Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I inform the House of the death on Tuesday, 21 July of Donald James Randall, member for the division of Canning. I call the Prime Minister.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House record its deep regret at the death, on 21 July 2015, of Donald James Randall, a Member of this House for the Division of Swan from 1996 to 1998 and for the Division of Canning since 2001, place on record its appreciation of his long and meritorious public service, and tender its profound sympathy to his family in their bereavement.

This House quite frequently notes the passing of the great, the good and the famous, but there is a shock and a poignancy when we remember someone who was actually sitting amongst us just six weeks ago. Six weeks ago he was a part of our deliberations. Six weeks ago we could talk with him, joke with him, dine with him and on occasion be chided by him, and now he has gone.

Don Randall was a man who had kept bees, tended roses, caught rabbits, played the violin and trained horses. He had more than a passing interest in footy, golf and good wine. Along the way he had been a jackaroo, a rodeo rider and a local government councillor. For 20 years he was a teacher; his work included helping children with intellectual disabilities. All of this reflected a natural inquisitiveness and an interest in people that made him well suited to public life.

Don was elected the member for Swan in the Howard landslide of 1996. He lost in 1998, but he came back in 2001 in the seat of Canning. In fact, John Howard named Don, and Bob Baldwin, 'the MacArthurs' because they did return. In 2001 his margin in Canning was just 530 votes, but by 2013 his margin was 20,900 votes and he won every single booth. 2013 was his biggest victory, but 2010 was his most satisfying. In that year Labor had chosen Alannah MacTiernan as its candidate, known throughout the state as an effective minister. In the end though, Don won by over 3,500 votes. Three years later, when Alannah was elected member for Perth and took her first trip across the continent, she found Don Randall in the seat next to her. I am sure we will hear from the member for Perth, because a friendship developed between these two fierce political warriors.

Don's motto in the electorate was, 'You talk, I listen.' Over here, especially in the party room, it was sometimes a case of, 'I'll talk, you listen'—at least to leaders. He was fearless, absolutely fearless, and utterly impervious to political correctness, but he did have a natural affinity with people. He put that gift to work by doorknocking week in, week out. More than a decade and a half of doorknocking created its own legends. His car was known as a mobile maintenance unit; in the back of his car were the tools to fix everything from phones to sewers. On one occasion, Don doorknocked a house to discover a constituent in deep distress—the family's pet rabbit had died. Without missing a beat, Don went to his car, took out a shovel and gave the rabbit the burial it deserved. On another occasion he visited an elderly lady's home and noticed that the roses needed some tending. So out came the secateurs and the roses were pruned, and in the years that followed Don returned to prune those roses again and again. Of course, he was chased and bitten by dogs, and on occasions, as we learned at his funeral, he was met by all sorts of people—once, by a lady just out of the shower, who was wearing little more than a bath mat.

He was one of those MPs who preferred to make a phone call than to write a letter, because he knew that personal engagement was the way to get things done. In many respects he was the classic Australian male, yet he had a deep inquisitiveness of other cultures. He was the chair of the parliamentary friendship groups for Japan, Cuba and Sri Lanka, and the relationships formed through these friendship groups were real and sustaining. To give one example, he quietly made small payments to a family in Sri Lanka to help them buy a sewing machine, which they turned into a family business. That was always his approach—to build relationships, one person and one household at a time.

The anchor of Don's own life was his family. He was married to Julie for 31 years. His love for Julie, and for his children Tess and Elliott, was abundantly reciprocated, and we welcome them to the parliament today.

Early in this parliament Don said:

The next member for Canning—may that be well into the future—will probably win his seat by being on social media. But the old-fashioned way of getting out there, shaking hands, putting up a placard and telling people who you are, and listening to them, still works … I am interested in what my people have to say. I do not always agree with them and I cannot always deliver for them, but I am interested in listening to what they have to say.

He went on:

That is why we come to this place: to represent the people in our electorates. There is a pretty cynical view about politics in this country—that is, politicians are here just for themselves. If we are here for the people, they will continue to give us the benefit of the doubt …

Don was not one of those MPs who set out ostentatiously to change the world, but he did change people's lives. Thanks to Don, the Perth to Bunbury Highway became an expressway. Chiefly thanks to Don, there are now special Commonwealth programs for children with autism. Thanks in part to Don, the Clontarf program for Indigenous footballers now attracts public and private support. And thanks to Don, this parliament does not sit on Fridays. A few years back, when a certain Prime Minister decided that MPs would be in parliament on Fridays but not the Prime Minister, it was Don who brought 'cardboard Kev' into the chamber, firmly establishing the principle that, if it was important enough for the parliament to sit, it was important enough for the Prime Minister to be here too.

Every one of us here is striving to make a difference. We all so want our lives to be worthwhile. Don, yours was. Farewell, Don, you will live on in the hearts of your friends and your family to whom we extend our deepest condolences.

Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call the Leader of the Opposition, on behalf of all members could I acknowledge Julie, Tess and Elliott Randall, who are in the Speaker's gallery today.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the opposition, I join the Prime Minister in offering our condolences to Don's family and friends, following his sudden passing. Perhaps the hardest part of grieving an early death and a sudden loss is a sense of unfinished conversations, of words left unsaid, of contemplating the children who may one day now have to explain to their own children about their grandfather and his achievements. So our sympathies are to all who loved Don Randall. All members were shocked by Don's passing. Those most affected will doubtless be feeling a fresh wave of loss today on returning to this place and seeing his seat empty marked by a white rose. You have my sympathies.

In his first speech in this place, Don Randall paid tribute to his grandparents, who, in his words:

… came to a block of uncleared land with a tent, an axe and a toddler. Like other Australians at this time, they survived the rigours of drought, recession, depression and war. In the face of adversity and difficult times, it was these types of Australians who helped form this great nation.

These were the qualities that Don admired: resilience, individual enterprise and family loyalty, self-reliance in hard times and fair reward for hard work.

There was, of course, much on which Don Randall and the Labor Party disagreed, often very deeply. But, personally, not for one moment did I doubt the strength of his convictions or his advocacy. He was, as the Prime Minister says, his own man and acted in line with his own views. I note from my personal conversations with Don Randall that he had many sides—some are well known, such as his fierce love of family; some less well known, such as his abiding interest in special education. I regret now that I never followed up his invitation for Gary Gray and I to have lunch with him and his great mate Steve Irons. Perhaps there is a lesson for all of us not to always waste so much energy upon our disagreements.

So often in this place when we pause to pay respects to the life of a former member, we quote from their valedictory speech. Normally, we look to the valedictory for a sense of the achievements in which the member took most pride, the fierce battles they fought and won, the opponents they respected and the people to whom they owed the deepest debt of gratitude—families, friends, mentors. Don Randall has left us without a valedictory. His final speech in this place was a 90-second statement delivered before question time on the Tuesday of our last sitting week. Yet this brief minute and a half tells us much about Don Randall. It contained a fierce attack on the former Labor government and the current Labor opposition. The member for Perth, Don's long-time sparring partner, was the beneficiary of free advice, but most of all and, indeed, best of all it is a speech focused positively on the citizens of Canning, the community that Don Randall put ahead of party and personal advancement. Don Randall was always 'Canning ahead of Canberra'. He was a local member first, last and always.

We should take note that a man with such a strong sense of local identity and pride still believed the best way to serve his community was in this place. He believed to his final day that our democracy mattered, that parliament counted for something, that the measure of political life was the difference you made to the lives of the people you served. Politics is a calling to which many are drawn but few ever know the privilege of standing in this chamber. Fewer still represent their communities for as long as Don Randall did with such distinction. We honour his memory today. We pay tribute to his service. And we offer our heartfelt condolences to the people he loved and the people who loved him. May he rest in peace.

