House debates

Thursday, 27 November 2014

Condolences

Goss, Hon. Wayne

11:41 am

Photo of Anthony AlbaneseAnthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | | Hansard source

When I was a young man growing up in the progressive political movement in the 1980s, people from my home state of New South Wales used to make fun at Queensland and Queenslanders. The joke used to be that, when you crossed the Tweed River in Queensland, you had to wind back your watch 10 years. Of course there was an element of parochialism in such remarks; people from New South Wales and Queensland have always been friendly rivals, and that age-old rivalry is played out each year in State of Origin matches. But, for most of the 1970s and 1970s, there was also an element of truth to the charge that there was something wrong in Queensland. People knew that, while the weather was fantastic up north, the political atmospherics were, to be generous, somewhat cloudy.

Wayne Goss changed all that. This mild mannered lawyer, politicised by the Dismissal of Gough Whitlam in 1975, was a genuine hero. Although he was in office for only six years, Wayne Goss brought fundamental change to Queensland—change that dragged the state out of the political dark ages and into the light.

Let's consider Queensland in the 1970s. It was run by a right-wing populist. Joh Bjelke-Petersen was a reactionary who derided education. He refused to introduce a prep year for Queensland schools, meaning that Queenslanders were a year behind children in southern states when they finished school. It was a corrupt state. Police were on the take. Conservative politicians collected donations in brown paper bags. It was a police state. Protests on anything from workers' rights to the right of people to protest were met with truncheons. It was a morally bankrupt state. A South African rugby union team chosen on racial grounds was welcome while anti-apartheid protestors were not.

Wayne Goss was there that day in 1971 when police tore into anti-apartheid protesters with batons. Like hundreds of thousands of Queenslanders, he grew up living under the shadow of an arrogant government with no respect for civil rights. As a young lawyer, he would have heard National Party politicians swearing blind that there were no illegal casinos in Brisbane, even though he could see such establishments openly operating. He also watched as the National Party entrenched its power with a political gerrymander.

Part of the problem was the weakness of the Labor Party of the time. It was run by a small group which was unable to build the political momentum to confront the Bjelke-Petersen regime. But by 1983 the party had shifted after an intervention by then federal Labor leader Bill Hayden. A new group of leaders emerged—a new group of leaders that understood that Labor needed to endorse candidates with broader political appeal. Wayne Goss was one of their first draftees.

He entered parliament in 1983 in the seat of Salisbury and by 1988 Wayne Goss was Leader of the Opposition. One of his first decisions in that role was to hire the then young Kevin Rudd as his chief of staff. Together with Wayne Swan, then Labor's Queensland party secretary, the trio led Labor to victory in the 1989 election, helped by the fact that the Fitzgerald inquiry had finally laid bare the police and political corruption that had flourished under the coalition.

Goss's list of achievements in government was impressive. He implemented the findings of the Fitzgerald inquiry, eliminating the gerrymander and creating proper institutions to prevent a re-emergence of police and political corruption. He decriminalised homosexuality. He abolished the much hated police Special Branch, which the Nationals had used to keep track of political opponents. He ended logging on Fraser Island. He created parliamentary committees, including budget estimates committees, to increase the power of the parliament to keep the executive honest. This was, of course, critical given the Queensland parliament has no upper house.

Above all, Goss restored pride to Queenslanders. Before Goss, Queensland was the political badlands—a place where dodgy dealings were common and went unnoticed due to a lack of proper institutions. After Goss, Queensland was respectable again. No government can ever completely stamp out corruption and wrongdoing, but Goss did what any government should do: he put in place the proper checks and balances that should be part of any well-functioning democracy. This took immense courage and strength.

Wayne Goss was also a dedicated Labor man who entered politics because he wanted to deliver opportunity for all. He knew from his own experience that education is the great enabler. He understood struggle. Wayne Goss grew up in a housing commission home in Inala, in Brisbane's south. He was the oldest of six children and the first of his family to attend university. He learned from his own experience that education and hard work represent the pathway to personal social mobility. Having risen from a housing commission home to the highest office in Queensland, Goss wanted to make sure others would have the same opportunity. That is why he lifted education funding.

While Goss had a soft heart, he also had a hard head. He was a non-nonsense Labor man who knew no amount of opportunity can change a person's life if they do not learn the value of personal responsibility and self-reliance. Once asked by a journalist whether his government was providing enough welfare support for the poor, Goss shot back, 'The best form of welfare you can give a person is a job.' This was why his period in office was marked by careful economic management that aimed to grow the Queensland economy and thereby grow jobs for his fellow-Queenslanders.

