Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I suppose we can just put that kind of contribution down to the Rennick effect. That's the modern Liberal Party. It's worried about an imaginary war on imaginary statues, but there is not a word about Aboriginal deaths in custody. It's the culture war nonsense. I remember—I don't know whether anybody else does—why that bloke left his job in the United Kingdom. I remember exactly what prompted his departure from Boris Johnson's office, so I've got very little time for his views about the state of race relations in modern Australia.

At the end of May we lost Denis Nichols, a very significant figure in the Labor movement. He represented much of what has come to define the city of Newcastle. He started his working life as a fitter and machinist at the BHP steelworks. He later became a union delegate and a senior union official. As a young man, he was a local rugby league legend, playing 111 first-class games of rugby league for the North Newcastle Bluebags, and developed a reputation for being a very tough front rower. The industrial politics of Newcastle in the 1980s were tough, but Denis Nichols had a reputation for being fair and effective. He fought for wages and conditions, and he fought to keep Newcastle's workplaces open. In 1983 he was elected president of the Newcastle Trades Hall Council. He was elected to the Newcastle council in 1986 and was deputy mayor between 1987 and 1989. Both his industrial and his political advocacy have shaped the city that Newcastle is today, particularly the Newcastle foreshore.

I want to pay particular tribute to his leadership through the closure of the BHP steelworks. At its peak, the steelworks employed 13,000 people and dominated the economy of the Hunter Valley. Its closure represented something larger than a massive loss of jobs. It was a threat to the identity of Newcastle itself. Denis, through his leadership of the Newcastle Trades Hall Council and his participation in the BHP steelworks transition steering team, was critical to ensuring that the end of the steelworks was not the end of Newcastle. He fought to give as many workers as possible a job or a dignified retirement. It was a difficult time for thousands of workers and their families, but Newcastle thrives today because people like Denis fought for it.

In 1988 he was the Labor candidate for the state seat of Newcastle. Denis missed out because that was the election where Nick Greiner swept to power in a landslide that put the Unsworth government out of office. I have to say—while people would say that I would say that—Denis would have been a very good state member of parliament. He would have made a remarkable contribution as a state MP and who knows if he would have had a future as a minister in a Labor government as a very senior leader.

He retired in 2001, but he remained committed to the people of Newcastle. He was the director of the Labour Cooperative Group. He was a senior leader in Shortland Electricity and the water board. Until his death, he was the chair of the Hunter TAFE Foundation, which financially supports TAFE students experiencing hardship. Denis Nichols was a very decent, fair-minded and honourable man whose leadership went beyond his own union for working-class people in Newcastle. He made their lives better and made the region better. Denis will be remembered by his local community in Stockton. To his wife, Iris, his children and his grandchildren, our deepest condolences.