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I take this opportunity to congratulate you on your elevation to this high office.

During parliamentary sitting weeks I begin my day with a run into Parliament House. It is, for me, a tranquil 40 minutes as I take in the sights and sounds of Canberra mornings before the turbulence and noise and intensity of parliament descends. Over many years my early morning run has been punctuated by a bright spot—a daily encounter with Don Randall, as he walked the same route but in the opposite direction. I looked forward to this brief conversation invariably along these lines: 'Morning, Don! What mischief are you up to today?' 'Morning, Jules! Just you wait and see!' Don became a close friend, a trusted friend. He made me laugh. He had a droll, often irreverent sense of humour. We had a shared passion for the West Coast Eagles. When I was on the board of the AFL club during a rather low patch in its fortunes, Don never missed an opportunity to tell me precisely what was wrong with the team and precisely how it could be fixed—and he always ended with: 'In my humble opinion.' There was a larrikin streak within Don's personality. He was a larger-than-life character, often speaking his mind without any regard for the consequences. He was loyal to a fault. There was a side to Don that was far softer, more caring than perhaps his public persona. Don had an uncanny way of knowing when his mates were feeling down, knowing when to contact them. He was always there for them—and he had many, many close friends.

On 17 July last I was attending the national memorial service in Canberra on the first anniversary of the downing of Malaysian Airlines MH17. It was a very emotional day for the family and friends of the victims who were here in Canberra. It also happens to be my birthday. I received this text—and I have kept it: 'Hi Julie. On what is obviously a sad day for you and others about you, I hope you take time to enjoy and celebrate your birthday. Cheers, Don.' I am so pleased that I took the time to respond to him: 'Thanks, Don. So very sweet of you to send me a birthday text—emoji, emoji—Cheers, Julie.' That was the last communication between us.

Over my eight years as Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party I have been asked by the leader, from time to time, to have a word with Don, invariably after Don had done or said something that had caused headlines—and not in a positive way. At first Don was rather curt with me and clearly defiant, but over the years the tone of our conversations changed to the point where, after any particular incident involving Don when I would contact him, he would say: 'What took you so long? I've been waiting for your call!' Recently, his beautiful daughter, Tess, told me that Don's staff had dubbed me 'the Don Tamer'.

Throughout his parliamentary career, Don never lost sight of his role as a local member, first elected by the people of Swan in 1996. The GST election of 1998 saw his seat change hands in a swing against the federal government in the west. It was a momentary setback for Don, but he returned in 2001 as the member for Canning, a responsibility which he cherished and to which he was devoted. His political career spanned almost 20 years and included seven elections—and Don was a superb campaigner. He was at home amongst his constituents. He listened to their concerns. He fought for and, if necessary, defended their interests. When new members would ask me for tips on retaining their seat, I would always suggest they spend time with Don Randall. He understood better than most how much time, effort and nurturing had to be dedicated to an electorate.

Don also cared deeply for the people of Sri Lanka. He had a significant Sri Lankan constituency and he became involved in the life of their country of birth, supporting charities that worked with the victims of the civil war, particularly in the northern region. He loved Sri Lanka and was loved in return. Let me read from a letter from the Sri Lankan foreign minister, Mangala Samaraweera, that I received just after Don's death: 'We will continue to honour and value his consistent support for our country in the Australian parliament, including the steadfast advocacy for peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka. As the architect and chair of the Australia-Sri Lanka parliamentary group since its inception, Don contributed significantly to promote our bilateral relations, people-to-people contacts and interparliamentary outreach. In the passing of the Hon. Don Randall, Sri Lanka has indeed lost a true friend and kindred spirit.'

Don's greatest love was his family: his wife, Julie, his daughter, Tess, his son, Elliott. They were the centre of his universe. He believed in the sanctity of the family unit. As he said in his first speech to parliament:

This is where young Australians learn about responsibility for themselves and where older Australians learn responsibility for others.

Don Randall was from the west; he was of the west. He spoke in the vernacular. He championed the values, the interests of the west. As a teacher, horse trainer, marketing consultant and local councillor he brought a breadth of experience and insight and community perspective to the Australian parliament.

This morning, as I ran along my route to Parliament House, I felt quite painfully the loss—that Don was not there. I ran past a man I had not seen before, and he called out, 'I'm so sorry to hear about Don Randall.' I stopped and spoke to him. He was a retired public servant—and apparently he got to know Don through the morning walks—and he said to me: 'I walked with him every morning he was here, but I'm taking a different route from now on. It just won't be the same anymore without Don.' I could not agree more. To Julie, Tess and Elliott: you are in our hearts. Don Randall was a good man. He will be missed. Vale, Don Randall.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We often rise in this place to honour the lives and celebrate the achievements of our former colleagues from both sides. They are usually former colleagues. On this occasion we were all stunned to learn of Don Randall's death—that someone we were used to seeing every day, each sitting day, here in the chamber was so suddenly, so unexpectedly gone. It brings to mind the words of William Sherlock, who was a dean of St Paul's in the 17th century. He said:

… some expire in the Cradle, and at their Mother's Breasts, others in the heat and vigour of youth, others survive to a decrepit age, and it may be follow their whole Family to their Graves. Death very often surprizeth us, when we least think of it, without giving us any warning of its approach; and that is proof enough, that the time of our Death is unknown and uncertain to us.

Losing someone so suddenly and so unexpectedly of course reminds all of us not to take tomorrow for granted; to say to our friends, to our families, the things that we want to say to them today; to make the most of our time with them.

In the hurly-burly of political debate, with our country's future at stake, we often fight hard for what we believe, and Don Randall was certainly one of those who fought very hard for what he believed. He was never afraid to stand up for his views; he was never afraid to stand up for his electorate and for his beliefs. Many of us on this side agreed with him on occasion—many more of us disagreed on occasion—but we never could fault his courage.

The shock and disbelief that we feel as colleagues, of course, is only a shadow of the grief and the pain that his family must feel. To his wife, Julie, to his children, Tess and Elliott, to his close friends, to his supporters, political supporters and friends in the community: you have our deepest sympathy at this terrible time.

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join with everyone else here in offering my sincere condolences to the Randall family, to his friends, to his extended family and to his staff. I came into this place in 1996 with Don and an ever smaller cohort of others. In fact, I was sat just near Don in the early years, when this chamber saw far more significant disruptions in its composition than we have seen even in this term of parliament. We saw the tragic death, in that time, of Greg Wilton. We saw a number of ministers resign. It was quite a traumatic and volatile period, and people tend to forget what it was like.

In the 1998 election, Don lost his seat, and so many members of parliament who lost their seat were forgotten, which, in itself, is tragic. I remember as a new minister getting a phone call from Don Randall one day, and I said, 'Mate, I'll do anything I can to help you,' and he said, 'Well, I haven't given up'. I remarked to him, 'The thing about you tough buggers is your heart is often bigger than your body and your toughness,' and he said, 'Yep'. He did not give up. He came back. And I did everything I could as a new minister to help him and help Bob Baldwin, the member for Paterson—the two MacArthurs. He was a fierce warrior, Don, he really was. You always knew where you stood with Don Randall. There was no doubt about that. He was a fearless advocate for his electorate and for his values as well.