Wayne was endorsed to contest the safe Labor seat of Oxley in the 1998 federal election. The illness that finally took his life intervened, preventing him from bringing his intellect and leadership to the national stage. In the wake of Wayne's death, there has been some criticism of the fact that tributes to his life have stressed the shortcomings of the Bjelke-Petersen era. Bjelke-Petersen's supporters claim his period in office was not as bad as has been claimed by people reviewing Goss's achievements. I would like to finish today by respectfully rejecting this view. Bjelke-Petersen did oversee a dark period in Queensland history. Anyone who wants to view that era through rose-coloured glasses ought to read the report of the Fitzgerald inquiry. Wayne Goss liberated Queensland from a period of its history which should be remembered for its lack of proper governance. It took great strength and immense integrity. He deserves our gratitude.

These days, entering Queensland is not regarded as a step back in time. Wayne Goss was forward-looking and dynamic, and his approach transformed Queensland permanently. His efforts ensured Queensland's natural beauty was harnessed for the benefit of Queensland and the entire nation. In fact, many Australians move there from the southern states, knowing the bright sunshine is matched by a political system that sets a standard for openness and accountability.

In recent years Wayne spent considerable time in Sydney on business. On a number of occasions, he would take me aside and offer advice on issues of the day or on more general political analysis. He was always a very intelligent man and humble about his own achievements. His advice was always well-considered, thorough and strategic, and I benefited from that advice.

I express my condolences to Wayne's friends, particularly his good friends Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan. I also express my sincere condolences to his beloved wife and life partner of 32 years, Roisin, and his children Ryan and Caitlin. Wayne Goss's legacy is extraordinary and I pay tribute to this great Queenslander.

11:51 am

Photo of Shayne NeumannShayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | | Hansard source

Wayne Goss was Queensland's Whitlam: a reformer, a decent and an honourable man, a lawyer with a passionate sense of social justice. The barber's son from Inala, born in 1951, he grew up in a housing commission dwelling there in Inala and never forgot his roots. Wayne Swan, the former member for Lilley and former Deputy Prime Minister described him as a leader of 'exceptional quality' and 'breakthrough' leader—absolutely true and completely accurate.

He was inspired by Gough Whitlam and his legacy, and he did so many good things for Queensland: law reform; implementation of improved public administration; overseeing the implementation of the Fitzgerald inquiry recommendations, delivering tangible and enduring action across that area; rebuilding the public hospital system, the education system; improving infrastructure. My good friend David Hamill, the former member for Ipswich and former transport and education minister in the Goss Labor government, said of Wayne Goss that 'he restored dignity to the processes of government'. He reformed the electoral system. He ended the gerrymander, having overcome it in December 1989. I can recall vividly being involved in campaigns in the 1980s in Ipswich, as one of the campaign workers in David's campaign. I remember being there with Ross Platz, the campaign director, as we tallied seat after seat after seat falling in 1989—scarcely believing that we could eventually win. We had enormous faith and enormous respect for Wayne Goss. We many times in many elections the pain and anguish of defeat, but it was always Wayne who had that faith, drive, determination, work, discipline and focus which was required to overcome the gerrymander.

I do pay my condolences to his wife Roisin, his children Caitlin and Ryan on behalf of my electorate of Blair.

Wayne Goss was not an arrogant man, as some have said. He was a shy man and I do recall after he had decided to leave state politics that it was agreed that Wayne would be our candidate in the federal electorate of Oxley. At that stage Oxley covered most of what is now Blair. As David Hamill's campaign director, I recall travelling around the branches in Ipswich. When Wayne was introducing himself, it was quite ironic that he was introducing himself to branch members as a pre-selection candidate in the seat of Oxley, yet they knew him very well because he had been the Labor leader and premier of Queensland.

In my meetings with him, Wayne always struck me as a shy man and a retiring figure. He was not someone of whom you thought hail-fellow-well-met. What struck me many times was his fundamental integrity and decency. I recall in those branch meetings that here was the former premier of Queensland with hands shaking while he was talking to branch members. This was something new for him. He had never been a pre-selection candidate.

It is a great loss. I pay my respects for the current member for Oxley, my good friend Bernie Ripoll, who I think has done a fantastic job for that region. For two terms he was my federal member. Wayne was a great loss to the federal parliament. He would have been a senior minister in a future Labor government, I am sure. He was a man whom I thought really knew where he was going. I recall meeting him in his office on occasions when there were issues of pre-selection concerning my area. This is when he was the opposition leader. He said, 'Shayne, you will know when it is time to leave the law.' I never forgot it, because on more than a couple of occasions I had the opportunity to go into either local or state politics, but I never really felt it was the right time to do it. Wayne's sage advice to a young bloke, as I was in those days—I had a lot more hair than I have at the moment!—was extraordinarily wise. I always respected him because he was someone who committed so much of his time to the service of land rights, representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and being involved in law reform. He was involved in legal aid services in Queensland—establishing them, building them and promoting them—and in delivering justice and representation for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

But he had a greater vision and focus. He wanted to rebuild Queensland, which had been left rundown for a long time. I remember former state member for Ipswich West Don Livingstone saying to me when he was elected to parliament in the late 1980s that there were absolutely no road projects or serious infrastructure plans for Ipswich West at the time. The Goss government started to build. They built roads, rebuilt schools and rebuilt hospitals, all vital community infrastructure that had been run down.

