedicated to a repudiation of Country Party policies and attitudes, possibly demonstrating the importance of beginning as one means to continue. He lamented the Country Party's:

… passion for treating symptoms instead of causes and consistently ignoring economic realities, thereby aggravating long term problems.

He said:

… the agricultural policies which [the coalition] implemented when in government, woven as they were from a mixture of romanticism, economic illiteracy and Country Party pork-barrelling, would at best be ineffective and at worst counter-productive.

Perhaps he always had an intuitive reaction against the Country Party. Former Queensland Nationals senator Ron Boswell told the story that his grandmother shared a fence with the Walsh family farm and that, as a child, Walsh wired Boswell up to the spark plug lead on his father's tractor.

Walsh stood as a candidate for the House of Representatives in 1969 and again in 1972, before his eventual election to this place in '74. He was not expecting to come into the Senate then, but the double dissolution election accelerated the timetable and enabled him to be elected. As with all Labor members and supporters, the dismissal of the Whitlam government on 11 November 1975 had a searing impact on Walsh. More than most, he dedicated a significant portion of his energy to pursuing those whom he saw as the architects of this travesty: Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, Governor-General Sir John Kerr, Chief Justice Sir Garfield Barwick and future National Party leader Ian Sinclair. He did nothing to hide his contempt for these figures, and in 1980 he refused to stand when Barwick left the Senate chamber at the opening of the parliament.

Walsh came to the Senate with no ministerial ambition. When he arrived here, he believed that the then ministers and opposition shadows were more experienced and competent than he could ever hope to be. He later said:

It took the simple country boy I was then more than a year to realise that that was not so.

He played a pivotal role on Labor's front bench—first in opposition and then in government. Before the election of the Hawke government, he served in the primary industries portfolio, doing the hard policy yards to build Labor's credibility in this area. This role was followed by finance, trade and national development. After Labor's election in 1983, he served as Minister for Resources and Energy from 1983 to 1984. Although only minister in this portfolio for a brief time, he had a substantial influence on policy, with the legacy of some of his decisions enduring today. The introduction of a resource rent tax on oil production was one of his proudest achievements. Another significant contribution was his announcement of the royal commission into British atomic tests conducted in South Australia and Western Australia between 1952 and 1963. In government, Walsh continued to be a formidable parliamentary contributor, a reputation he had established in the 1970s. Paul Lyneham described Walsh as 'acidic'—and that was on a good day.

But, as Senator Abetz has noted, it really was as Minister for Finance from 1984 to 1990 that Peter Walsh made his mark. He was determined to repair Labor's fiscal credentials and to escape the economic malaise that had enveloped Australia under Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and Treasurer John Howard. He was a central member of an economic team that was not afraid of taking on sacred cows as it wrote a new manual for the Australian economy. Their achievements, and his achievements, yielded an unprecedented period of economic growth for our nation. Walsh was a particularly dogged contributor to cabinet's Expenditure Review Committee. As finance minister he regarded himself as the government's chief 'prosecutor' for savings. It has been said that for every hour that Treasurer Paul Keating spent in the ERC Peter Walsh spent two—others would say even more.

Labor's fiscal record in the 1980s was remarkable. It presided over unprecedented change in the Australian economy whilst turning around the deficit of $5.57 billion bequeathed to it by the Fraser government in 1983-84 to a surplus of $2 billion in 1987-88. Walsh highlighted Labor's 1987 election victory, after the party had pursued vigorous fiscal consolidation, as a particular success. He said:

The 1987 victory confounded the pre-existing conventional wisdom that a government which actually practised fiscal responsibility, closed tax loopholes, desisted—mostly—from pork barrelling and cut perks to the affluent could not survive an election

Walsh entitled his memoir Confessions of a Failed Finance Minister but nothing could be further from the truth. His obituary in The Australian noted:

… Walsh excelled as finance minister in a government that relentlessly and mercilessly cut budget spending to a degree never repeated by any subsequent government and unleashed a reform agenda that gifted 25 years of economic growth and prosperity.