The Prime Minister referred to that quite significant day in parliament where we brought in 'cardboard Kev'. Brendan Nelson, the then Leader of the Opposition, said to me, as manager of opposition business: 'This cardboard Kevin idea: if it works, it's my idea; if it fails, it's yours.' I've still got 'cardboard Kev' somewhere in the office. When we actually had to bring 'cardboard Kev' into the chamber and the deputy speaker at the time, who is now here, said, 'Get rid of that thing,' we knew that Don was not going to back down, because he was the one that said, 'I want to take him into the chamber and I want to make a point'. He was always up for those sorts of tasks, being prepared to make a point to deliver an outcome that he thought was the right outcome for his electorate and his community.

He was a fantastic local campaigner. In 2001, I was sent up to campaign with him two days out from polling day. I said to Don: 'Are we going to street stalls? Are you we going to do some local media?' He said: 'No, mate.' He said: 'You've porked up a bit; we're going to go and do some doorknocking.' Terrific! Two days out from polling day. We walked into what was a housing estate, and I thought it was unlikely to be a swinging Liberal area. I went into a house, and this beautiful old lady said to me: 'Oh, you're Mr Hockey. My eyes aren't too good, but I can tell who are you.' Don was with me, and I said, 'Well, this is Don Randall,' and she said, 'Yes, yes, I know Mr Randall,' and she said, 'Oh look, I'm such a big fan of you guys,' and I said, 'Don, I can cover it from here'. And she said: 'Can you help me fill out my postal vote?' I thought, 'Oh, okay, I am happy to do that,' and I sat down at the dining table, and I said, 'Ma'am, I assume you're voting for Don Randall?' She said: 'Oh no, I'm Labor through and through.' So I penned the ballot paper and folded it up—

Opposition Member:

An opposition member interjecting—

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I did the right thing. I did the right thing. I walked out and Don said, 'How did that go?' and I said, 'Locked that one away, mate'.

He had a great sense of humour. Yes, he was a great fan of Sri Lanka, but he also was a great advocate for Cuba, which was a little close to home for me, I must say, because he constantly would bring in the Cuban ambassador to my office, introducing him and arguing for closer economic ties, particularly at a microbusiness level. I did not agree, Prime Minister! Don had a wonderful trip to Cuba recently. He came back with very many fond memories.

You know, everything, when you had a conversation with him, was about individuals—about how to make someone's life better. He brought more mayors into this Parliament House than any other member of parliament, and you had to see them. You had to see them, and you would be talking about issues that were most likely the responsibility of local government or state government, but they were all Don Randall's issues. He was a fierce warrior for his community. He was a man with very strong beliefs. He was a very, very committed and principled person when it came to family values. He will be sorely missed.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My main engagement with Don Randall was during my time as agriculture minister. The southern part of the seat of Canning is significant farming area. Don, very early in his life, had taken up beekeeping and been involved in the direct enterprise there. But, while his seat was known for stone and citrus fruits, beef, dairy, market gardens and forestry, the big issue when I first came in was wheat. While it did not necessarily reach his electorate in the way it did other seats, the principle reached his policy views. As a result, he was extraordinarily outspoken at a time when the Liberal Party, under Brendan Nelson, was still arriving at a final position.

There were three members of the Liberal Party—and none of them are in the parliament any more—who engaged very heavily during that wheat debate—Wilson Tuckey, Alby Schultz and Don Randall. Both Alby and now Don we have lost. With all three of them the principle was so solid. It matched a whole lot of other principles that they argued for and that Don would argue for when he would speak to me. He would say, 'It is not that significant to my seat, but it is absolutely paramount that, if it is their wheat, they have the right to sell it to whoever they want.' At a time when the coalition was still arriving at a position and the parties ended up going different ways, he was absolutely forthright in a way that I think every member of parliament would see as our job at its best.

He then moved on to taking up a lot of advocacy on particular beetles that he wanted to get through quarantine as a biological control. There are a number of speeches on that in the Hansard. I will not go into detail on the beetles, but that was an extraordinary example of somebody who would get down to the absolute nitty-gritty of an issue that affected their electorate. He would decide what he believed and pursue it relentlessly. We had meetings in the office on what he thought needed to be done. When I would say, 'Quarantine says there is a problem,' he would say, 'How do we fix it?' He would try to find a way through and to deliver.

Both he and Wilson Tuckey were known for their points of order during our time in government. Each of them would be waving their standing orders around. Wilson's were admittedly more well thumbed than Don's. Don would have his glasses on his head when he stood up. He was never afraid to speak out, and he was never afraid to be critical no matter who it hit. He was critical of the Howard government on wheat, just as he was critical of us on restricting pesticides. His criticism, though, would extend wherever he thought it should be aimed, and it was never aimed against his electorate.

I offer, again, condolences sincerely to Julie, Tess and Elliott but also, given the particular nature of what we are dealing with today and the very rare situation that we have lost one of 150 of us, to those opposite. Those opposite have lost a friend and a colleague in a very special way. I extend both to those members opposite and to the electorate staff of Don Randall our deepest sympathies. May he rest in peace.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this condolence motion and, in doing so, express my condolences to Tess, Julie and Elliott—the members of Don's immediate family—and also to his electorate staff, who are like family. I also acknowledge the remarks that the Manager of Opposition Business just made, because I think he is the first to recognise that this is a great loss to this side of the House. While the whole family of the parliament knew Don Randall well and he was one of 150, each member of this side of the House sees our side as a team, the same way as I am sure the Labor Party see their side as a team. To lose one of our team is a serious and significant emotional blow. As Leader of the House, I feel that each member of the team is very much a part of my team. As Leader of the House, I feel that I have lost a significant part of my team, my persona and my daily activities. It is a great loss to our side of the House and we feel very emotional. I feel the pain of all my colleagues as well as my own and the pain that the Prime Minister, the deputy leader and the Treasurer have all expressed.

The message from Don's death to us all is that you never know what is coming around the corner. When we got the news that Don Randall had died, it just reminded us all that you must live every day as though it is your last day and enjoy every single day, make every day a winning post, have as much fun as you can, of course, and try to do great things. Don did great things. Don was a wonderful character. Don did not come into this parliament to serve a few terms and pass out again having made some contribution but not necessarily a memorable one. Don was a memorable member of this chamber. He was sophisticated and unsophisticated. He was interested in the parish pump and he was interested in foreign affairs and other cultures, as the deputy leader mentioned in her contribution. He was a man of many parts. I do not want to repeat all of those parts, as other people have already spoken about them, and others will as well.

He was interested in being a good representative. I think the first job of all of us in the parliament is to be a good representative, to represent our electorates—in his case, Swan and Canning, and in mine, Sturt—and to represent our states. If you get the opportunity to serve on the executive as a cabinet minister or as a shadow minister, that is a bonus. The first foundation of being a great member of parliament is to be a good representative, and Don regarded that as the most important honour. Anyone who campaigned with Don, spent time with Don or fundraised with Don always had a good time but always knew that he was constantly arguing, pushing, lobbying and suggesting things that would help his electorates of Swan and Canning, Western Australia and Australia in general. He was good company. I became a good friend of Don's.

As nobody else has been game to mention it, I am prepared to mention the unmentionable. I was in the chamber the night that Don made a couple of remarks that did not go down as well as, I think, he had hoped they would at the time. I was, in fact, sitting in front of him where Bruce Scott, the member for Maranoa, sits. I was much younger then. I remember thinking, 'I don't think that will go down very well!'

But once it was out, it was hard to take it back, it must be said. This was the unsophisticated side of Don that I mentioned earlier. And then, about a couple of weeks later, the Liberal Party had its Federal Council in Brisbane. There was a very long escalator, and I was going down this very long escalator and I saw Don going up on the other side of this very long escalator. I remember thinking at the time, 'that is unusual, that Don has come to the Federal Council; I would not have thought he would have been allowed to come to the Federal Council'—because he was a bit controversial for a little while. When I got to the bottom of the escalator, I looked back up again and there, coming down the escalator, was Don Randall with Tony Nutt! I remember thinking, 'yes, I did not think that would last very long'. And we did not see Don for the Federal Council. But I think that Tess, Elliott and Julie enjoyed a lovely three days on the Gold Coast, if I remember rightly, on the Liberal Party's expense, and so something good came of it.