There are a lot of people who want to rewrite the history of the period of the Bjelke-Petersen regime in Queensland, and the premiers after that. It was characterised by a comment that David Hamill made about a conversation he had on numerous occasions with Russ Hinze, who, in the 1980s, was actually the 'minister for everything' in Queensland. He famously would drive through the Valley and say he could not find any brothels or illegal casinos anywhere, even though they would all be there on the very sides of the roads. Russ Hinze said to David on more than one occasion, 'Young fellow, you would be a mug if you did not make money out of politics.' So, according to Russ Hinze, conflicts of interest were more confluences of interests. There was an extraordinary degree of lack of integrity and probity in government at that particular time. As the member for Grayndler said, 'If you doubt there was corruption and darkness and despair at that time in Queensland, go and have a read of the Fitzgerald inquiry and read the recommendations and see what Wayne had to do.'

Wayne did in fact establish merit-based appointments in the public service and he supported the work of the Criminal Justice Commission, now the Crime and Corruption Commission. Wayne was broader than that, though. There were so many environmental reforms, the establishment of national parks, the decriminalisation of homosexuality and a whole range of areas that Wayne devoted himself to. He was a runner who took his discipline as a runner and brought it into political life.

Wayne served with distinction after he left politics. When he left politics, he said a famous thing which is reported many times in Queensland media:

Thank you, Queensland. You've been good to me. I hope I've left you a better place.

He certainly did. He certainly left Queensland a much better place. He was a moderniser and a reformer—our Gough Whitlam. He changed Queensland for the better. The member for Lilley was absolutely accurate when he said:

Wayne changed Queensland, the state we love, for the better. He dragged it into the sunlight after 32 years in the darkness.

He will never be forgotten. Wayne Goss is a legend in Queensland and a Labor legend. He has changed our state for the better. I hope that people in other states will look to him as a role model for reformism. It is a tragedy and a shame that he never got to display his incredible talents, character and ability on the national stage here in parliament, but in Queensland we will not forget him.

12:01 pm

Photo of Graham PerrettGraham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I associate myself with the remarks by the member for Blair and commend him for his kind words about the late Wayne Goss. I would like to follow suit. Wayne Goss's historic contribution to Queensland basically included restoring respectability to Queensland, crushing corruption and introducing fair electoral reforms—basically 'one vote, one value' in a state that had had a gerrymandered system for years and years. Wayne Goss was the man who ended 32 years of conservative government ruling Queensland and ushered in Tony Fitzgerald's corruption-busting reforms in 1989.

Wayne grew up in Inala, a working-class suburb right on the edge of my electorate of Moreton. He worked as a solicitor and with the Aboriginal Legal Service before setting up his own practice. After the dismissal of the Whitlam government in November 1975, Wayne joined the Australian Labor Party. It is sad for the Labor Party that we have been acknowledging the death of both of these Labor legends in the last few weeks.

Wayne Goss entered state politics as the member for Salisbury in 1983 and was later elected as the member for Logan before taking over as the Leader of the Opposition in March 1988. The suburb of Salisbury falls right in the centre of my electorate of Moreton, on the south side of Brisbane. Wayne also lived for a long time in Sunnybank Hills, a suburb I also know very well, on the southern end of my electorate. The former Premier's close connection with the south side community and its people is both heart-warming and inspiring.

In preparing this speech, I consulted with Matt Foley, who was the Attorney-General in the second Goss government and he told me many amusing tales—some of which I cannot repeat. I know that Wayne Goss was a true Labor believer. He both personified Labor values and worked incredibly hard to make sure that all Queenslanders could get the benefits of Labor policies. He served as Premier between December 1989 and February 1996.

While many aspects of Wayne's past have been touched on, I want to particularly focus on his first term, when he was both the Premier and the Minister for the Arts. It is his role as arts minister that I wish to dwell on, because I do not think it has been particularly acknowledged. As a lawyer, as a leader and as a Premier he was a standout person, but his role in the arts in Queensland was symbolic of that change in attitudes in my state, from a time of ignorance and not respecting achievements through to now celebrating Queensland's role in the arts community. I say this as both a writer and a lover of music and the arts. I remember seeing Wayne often at the Queensland Theatre Company. Back before I had children, when I could go to the theatre, and before I was a politician, my wife and I used to go, and we would often see Wayne and Roisin at shows and at other arts events. After leaving the position of Premier of Queensland, Wayne was chair of the Queensland Art Gallery Board of Trustees from 1999 to 2008.