As my colleague Senator Abetz has noted, Nick Minchin when he left parliament in 2011 had been Australia's longest-serving finance minister but Peter Walsh had been its best. In his press release announcing his decision to not stand again for the ministry on 2 April 1990, Walsh stated:

I have been particularly proud of a number of the Government's achievements over the last three terms. Most prominent amongst these are the correction of the Commonwealth's budgetary imbalance, significant improvements in income support for people on low incomes, the recent decision to extend fee relief to parents of children using private childcare, and the introduction of a resource rent tax on oil production.

There have been many opinions published on the contribution of Peter Walsh, following his passing. Some of these have sought to extrapolate policy positions he held onto contemporary political debate. For example, one editorial lauded him as a 'common-sense reformer', one of the 'steady hands and fine minds during Labor's golden era of reform from 1983 to 1996'. These are all sentiments I endorse.

The same editorial went on to talk about the necessity of broadening the consumption tax base. Yet Walsh opposed a consumption tax when it was proposed in the lead-up to the tax summit of 1985. He argued that such a tax was inequitable and that compensating those on low incomes would be all but impossible. Peter Walsh's approach to fiscal policy was not based on rigorous discipline for abstract, philosophical ends. He said he 'came into the Senate with strong and long-held beliefs about a fair society, and the importance of economic efficiency in achieving one'. His approach was always grounded in Labor values.

It is this that distinguished him from those with similar views about government spending and intervention in the economy, such as his friend from the other side of politics John Hyde, and the Secretary to the Treasury, who later became a National Party senator, John Stone. I note all three of these men came from the same part of Western Australia.

On this budget day, let us recall that Peter Walsh was always driven by fairness. He saw the twin policy 'goals of human welfare and economic efficiency were often in conflict and that a final policy is most likely to incorporate a sensible compromise between the two'. He saw the principal role of a Labor government as addressing income redistribution. As Paul Malone said in The Canberra Times in 1988:

Social justice and equity have always been at the centre of his thinking but some found it convenient to drop this reference.

Early in life he recognised there was no fairness for the small farmer who received little assistance from measures that only served to make wealthy farmers richer. The goal of fairness was evident even from experiences in his youth, when he witnessed the way what he described as the 'natural' social order treated some members of society, including the Aboriginal children with whom he grew up. He saw: 'Labor was more likely to correct life's unfair deals than the other side.'

In preparation for Walsh's retirement from the Senate in 1993, The Australian ran the headline, 'Last great hater ready to call in old debts'. This was an accurate statement. There are some—maybe from the other side of politics—who may seek to lay claim to the Walsh legacy now. But the fact remains that he really got under the skin of his political opponents, even to the extent that his valedictory speech was peppered with points of order from those on the opposite side objecting to Walsh's use of his parliamentary farewell to have the final say on some of those whom he had spent so many years pursuing; in this case, Sir Garfield Barwick. Walsh also made clear in his valedictory that fairness could not be achieved without creating the economic conditions that would allow a society to prosper. He drew on the Chifley legacy, stating:

… mouthing Chifley rhetoric is a poor substitute for sharing his beliefs, especially his belief that economic growth, or development as he would have called it, has a paramount role in improving the life of ordinary Australians.

One theme that continued to repeat itself throughout Walsh's life was his contempt for 'rent-seekers'. This began, of course, with the Country Party and continued throughout his parliamentary, ministerial and post-parliamentary career. In The Canberra Times, he was described as 'a scourge of special pleading, bad arguments, intellectual humbug, and assertions associated with apple-pie ideas that were not supported by evidence or experience.' Walsh stored up a special dislike for particular groups of people, including environmentalists, campaigners against uranium mining and what he described as the compassion industry. He used his aptly-named 'Cassandra' column in The Australian Financial Review to provide Australian decision-makers with the benefit of his views on the parliament, economics, immigration, infrastructure, the environment, tertiary education and the Labor Party.