We will certainly miss Don Randall, as we would miss any of our colleagues who had ended in the way that Don has, while being a serving member of parliament. I will certainly lose a friend, as I know many of our colleagues will. He was a great colleague, a good friend, and a great representative. He is the epitome of what a good member of parliament should be. Vale Don Randall.

Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call the member for Brand, could I also acknowledge Don's staff who are here—Chloe, Claire and Tegan—and Don's sisters, Delys Rogers and Nola Price, his sister-in-law, Robyn Brealey, and other family friends who are in the gallery today.

Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and congratulations on your elevation. And to the member for Mackellar: thank you for your service in this position, too.

In giving a eulogy for Don Randall, it gives me no pleasure at all to be speaking of a bloke who had become a mate, and whose death genuinely surprised me, as it surprised all of us. He was a bloke who built a political platform in the suburbs—and he stood for those suburbs. He is a bloke who held his seat, originally, by the thinnest of margins, but behaved in this place with the greatest of courage. And when he lost his first seat, he went back and he thought seriously about his role—and when he then came back to win the seat of Canning, he won it by a hair's-breadth. He won it by the Halls Head booth in the middle of Mandurah, and he knew he had won it by the Halls Head booth. By the time Don was taken from us, he won in every booth in that electorate—simply astonishing.

Julie, Tess and Elliott: Don was a mate. He was a good man and a good participant in this place. He was the son of a family shaped by the Great Depression. He was the son of battlers. He grew up in the WA wheat belt town of Merredin, where he attended primary school and high school. Merredin is an extraordinary place; simply extraordinary. It has produced liberal 'dries' like John Hyde; the region has produced National Party populists. It produced Peter Walsh, and it produced the secretary of the Treasury, John Stone. It has produced local West Australian Greens. And it produced Don. There is no similarity between the political characters that I have just mentioned and Don, because Don was just Don. He was a baby boomer in postwar WA's education system. He was in a class of nearly 50 students in his school, and he learned how to draw attention to himself through his cheekiness, stirring up teachers in class and soon being kicked out of class by his teacher. It was a skill that Don deployed to great effect in this place.

In a life that Don himself would frequently describe as 'a lucky life'—'a Lotto life'—he was a horse trainer, a radio writer, a rabbit trapper, an apiarist, an accomplished gardener, and a teacher with real affinity for kids with learning difficulties. He was a local councillor, a Liberal loyalist, an MP, and an advocate for the people. He enjoyed good red wine—not West Australian wine, in general; usually South Australia wine. But there is a reason for that. He enjoyed good food and a cigar. He loved his family—Tess, Elliott, and, of course, Julie. He enjoyed time on the beach at Binningup. He spoke Italian and he played the violin. In Merredin, the Randalls grew up with flowers in the front yard and roses in the back. The garden was prolific, and Don learnt how to grow vegies at a very young age. Don was recognised for his green thumb. Constituents could attest to this, as Don would frequently take secateurs with him on his doorknocking, assisting older residents by doing a little pruning of their roses. He even had a select group of regulars—as the Prime Minister has referred to—for whom he pruned roses or dispensed gardening advice. Don cared about people. He cared about the little people, the small people, the small businesses—the truckies, the tomato growers, the earth movers, the teachers, the cheesemakers, the citrus growers, the butchers, the bakers, the hairdressers, and the cafe owners. And they all knew him. If you looked at the funeral notices, the obituaries in The West Australian or in his local newspaper over the course of the last few weeks, there were days when they ran for pages and pages and pages: a grade 5 class from Armadale acknowledging Don's efforts and help; hairdressers—I often wondered about the hairdressers, because you would not have noted Don as being a person who went to the hairdresser's very often!

Don enjoyed music. The Merredin brass band—we learned—practised in Don's home. His mum made their uniforms. But Don, ever being eclectic, took to the violin with enthusiasm and skill. Rabbit tracking, beekeeping and lawn mowing were good earners for young Don around Merredin. On leaving home, Don played football, went to teachers college, and learned to appreciate his family heritage in South Australia—a family of battlers with good bush skills; horse riders, grape growers, and workers of the land. In his younger years, Don spent time on a station north of Meekatharra as a roustabout. Horse riding led to Don's enduring interest—and, I suspect, Julie's enduring frustration—in specialising in slow horses. Don even tried his hand at breaking horses. He enjoyed riding in bush races and in rodeos as far and as wide as Carnarvon and Meekatharra.

He was a bloke who enjoyed people, and people were at ease with Don. When Don made friends, they were for life. Don stood up for battlers; he always did. His family remembered that at his funeral. And Don was so proud of his kids—his daughter, Tess, and her violin skills and also his son, Elliott, and his footy skills.

But Don was a man of habit. Seat 1D on the Qantas aeroplane home was seat 1Don, and I would sit next to him. On our travels back to Perth, Don would always pick up a packet of hot chocolate from the Chairman's Lounge because on some occasion, once upon a time, Tess had said she liked it. He would also pick up some licorice allsorts for Julie because on one occasion, I suspect, Julie, you had said you liked them too. He made it a simple habit. When Tess was in Canberra with Don, he was proud. In this business, our kids do not get to see what we do. Tess and Elliott saw what Don did, and they were rightly proud of him. Tess worked for Don, and she was good at her job. They made a good team, both in the Canning office and in the garden. Tess, we liked your dad. At the funeral, Elliott told us that they had shared footy skills—Don mainly collecting footballs from the roof where Elliott had kicked them, and Don getting to know the people by climbing on their roofs and retrieving them. Elliott talked of Don's enjoyment working as a goal umpire while Elliott played footy. Elliott and Don played golf together; Don would talk about that on the plane ride home. Don enjoyed the country shows: Waroona was his favourite, and he was its patron. The Waroona show society, of course, were prolific in their funeral notice in mentioning Don. Elliott told us at the funeral of how Don went to the rescue of a constituent after a swarm of bees had taken up residence in her garden. Elliott held a torch, with no bee protection, while Don smoked the bees, removing the queen. Don still has those bees, which are making honey even now. At his funeral, Elliott told of him working on a kibbutz, racing horses, playing golf, smoking a Cuban cigar—not all at the same time but in a colourful and entertaining life.

The political Don that we all know had a win in 1996. He was proud of John Howard, and he felt personal loss and accountability for the defeat in 1998. I first met Don in early 2001, at about the time that he had decided to run for Canning. At the time that he had decided to run for Canning, the Howard government trailed in the opinion polls. The government of Richard Court had just lost the WA election, and the Liberals had just lost the Ryan by-election. Canning, with the Liberals, was trailing, and Kim Beazley, who held the adjoining seat, was riding high. But Don's instincts were strong. When he won the seat, Don likened himself to a racehorse—as Keating would say, running one out and one back, an unlikely winner. As I said, Don won because of tenacity and the Halls Head booth. Soon he ended up winning all of the booths in Canning.