Wayne increased Queensland's reputation in the international arts community. Whilst Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide have been well respected for their contribution to the arts, I think people saw Brisbane as a bit of a backwater, but now, as we saw with the G20 and many of the programs instigated by Wayne Goss, Queensland is able to hold its head high. Queensland is the most decentralised state, so what did Wayne Goss do? He developed the Regional Arts Development Fund, a highly successful state and local government partnership. The state government would put in money if the local governments stumped up money, and they often went to private donors as well. It supported local artists and arts and cultural activities throughout Queensland. That was a great boon for the state.

Wayne was instrumental in attracting the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art to Brisbane and had the foresight to buy the land for GOMA. If you are in Brisbane, you must go to the Gallery of Modern Art at South Bank. Wayne Goss set aside the money to purchase that. It was quite visionary at the time. GOMA has been extremely successful and is, I would argue, what has made Brisbane a truly international city, as we saw recently at the G20. As Premier and also in his role with the arts, Wayne made a special point of reaching out to all people, not just those who could afford to go to the opera, the ballet or the Queensland Theatre Company. He took art to the people. You see it still in Brisbane. I know this, having young children. If you go to GOMA and the Art Gallery, you will see that they have a summer program, when it is hottest in Brisbane, to engage with young kids. You see people coming in from the burbs to engage with artists in lots of different programs. That was the Wayne Goss touch—the boy from Inala who had a global vision: that Brisbane has the right to stand up as a world city.

Wayne's work brought music festivals to life across the state. The old Warana, as I think it was called, has evolved into the Brisbane Festival. He had a passion for music and love for the arts. I think his favourite band was the Rolling Stones. He even said that his favourite song was Sympathy for the Devilone of my top songs as well, but it was quite controversial when he said it. He really understood music. He had a combination of political vision and a literary or artistic heart—a fantastic combination. So we saw a significant era of change within the Arts portfolio under Wayne Goss and his government. As touched on by the member for Oxley, there was the idea of bringing back peer review and openness in the funding department for arts. Instead of just fear and favour, he was saying, 'What are the benefits of the programs?'

I admire his political courage as well. In 1992, he went to the election with a jobs plan—because unemployment was a significant issue. We see it is an issue for this government now, with 70,000 more unemployed people under the Abbott government. Under the Goss government, unemployment was emerging as a problem, so Wayne Goss said in 1992, 'Vote for us and we will put a tax on you.' He went to the people saying he would put a tax on tobacco to fund the jobs plan. That is real courage: the understanding that, 'You need to vote for me, but there'll be something associated with that—it's being done for the best of intentions and for good reason.' Wayne Goss trusted the people and spoke honestly to them about what his intentions were. Surely the most valued currency in politics is trust. Wayne Goss certainly had that in spades. People understood what the state would need to contribute to enable the introduction of a scheme that would secure jobs for many Queenslanders. He argued that case before the election and then, on election day, he was returned. He had great respect for the Queensland people. He was open about his beliefs, and this honesty created great respect for him in return.

In those six short years, the Goss government took a raft of actions to advance the civil liberties of Queenslanders, and I will just go through some of these. He appointed Queensland's first female judge and the first female Labor minister in cabinet. He reformed the electoral system and public administration to ensure each vote across the state was fair and of equal value. He introduced freedom of information legislation. He introduced whistleblower protection. He decriminalised homosexuality, although there is still a bit of work to be done in terms of the age of consent for male homosexuals.

He provided for judicial review of administrative decisions. He implemented the Fitzgerald recommendations for overhauling a formerly corrupt police force. He upheld children's rights by enabling the custody of exnuptial children to be considered in the Family Court along with children born in wedlock through a referral of legislative power to the Commonwealth. He legislated to grant land rights for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders well before the High Court's Mabo decision and subsequent native title laws. He outlawed discrimination on a wide range of grounds: sex, marital status, pregnancy, parental status, breastfeeding, age, race, impairment, religion—note that religion is not something that you can act on in the Commonwealth parliament—political belief or activity, trade union activity and lawful sexual activity. He enhanced the rights of the elderly and infirm by introducing laws to establish an enduring power of attorney. He legislated for principles of juvenile justice allowing detention of juveniles in custody only as a last resort. That is especially important in a state that puts children—17-year-olds—into adult prisons.

Wayne Goss was a great Australian, and he was a truly great Labor man. He created a climate of free speech that flourished across Queensland. He was an Inala kid with a world story. There is no doubt he modernised Queensland and his passing is a great loss. Vale, Wayne Goss.

Photo of Alex HawkeAlex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

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