I will conclude by drawing on the words of former prime minister Bob Hawke, in whose cabinet Peter Walsh served from 1983 to 1990. Hawke described Walsh's role in cabinet as being fundamental to every decision his government made. Hawke said:

… it was as Minister for Finance that Peter really made his mark. His highly principled, no-nonsense, and at times, acerbic style made him ideal for this position. In agricultural terms, of which he was well versed, he was able to sort the wheat from the chaff in a very efficient manner.'

As we farewell Peter Walsh—one of the architects of the Hawke government and modern Labor, who never forgot where he came from or his values—we express our condolences to his family and friends, including our colleague the member for Brand, his son-in-law, who I know feels this loss especially keenly.

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to pay tribute to Peter Alexander Walsh. The Financial Review described Peter Walsh as a Labor authentic. Many people who had felt the sting of Walsh's acerbic tongue might have other views. But Peter Walsh was a rare character in the Senate, berating all opponents but particularly picking on the Nationals at every chance.

The reality of his parliamentary service was left to the coalition's Nick Minchin, who described Walsh as the best finance minister Australia has ever had. We would like to think, of course, that that is up to today. We now have a new finance minister in Mathias Cormann. I can imagine Peter sitting back in the clouds of heaven with a drink in hand and shoes off, ready for tonight's budget and, no doubt, preparing to launch the shoes at the screen. He was credited with getting the budget under control in the Hawke government, a very difficult feat for any government and certainly a feat utterly impossible for the Rudd-Gillard governments. He wrote:

There are, of course, people in parliament, the media and some academics—not to mention the compassion industry—who believe that spending should be higher and deficits don't really matter.

As we listen to the budget tonight, we will be listening to one of Walsh's reforms: the establishing of budgeting over the forward estimates. Walsh was also known for detesting government waste and for his opposition to what he described as 'unscientific Greens'. The carbon tax would, he felt, eventually 'turn farmers into curiosities like the Amish'. TheAustralian editorial described Walsh as 'one of the steady hands and fine minds during Labor's golden years of reform from 1983 to 1996'. And all this from a Western Australian wheat farming background.

Right from the start, as has been indicated before, he declared war on the Country Party in his first speech and absolutely never let up. In his later years, I think he came to some understanding and formed a bit of a truce with Nationals' senator Ron Boswell over their united views on what they saw as a common enemy: the carbon tax. We heard an anecdote from Senator Wong. There is a little segue to that. I think it was Boswell's grandmother giving him a thump in the ear for such an indiscretion that ensured that Peter Walsh's vendetta against the National Party was welded forever.

Peter Walsh entered parliament as a senator for Western Australia in the May 1974 double dissolution and was re-elected for four terms until retiring in 1993. During that time he was Minster for Resources and Energy from 1983 to 84, implementing the petroleum resource rent tax; he was Minster for Finance from 1984 to 1990; as well as being the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Public Service Matters from 1984 to 1987. In his last speech, always the fierce anti-coalitionist, he admitted that he had surprisingly made some friends on the coalition side. He chose his own time to leave parliament, which few of us can hope for. He described the pinnacle of his personal political ambition as the five years he was Minister for Finance, claiming that 'the most satisfying and significant period of my life was the period I spent working with that excellent department'. Peter said that he came into the Senate with the belief that he could make an important contribution to agricultural policy, an area in which, he confessed, the Labor Party had long been ignorant and confused. He found the adjustment of wheat farmer to politician was not easy, to the extent that he nearly gave it away. That was sharply turned around by the events of 1975.