Don made a substantial contribution in this place—not only by saving us from Friday sittings, which is a blessing which all of us from Western Australia were greatly indebted to Don for. Don built lasting personal friendships with the Sri Lankan community, the Japanese, the Taiwanese and, lately, the Cubans. Don was an eclectic man. He enjoyed good food—fish, beef and Italian—and red wine. When he died, it was to be my shout for the next one of our lunches. It was actually very hard to shout Don for lunch or for a drink. You would find that he had already got up and talked to Nunzio and dealt with the bill. You would find that he would turn up and we would drink his bottles of wine first, on account of he would bring four and that meant that you would not get to the wine that anyone else might have brought. He liked Canberra's Italian restaurants—La Capanna, La Cantina, Italian and Sons, Santa Lucia—and he enjoyed, in Fremantle, Villa Roma, where he was a close friend to Nunzio. Lunch with Don at Villa Roma was simply lovely, and I miss that.

Many of his staff went on to work for state and federal ministers. They were good staffers who made their mark, and Don was proud of them. Don was not simply proud of them as graduates from his stable; he was proud of them for what they would contribute to Western Australia and to our nation. He was not simply proud because one was his daughter. He was proud because he gave to his party and to his community by developing a skill pool on his staff that has been greatly deployed to the advantage of the Liberal Party in Western Australia.

Don championed Gerard Neesham's Clontarf Foundation. Don could speak Italian, and Western Australian Italians liked him. The Borrello cheese family were so strongly supportive of Don that, although they occupied a street which is partly in my electorate, when I went to call on them to say, 'Hi,' they simply did not respond. We emailed them; they did not respond. Eventually, they contacted me and said Don had said it was okay. I mentioned to you the page upon page of funeral notices: 'Sincere sympathies to the Randall family, a respected friend and customer. You were always willing to give a helping hand. Signed, Vince and Theresa Borrello and family and staff at the Borrello cheese factory.' There were so many of those businesses that Don knew literally inside out.

Don made Canning safe for his party by standing up for locals, and he mentored a generation of Liberal activists. He strove for excellence in his electorate operation. When he said he would help, he did. Don stood up against political bureaucracy; he got stuff done. Chris Evans told me that. Chris Evans was the immigration minister when Don was dealing with immigration issues for his constituents, and Chris reported that Don was simply relentless.

He raised money for autism in Western Australia. Again, a funeral note from the Autism Association: 'Don touched so many lives with his memorable Walk for Autism,' they say, 'where he walked around his electorate to raise funds and awareness for autism. His warmth in the way in which he was received by the hundreds of people that he met along the way, the schools he visited and the places he dropped in was a reflection of the respect that Don enjoyed in his community.' That is from the Autism Association of Western Australia.

He raised money for the Liberals in massive fundraising events. I was so jealous of Don. I wish I could have run a fundraising event just half as good as his. Don was also proud of his government car; it was a Ford XR6. I know that he was proud of it because I was the minister when Don told me he wanted that car, and I put it on the government list as an approved car. It was Australian made and it was within the right price band and the right cost. At his funeral, Don's staff told the story of why he did not have magnetic stickers on his car doors. He did many thousands of kilometres of driving each week in Canning and it would seem, so thought his staff, to be a good idea to have magnetic door stickers. But Don was also an old teacher. One day while driving home after heavy winter rainfall, where water was pooling in great reservoirs on the road, Don spotted some boys wagging school. Don swerved his XR6 through the water, spraying them completely wet. Don had reasons for not wanting magnetic stickers on his car!

That car was Don's pride and joy—driving fast, listening to and loving Johnny Cash. While driving to an electorate event in Boddington a few weeks ago, Don died in his car. He died at work, he died doing what he enjoyed and he died doing what he was good at. He would say, 'You talk; I listen.' And he did listen. I will miss you, Don, my friend. I offer my heartfelt condolences to Julie, Tess, Elliott and Don's terrific staff and to you, Prime Minister, and the Liberal Party. Don served the people through politics. He won and lost Swan; he won and never lost Canning. As Don's staffer said in beautifully chosen words, 'Don never lost Canning. Canning lost Don.' Vale, Don.

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I join others in congratulating you on your election as Speaker. The voice of the member for Canning is silent today in this place for the first time in a very long time. I think it is wonderful that today we can come together. Who would have thought, in all the paradoxes of this place, that it would be Don Randall who has brought us together today? As Don's voice is silent in this chamber today, he can be silent; we will speak and he can listen. I am sure Don would be enjoying hearing what he is hearing today very much.

Don passed away at work, as the member for Brand has just said, in his car. He was on route to the Boddington IGA, where he was going to yet another one of his listening posts. It is very fitting that that is the way that Don would leave us, doing what he loved doing every single day, working hard for the people of his own electorate. Much has been said about Don's significant electoral victories and achievements already. At the heart of those achievements was his simple commitment to the job that he loved doing and the people he loved doing it for. You cannot fake that. It is real and it is authentic. It was very genuine in the person of Don Randall. This is why he was successful in politics. People understood that about Don: his authenticity. He was unorthodox, he was a larrikin, he was tremendous company and he was controversial. He was all of these things, but he was a very human person, a very real person and a very authentic person that people could connect with.

Of his victories, there were many. They have been remarked on, whether it was his first victory in '96, the comeback victory in 2001 or his greatest victory, winning every booth in 2013. I think it was his victory in 2010 for me—as a former state director and party campaigner—which was most significant, because it was probably one of the toughest. He was up against his toughest opponent. We were relying on Don in that election to deliver as he always had. Don just never let us down. He campaigned bravely, he campaigned on his record and he campaigned on his unique relationship with his electors. Their response to him was instinctive and that was Don's reward: the appreciation of his efforts in a great contest.

As local members of parliament, we hope that we make a difference in our own electorates, as Don did. His achievements were many. I particularly want to commend him for his work in the Clontarf Foundation, which has been remarked upon. That did not only impact on people in his electorate in Western Australia; it is impacting on mine. There are 50 young Indigenous boys at Endeavour High School in the Sutherland Shire mentored by Jeff Hardy. That would not have happened if it were not for Don. These young boy have a future that they could never have dreamed of. That is a generational legacy for those young Indigenous boys.

I was an event recently at Endeavour High School. Premier Mike Baird was there also, lending New South Wales state government support to this incredible initiative that enjoys support across the chamber. There were two young men there who had been through the program and now were in employment, working on one of the big construction projects out in Western Sydney. The Premier and I asked them, 'How does this play back in your communities? What does your mum think about the fact that you have gone, you have got this job and all of the rest of it?' They said, 'They never thought it was possible.' For one Australian and one Australian family to now have a future that they could never have dreamed of, because of the support and investment of Don Randall, that on its own was a legacy worth leaving in his time in this place.

But there were many, many more. Others have remarked on Don's mentoring skills. That is true. I know, in particular, he was a fine mentor and friend to the member for Swan, as a former member for Swan. But it was not just members of parliament that he mentored. For those of us who came in in the class of 2007—there were not many of us on this side in 2007; there were a lot more on that side—Don was kind friend to us. With the member for Swan, we came in. We love him and miss him dearly.

It was for his staff also. I am glad the member for Brand mentioned the staff. Don was a fine mentor of so many staff, who you would see then going and working in other member's campaigns or even candidate's campaigns, as you would move around Western Australia. There are many people who own their place in this chamber because of the good skills and support of staff who were tutored under Don Randall's leadership. Someone who takes the time to take the interest in mentoring someone is a truly decent person. Don has set a fine example to us all in that regard.

In politics and in public life, and as a shadow minister and as a minister, there are difficult tasks that one has to engage in. In my own case—as Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, as indeed the current minister would know—Don was the strongest possible supporter of the policies we took to the election in 2013. Many doubted, but Don was always a rock of support. I know members opposite who have taken and held those responsibilities know the difficulties and challenges of that portfolio. They know also how important it is when you have some mates who are there to back you up in the difficult times on those decisions when the world seems to be against you. Don was such a person. He believed in the outcome, he believed in the issue and he believed in the people who were doing it. For that, I will always remember my good friend Don Randall.

