George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

Motion not available at the time of publication—

Shimon Peres was one of the most important statesmen of the second half of the 20th century. In his almost seven-decade-long career in Israeli politics, from the forging of Israel's nationhood out of the wreckage of war and the horrors of the Shoah, through times of war and peace, and throughout Israel's recent emergence as one of the technology and innovation capitals of the globe, there has rarely been a moment in which Shimon Peres was not at or close to his country's helm.

It was my immense privilege, on my first visit to Israel more than 10 years ago, to have met Shimon Peres at the Knesset before he ascended to the office of President, and a photograph of us enjoys pride of place in my office.

Reflecting in later life upon his own eventful role in Israel's history, Shimon Peres once wrote that he was a child of the generation that lost one world and went on to build another. And, indeed, looking back on his long and accomplished life, it is difficult not to think of Shimon Peres as a builder of nations and as one of the pre-eminent statesmen of the modern world.

The trajectory of Shimon's early life is one that would be familiar to so many Jewish families who fled the anti-Semitism of Europe to embrace Zionism's promise, the land and a future free from persecution. He was born in 1923 in the predominantly Jewish town of Vishnyeva in what was then the Second Polish Republic. Amid growing anti-Jewish sentiment, he and his family made aliyah, and arrived in Mandatory Palestine in 1934.

By the age of 19, he had become the leader of the labour-aligned Zionist youth movement and went on to serve in Israel's pre-independence underground military organisation, Haganah. It was not long before Shimon Peres's precocious talents drew the attention of David Ben-Gurion, whose protege he would become. Ben-Gurion appointed him to be Haganah's head of mobilisation in 1947, the year before Israel's founding as a state. By 1953, at the age of only 29, he had risen to become the director of the Ministry of Defense. In 1959 he was elected to the Knesset. He served as Prime Minister on two occasions, as foreign minister on three and finally, from 2007 until 2014, as President.

In no small way, the passions that define Shimon Peres's life grew to shape Israel's destiny. He was a fierce defender of Israel's security, but, equally, he became a tireless advocate for peace. Even when the politics of the day meant that the very prospect of peaceful coexistence between Israel and its neighbours seemed fanciful, he persevered.

In 1994, along with Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the Oslo Accords. And, while that ambitious agreement failed to secure an enduring peace, Shimon never lost hope. The duty of leaders, he once said, is to pursue freedom ceaselessly, even in the face of hostility, in the face of doubt and disappointment.

Although his legacy will be defined by his ambitious pursuit of peace, equally we should pay tribute to Shimon Peres's advocacy for the transformative power of innovation, which helped to transform the Israeli economy into the global leader in advanced technology it is today.

Shimon Peres was among Israel's first visionaries and one of its last surviving founding fathers. In his passing, his country has lost a tireless advocate for peace and reconciliation, and the world has lost a famous statesman.

On behalf of the Australian government and the Australian people, as we take up this moment to celebrate the long life and distinguished place in history of Shimon Peres, I extend our nation's sympathy to his family and to his nation, and express our abiding friendship to the people of Israel.

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

On behalf of the opposition, I rise to support this condolence motion, to express Labor's deep sadness at the passing of Shimon Peres, and to join with the government in expressing, as Senator Brandis has, our sadness at his passing. Shimon Peres was a former President and Prime Minister of Israel and a former leader of Israel's Labor Party. He was a Nobel Peace Laureate and a recipient of the US Congressional Medal of Honor. But Shimon Peres was much more than the offices he held and the honours he was awarded. He was a towering figure, both in his own nation and in the international community, both in the 20th and the 21st centuries. He was a statesman and a leading social democrat. He was a political leader with an unwavering commitment to Israel's security and also to peace in the Middle East.

He was a remarkable person: a pillar of Israel's national security leadership who became a passionate peacemaker, a hard-headed realist yet an eternal optimist, a master of political intrigue yet a believer in high-minded principle, a manager and a dreamer. It has been said that he was one of the youngest 93-year-olds on the planet and that he was as full of contradictions and complexity as the vibrant society he served. His death marks the passing of the last of the founders of the modern state of Israel, and that in itself is a remarkable fact given that David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of Israel in 1948. It reflects his great age at his passing and his precocious abilities at the start of his career.

Shimon Peres Shimon was born in Poland in 1923. When he was 11 his family, like so many, fled persecution in the old world of Europe by immigrating and settling in Tel Aviv. He was a Labor Party activist in his teens, an aide to Israel's leading founder, Ben-Gurion, at 24 and director-general of Israel's defence ministry by the time he was 30 years old. He was elected to the Knesset in 1959, became a cabinet minister in 1969 and then Prime Minister for the first of his two stints in that office in 1984. Politically, his trajectory involved a steady move to the Left and a transformation from hawk to dove. As foreign minister, Shimon Peres negotiated the historic Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians, signed at the White House in September 1993. For that achievement he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat.

After Prime Minister Rabin's assassination, Shimon Peres became prime minister for the second time, but it was a period of political turmoil in Israel. Peres and Labor lost office in 1996 and a new cycle of violence ultimately led to the failure of the Oslo Accords to deliver on their promise. Yet Shimon Peres never gave up. He was elected President of Israel in 2007, a position that he held until 2014 and which he used to campaign for peace. As Natan Sachs of the Brookings Institution has written:

Yet through all the pitfalls of his pursuit of peace, and the disappointments and tragedies that accompanied his journey, he remained a believer in the possibility of coexistence between Israel and its neighbours and in Israel’s potential to transform its reality for the better rather than succumb to cynicism and passivity.

Sadly, Shimon Peres has left this world with his vision of peace for Israelis and Palestinians still to be achieved. Yet we can pay tribute to the memory of a great man. We solute his legacy—modern Israel—and we honour his life lived in the pursuit of peace.

Question agreed to.

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

I ask senators present to stand in silence as a mark of respect to the late Shimon Peres.

   Honourable senators having stood in their places—

I thank the Senate.