Walsh's valedictory speech was interspersed with heckling as he went out the same way he came in: fighting to the end. He did not just pick on the Liberals or, always his target, the National Party; he also went for his own side, saying:

I feel that Ben Chifley's Labor Party, to which I made a personal commitment more than 40 years ago, has lost its way … Does anyone believe that Ben Chifley would have closed down mines and banned exploration in a sequence of highly prospective mineral provinces, not for any serious environmental reason but to appease the secular religious sanctimony of Balmain basket weavers? Would Chifley have allowed the long-footed poteroo, or whatever fad was in vogue with the chattering classes, to take priority over a million unemployed.

He certainly had a great use of the vernacular. Peter Walsh was a great contributor to the parliament and his country. I extend the condolences of my National Party colleagues to his family.

Bob Day (SA, Family First Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of this motion. In John Bunyan's great epic Pilgrim's Progress, we read of the encounter between Mr Great-Heart and Mr Valiant-for-Truth:

Then they went on; and just at the place where Little-Faith formerly was robbed, there stood a man with his sword drawn, and his face all over with blood. Then said Mr. Great-Heart, Who art thou? The man made answer, saying, I am one whose name is Valiant-for-Truth. I am a pilgrim, and am going to the Celestial City. Now, as I was in my way, there were three men that did beset me, and propounded unto me these three things: 1. Whether I would become one of them. 2. Or go back from whence I came. 3. Or die upon the place … To the first I answered, I had been a true man for a long season, and therefore it could not be expected that I should now cast in my lot with thieves. Then they demanded what I would say to the second. So I told them that the place from whence I came, had I not found incommodity there, I had not forsaken it … but finding it … unsuitable to me, and very unprofitable for me, I forsook it for this way. Then they asked me what I said to the third. And I told them my life cost far more dear than that I should lightly give it away. Besides, you have nothing to do thus to put things to my choice; wherefore at your peril be it if you meddle. Then these three … Wild-head, Inconsiderate, and Pragmatic, drew upon me, and I also drew upon them. So we fell to it, one against three, for the space of above three hours. They have left upon me, as you see, some of the marks of their valor, and have also carried away with them some of mine.

Mr. Great-Heart: But here was great odds, three against one.

Valiant-for-Truth: 'Tis true; but little and more are nothing to him that has the truth on his side: "Though an host should encamp against me," … "my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident," … Besides … I have read in some records, that one man has fought an army: and how many did Samson slay with the jawbone of an ass!

…   …   …

Mr. Great-Heart: But you fought a great while; I wonder you was not weary.

Valiant-for-Truth: I fought till my sword did cleave to my hand … and when the blood ran through my fingers, then I fought with most courage.

Mr. Great-Heart: Thou hast done well … Thou shalt abide by us … for we are thy companions.

I heard this same introduction at the funeral of one who reminded me very much of Peter Walsh: the former Member for Wakefield, the late Bert Kelly. I have used it today because I think it is an apt description of Peter's life and work: 'Mr Valiant-for-Truth.

I first met Peter through the work of the Lavoisier Group, whose founding members—Peter being one of them—challenged the so-called scientific consensus surrounding anthropogenic global warming. Peter rejected, outright, claims that the science was settled in this matter. Writing in 2006 about Labor's pro-Kyoto stance, Peter wrote:

Since the 1980s, ALP policy has been incrementally hijacked by … morally vain … authoritarian activists, whom the media often misdescribe as the intelligentsia.

Peter Walsh was no 'Don Kyoto', tilting at wind turbines. As for what Mr Valiant-for-Truth would say today about his home-state university's decision to censor debate on climate change, I can only imagine.

Peter's Lavoisier Group has done Australia a great service and provided us with some extremely valuable work promoting vigorous debate within Australia on the science of global warming and climate change generally, and of the economic consequences to Australia of both unilateral and multilateral decarbonisation. It is a pity more Labor members who think like Peter do not speak out on this subject and question their party's position.

Peter gave me a signed copy of his book, Confessions of a Failed Finance Minister. In it there are similarities to the Bert Kelly book, The Modest Member. The Bert Kellys and Peter Walshes are becoming all too rare. I honour Peter Walsh here today.

Question agreed to, honourable senators standing in their places.