We got to know each other through a relationship with Sri Lanka, which the Minister for Foreign Affairs has referred to. Don was passionate about Sri Lanka, and they were passionate about him. I was there with him on one occasion and they referred to him as 'Mr Sri Lanka'. Don was passionate about the whole country and everything about it, but he was passionate and had an ambition for Sri Lanka that bore no allegiance to any ethnicity in Sri Lanka. I think this was something misunderstood about Don. Don believed in a peaceful, prosperous, successful post civil war Sri Lanka. He wanted the best for Sri Lanka, and he would support anything and anyone who was trying to bring about that result in Sri Lanka. He was not intimidated by those who were for this regime or that regime; he was just there trying to support the people of Sri Lanka on the ground—Tamil, Sinhalese and others alike. He reached out to them and he supported them; he supported poor families in the north and he spoke to presidents. He advocated on behalf of all for a peaceful and prosperous Sri Lanka. He will always be remembered in that country for his commitments both in this place and there. I want to thank the Minister for Foreign Affairs for reading the communication she received from the government of Sri Lanka.

Don will be deeply missed, as we have said, as a teacher, a larrikin and a mate. 'Mateship' is the Australian word for love, and we loved Don and he was a mate. But in all of these things and in all of our roles, the most important that we have—I know Don felt this way; we all know Don felt this way—is as a husband and a father, our greatest and most important roles. For Julie, Tess and Elliot, who are here, it is difficult for our families in the strange lives we live in this place, but you know, as we know, that you are much better off because you are the wife and children of Don Randall. We will miss him as a mate and we will love him.

Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and congratulations to you on your ascendancy. To the family, staff and colleagues of Don, I can only imagine the pain that you have experienced with Don's sudden and unexpected passing. I recall how I felt when I heard about it, and I can imagine for those of you who were so close to Don how incredibly difficult this time has been.

I have to say that the farewell that was held in Perth a week and a half ago was a tremendously moving event. It was attended by many, many hundreds of people—family, friends, constituents and colleagues from both sides of politics. This turnout alone was a testament to the enormous regard that Don was held in and to the strength of the bonds that he held with his family, and the friendships and the connection—the deep connection—that he had made with so many within his electorate.

It is a tragedy that so often you go to a memorial event and you learn so much more about a person. We have reflected on this: Don playing the violin—it is something that I never thought of Don!—and Don having a 100-year-old violin that he lovingly passed on to his daughter, Tess. There is the fact that he was also a bronco rider. In my teens I was a great lover of rodeos and cowboys, and I never realised that Don and I shared that interest. We also learned a lot about Don's youthful escapades, including his adventures working on a kibbutz—but it was made very clear to us that this was not due to any hidden socialist tendency on Don's part but the fact that he was a cash-strapped backpacker caught in Israel. And Don was into roses and beekeeping—this was an absolute revelation to me. I have to say that I think it is one of the unfortunate effects of the adversarial nature of our political model that you do not always see the lovely soft side of your opponents.

Don and I had been sparring partners for many years and we both represented the Armadale and Kelmscott areas. But it was not just a clash of personalities; we did have, both of us, very sincerely held differences of opinion about the best way to take our community forward. And this is part of politics: it is about the contest of ideas and it is an important part of our political process. This, of course, reached its height with the well-known battle that has been mentioned a couple of times today and got a few mentions at Don's memorial. It was obviously something that was a pretty significant event for both of us in 2010, when I was asked to stand for the seat of Canning. Don held the seat at that time by a 4.5 per cent margin. I had figured that Labor was doing well. We were travelling on a swing in WA of about two to three per cent. I thought, 'Okay, I reckon I can add about two per cent to that swing, and that would get us up to about 4.5. This could be a good and interesting battle,' so I agreed. I certainly never had any illusion that it would be anything other than hand-to-hand combat in the suburbs, as it indeed turned out to be as both of us campaigned like mad in that very complex electorate.

In the intervening time between my optimistic acceptance of the offer and the announcement of the election, we had Labor's leadership travails and we had the mining tax, and the landscape changed. I feel I should defend my honour here, after a number of references, to say that I did actually manage to get a 2.6 per cent swing to me, which was not bad when the state swing against us was 3.3 per cent. I feel, though, that both Don and I can take pride in that result. I am even prepared here today to acknowledge the role played by Don in bringing a reluctant Howard government on board in funding WA Labor's Perth Bunbury Highway. Good on you, Don—we worked well together on that one.

Partly perhaps because we had both mellowed and partly because we were not cohabiting, shall we say, an electorate, once I came into federal parliament, Don and I became really quite good friends on those trips to and from. We would have a bit of biffo in the parliament about the NBN et cetera, but basically we were on very good terms—so much so that Don invited me to deputy chair his beloved Cuba Friendship Group, which I was more than happy to do. I must also take this opportunity to correct a story that was told by one of his staffers at the funeral: I am not an anti-smoking Nazi. On that evening, having smelt cigar smoke for about the 10th time coming from Don's rooms, I knocked on the door to ask about the cigar smoke. What we were actually trying to do was to get an entry into Don's rooms so we could join the party. It was not because we were about to dob him in to the Speaker for smoking. His very devoted staff fended our party off and a few moments later, when Don worked out what was going on, he asked us to come and join in smoking cigars, but the moment had passed.

I just want to say this: of all the incredible stories that we have been hearing about Don and his skill as a representative of his community, for me the most powerful addresses at that memorial service were those from Tess and Elliott—not only were these very articulate, intelligent young people, but they were clearly devoted to and loved their father—and the revelation of Don as an engaged, exciting and loving father are the greatest testimony to him. To Julie, Tess and Elliott, and to all the staff, our very sincerest condolences. Vale, Don.

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I came into the parliament in 2001, Don befriended me immediately. It was not because we had come into the parliament at the same time; it was because I defeated Cheryl Kernot in the seat of Dickson. The Leader of the House alluded to that infamous story a little earlier. We went on to become good friends. Each Tuesday when parliament was sitting we would go to Timmy's Kitchen—a group of colleagues, whom one of my small 'l' Liberal friends used to refer to as 'the book burners club'; it was made up of conservative colleagues—and talk about issues of the day. All of you know that Don had an infectious chuckle—this little laugh—and on occasion at that lunch he would regale us with different stories. His favourite was always the Cheryl Kernot story and, in his view, his ultimate vindication was in the words he spoke in this parliament.

He became a good friend to many of us over the years, because he was, as the Prime Minister and others have said, a great character. Over the course of the last couple of weeks—indeed, over the course of the last couple of years—when people's view of parliamentarians has not been as high as it should, many have said that we should have more characters in this place. They think of an earlier period in our history when great names spoke at this dispatch box and graced the halls of the predecessor to this building. He was, in the modern age, a great character and a person to whom we can all be very grateful and we can certainly be grateful to the people of Canning that they delivered him into this parliament.

I would like to touch on a couple of points. A lot has been said about Don and I add my support to all of those comments. He was a person who loved his family. I remember as shadow health minister going to his electorate for his autism walk. He was with Tess on this particular day; he was incredibly proud of the fact that he was joined by his daughter. I went to his home afterwards, and the love he had for Julie and for Elliott was obvious during that visit. On that occasion I recall very distinctly going into a couple of schools where he had an immediate and obvious connection with the principals but with the schoolchildren as well. It spoke to his love of life; it spoke to his love of children and making sure that they succeeded in life. That one visit in and of itself said so much to me of Don and the character that he was and that he brought to his place. And we celebrate that life today.

As the Minister for Social Services, the member for Grey and others said earlier, I was texting with Don on the Friday before his passing to follow up conversations we had had in relation to an Iranian woman. He felt very strongly about this particular case—there were other cases that he came to see me about as the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection—but he was particularly exercised in relation to this matter because he thought this young woman was at particular risk in Iran. He was desperate to find a new life for her under the Women at Risk program. And yet if you spoke to members in this parliament about the day-to-day Don or if you spoke to people who were viewing his performance in question time, they would not have seen that side of Don—that side of Don would not have immediately sprung to their conscience. On many occasions he represented people who faced a very dim outlook. He lobbied me particularly on border protection with our good friend Sri Lanka, with whom over recent years we have shared an absolute resolve to deal with a very difficult issue for both of our countries. He was professional in those dealings, but he was relentless.

I can remember when I first came into this parliament I sat up the back near where the member for Fisher and the member for Brisbane now sit. I was joined in those days by Alby Schultz, whom we bid farewell to a few weeks ago, as well as the then member for Barker, Patrick Secker, and others. These were great characters of the parliament. Generally in the hurly burly and the exchange of ideas and comments in question time, Don led that charge. He would make us laugh, he would make us cringe, but he would make us proud. Don sat not too far away from the front bench here. We often exchanged comments and barbs with those across the table and quite often you could hear Don interjecting in debates. He added to those debates—he made this a great chamber, not only one where we could exchange ideas but also one where we could strongly stand for what we believed in. He was a person who strongly stood for what he believed in.

Don will be missed by all of us. Our Tuesday club lunch mourns the passing of Alby Shultz as well as, now, Don Randall. I remember learning of Don's passing through a text that I received as I landed in Brisbane, I think it was, on the day he died. I received a text from Kirilly saying what terrible news about Don, and I texted back and said 'What do you mean?' It was such an untimely passing. All of us who knew him knew him to be very proud of his service in this parliament. I remember him saying on more than one occasion at lunch that he would never repeat the mistake of 1998, and he never did. He fought hard for what he believed in; he fought hard for his local constituency and for that they were very grateful. He had the great support of his staff, who spoke so eloquently at his funeral. They relayed stories of why they believed so strongly in what he was doing and why they fought so hard for him to remain in this place.

Most of all, Don loved his family. He spoke warmly of trips he and Julie had taken part in. He spoke very warmly of Elliott growing up and Tess's involvement in his political life. We express to his family and to his extended family, as well as to his staff and all of his colleagues who loved him dearly, our deepest condolences at this very sad time. He will be missed—he was a great member for Canning but, most importantly, he was a great family man.

Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to offer my condolences on the passing of Don Randall. I got to meet Don on the day I was sworn in, after a by-election, 10 years ago. I thought he was somewhat critical of the government so he must have been on our side. It was not until the next day when we fronted up in question time that I saw he was a feisty parliamentary participant who regularly objected about our side—he was on the other side, contrary to what I had thought from our original conversation. He took the time to welcome me into the parliament and discuss things generally, and I guess we struck up a relationship as fellow parliamentarians. That is why this is such a sad occasion for us to come together—we have lost one of our number.

I had the opportunity to serve with Don on many committees but it was when I served with him as his deputy chair on the Sri Lanka-Australia Parliamentary Friendship Group that I spent a lot of time with him and we were able to talk about not only the issues facing Sri Lanka but also the issues facing the people of that country as they rebuild following that dreadful civil war. As many have said today, he had a genuine commitment and passion to see a return to normality for the people of Sri Lanka. I spent a lot of time with him and the former High Commissioner, Admiral Samarasinghe, looking at ways we could better improve our relations but with a view to benefiting the people of Sri Lanka.

Don and I got on very well because of our interest in special education, he being a former teacher, one who had a particular interest in the provision of care for children with autism, and me having a grandson with autism. We spent much time talking about that and about what children do need in respect of early intervention and what they need so they can participate as fully as possible in our community. Don's interest in that regard was certainly not academic—it was a profound interest in special education.

Over the break, since Don's passing, I received a telephone call from former senator Steve Hutchins. Obviously he will not have the opportunity to speak on this condolence motion, but he wanted me to tell the House that he had travelled with Don on many occasions—I think one of those trips was to Sri Lanka—and in particular he wanted me to mention his involvement with Don in the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program. He and Don travelled to the Middle East together, and he wanted me to advise the House that Don was a sterling travel partner. Steve said Don's wit, his humour and his embrace of all things associated with parliamentary life distinguished him, as he said, as very much a professional parliamentarian—one who could rise above politics and look at the institutions of the parliament itself.

With Don's passing there is absolutely no doubt that we have lost one of the characters of this parliament—one of the people who define much of the interest externally in what we do and also a person, quite frankly, who has contributed in a way that we all know means he will be missed. To Julie and their daughter Tess and son Elliott, I offer my absolute condolences to you. To Don, for being the friend you have been, may you rest in peace.

Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade and Investment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As everyone who has spoken here has said, and so many other people, it was a great shock, a great source of sadness, to learn of Don's death. Along with my colleagues, I would like to convey my condolences and deepest sympathies to Don's wife, Julie, and their two children, Tess and Elliott. It is still hard to accept in so many ways that such a strong voice for Western Australia has left us so early—far too early.

I had the good fortune to be heavily involved in the beginning of Don's parliamentary career—before he got to this place, actually. Don was one of my team of marginal-seat candidates in the 1996 election, when we won back government after 13 years. He and others in WA were very much celebrated for their contribution to that. He won the seat of Swan, as we have heard. I got to know him in that campaign because I visited Western Australia many times. Swan was a seat that was going to be very difficult to win at any time; but, with a swing on and a good candidate, we thought we had good prospects. The party provided a lot of support because the swing was on and we did judge that we had a very good candidate.

I got to know him as a door-knocker extraordinaire; a man with a very authentic personality; a character, as so many others have attested to; and a man of wide interests. Like the member for Perth, I have been surprised to hear about some of the interests he had. He was a horse trainer and a rodeo rider. I wish I had known that, because I have had an involvement with horses all my life and I used to go to the occasional rodeo, and Don and I were much the same age. Unfortunately, I never ran across him when he was riding. I did not run across the member for Perth either!

Ms MacTiernan interjecting—

I am sorry! I also had a good introduction to his irreverent streak when, from time to time, he disagreed with instructions from campaign headquarters. As others will attest to, when Don exposed something stupid that you might have done, he did not miss. You remembered it, not in a vindictive way but in order to avoid that treatment again!

When I saw Don in action, especially in those few months before he won that first campaign, I learnt a lot about the importance of genuinely listening to people. He demonstrated that great capacity. You could see that he was really absorbing what people were saying, no matter what it was. You do get the odd eccentric thing said to you as a politician, especially when you are in campaign mode, but Don never failed to absorb what he was being told. As someone else said, he may not have agreed with it—and I am sure he did not, half the time. But he had that capacity that I saw in John Howard. That is a fairly significant figure to align him with, but he had that capacity to identify with people, and they knew that there was an authenticity associated with that.

Many have spoken of his irreverence. Despite that, or maybe because of it, he took his responsibilities very seriously, from my observation. Over the 11 years that I have been in the House, he introduced me to many local mayors, which I have been very grateful for, and many domestic and international issues. Irrespective of the different responsibilities I have had, I was exposed to Don's sheer persistence—'the squeaky wheel par excellence', I used to think. I think the member for Dickson called it 'relentless'. I would call it dog-with-a-bone syndrome. He understood that, if he kept at people who had the opportunity to do something that would benefit his constituency, maybe that issue would get to the top of their list. You would think, 'Invariably, I'm going to run into Don in the corridor. I'd better make that phone call,' or do whatever. The important thing is that he had a lot of success because of that tenacity with which he went about his task. And I always found with Don that, whether or not an issue had been resolved, even if it had been unsuccessful, Don would make the effort to thank you for doing some representation on behalf of someone from his electorate. He always showed gratitude to those who responded to his requests. That does not always happen in life. But he did mark himself as a person of great character, I think.

Don's life was far too short, but it was a life, as I think we have heard today, rich in achievement. It was the life of a good man, a man loved by his family and extended family, and a man loved by so many others. He will be sorely missed.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commence my contribution to this motion by passing on my sincere condolences to Don's family, who have lost their husband and father; to his electorate staff, because in an electorate office you are all in there together, working as a team; and to the electors of Canning, who have obviously held Don very dear since his re-election in 2001. My sincere condolences to you all.

I will miss Don. I did not think I would ever say in this place that I would miss Don. When I first met Don, we were on, I think, the employment and industrial relations committee together, and I formed an instant dislike to him. But that changed. It changed over time, and I came to enjoy his company and to enjoy his wit and his quirky sense of humour that we have heard about today. I have gone from being in a position where I hoped I would never see him again to now being very, very sad that he is not here in this parliament.

I emailed his office when I heard of his passing, because I was really sad that I would not go along to the Procedure Committee again and see Don in the chair—and he was a great chair, if I could say. He listened to everybody; he encouraged everyone to participate and respected their opinions and tried to incorporate everyone's opinions into reports that were brought down by the Procedure Committee. I had not worked with him as a chair up until that time, and I was pleasantly surprised. He was a member of the Selection Committee in this parliament, and I might say that it is quite a different Selection Committee to the last parliament, but he contributed on that committee too.

After the 2007 election, Don's office was next to what is now the government party room and the then caucus room. We thought it might be nice for Don to move to a different office. Don would hear nothing of it—that was his office, that was where he was staying, and I think that really epitomises to a degree the type of person that Don was. He steadfastly stood by a decision he made and would not be swayed by any good argument or bad argument. Don was his own person, and I think we have heard that said many times here this morning. He was passionate and he would always speak his mind. He managed to build relationships across parliament and he was a person that I came to respect.

In establishing the Cuban parliamentary friendship group, he consulted widely. He consulted with the foreign minister. He really had a vision that we could build a relationship there. He knew that there were opportunities for us in this country to develop that relationship, and I know that the Cubans will be very sad at the passing of Don. I feel privileged to have known Don, I feel privileged to have worked with him, and my really, really heartfelt comment is: I will miss him, and my sincere condolences once again to his family.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is much sadness and much to be sad about in this House today, but there is also much to remember and to celebrate in a great life. In terms of the sadness, this parliament has lost a true representative in the terms intended in the heart of the Constitution. Our party has lost a wondrous campaigner and Canning has lost its voice. But his family—Julie, Tess and Elliott—have lost something immeasurably more valuable, as have his wondrous staff.

At the same time, there is much to celebrate. Don was not a secret environmentalist; he was an open local environmental champion. He was a boy from the wheatbelt and a beekeeper. In that context, during the debate about the Green Army in this place, he said, 'You know, I could speak for an hour on this topic.' And, knowing Don, if the standing orders were different, he would have. Only a week before he passed, he visited the Bridging the Gap Green Army team in his electorate. There was a beautiful photo of Don and all of these young people in the local Mandurah Coastal Times after his passing, and it was a wonderful way for him to be recorded. As Don's great friend and my great friend Bob Baldwin just reminded me, that same Green Army team of young people formed an honour guard in their uniforms at his funeral. They did not have to do that; they chose to do that.

He loved his local environmental projects. I remember he took me to a local composting plant right next to a pig farm, and whilst we were there he said, 'I want you to roll up your sleeves and feel the heat in this compost right next to the pig farm.' I dug my hands in and he said, 'I want you to get down to your elbows.' He rolled up the sleeves for me and he said, 'I want you to get down to just above your armpits,' and so I did. He said, 'I have got a towel in the car,' and he cleaned it all off. As we were leaving, I said, 'Did we really have to do that?' He said: 'I wanted you to feel the microbial activity—and I just won a bottle of Margaret River red from the owner. I told him I would have you up to your armpits in pig manure before you left the place.' He never let me forget that!

He also fought passionately for a Peel-Harvey Catchment Council. He was tenacious, unrelenting, passionate and good humoured about it, and not long ago we stood and announced, with all of the local community who had fought for it, that the Peel-Harvey Catchment Council was Australia's first new catchment council on land. That is his testament, and that is his living memory, in terms of his area in the environment.

Beyond the environment, we talked a lot about autism. We shared a lot of time planning his Walk for Autism. He was many things, but perhaps most of all in his professional life he was a teacher of kids with disabilities. He did that work for many long years, and he was quiet but intensely proud of his Walk for Autism. As others have recorded, the way the community responded represented the way he had dealt with them. The funds he raised, the awareness he raised and, most importantly, the fact that he contributed to autism being at the heart of the NDIS will perhaps be his most important professional legacy. Beyond those matters, he was a great friend, mentor, husband and father.

He loved his staff—he really loved his staff. He said to me one day: 'I've got a fantastic girl, Nicole Green. She deserves to be on ministerial staff. I don't want to lose her but I don't want to hold her back.' He introduced me to her and we recruited her, with his consent and blessing. Not long after she arrived at the front desk, she was promoted. Don took that approach to all of his staff. On the night I received the news about Don, I felt it was my duty to call Nicole, but she had just found out and she was in floods of tears. She loved her old boss and she loved her friend Tess. On behalf of Nicole and all of us here in the parliament, I say to Don's family: he was a wonderful husband and a wonderful father, and he left the world a better place.

Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join with others in offering my sincere condolences at the passing of Don Randall—a real character and a guy whom I have known for the best part of 20 years in this place. Like many, with someone on the other side you can often spend years where you nod at the them in the corridor but you do not really talk much with them. Unless you are on a committee or you have some sort of personal involvement with them, they are someone you know of but not necessarily know so well. But I came to have a view of Don over the years and, yes, he was a man of strong beliefs. He was a man who said what he thought. Sometimes he probably should have thought about it a bit more before he said it—but then we have all done that. He was also a very committed parliamentarian. Where I did come to know him—and I just want to outline two or three little events in my time with Don, just to highlight what I think encapsulated him as a man—was in relation to that issue of his strong beliefs. It was when I was a minister and Don was giving an adjournment speech. He was a guy who basically believed that adjournment speeches were a very important part of what local members do and a very important opportunity for them to get on the record the issues they care about. In this particular speech, he was dropping a bucket—that is the truth of it—on some ALP political figures from Western Australian—not that there are many to choose from. But the thing was that he was dropping a bucket, and I was the minister at the table. In those circumstances, your job is to put them off their game. So, of course, I got up and I did a point of order, I did another point of order and then I did another point of order. I used up a fair chunk of his time—and jeez he was pissed! But I left it at that, and I thought that that was pretty much it.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take it you mean he was upset.

Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought that is what I said, Mr Deputy Speaker. A couple of days later, I was at the airport. I had thought nothing of it. It is what we do in this place, as we all know. Don came up to me in the lounge and he gave me a talking to in severe terms about the fact that you should not use up a local member's time to be able to put issues on the record, even in the circumstances where maybe you thought they were pushing it a bit far. I said, 'Well, you know, I understand your point but I don't back away from what I did.' That said something about him as a man, about how he viewed his job and about the fact that he was prepared to have a go.

At that stage you would say, 'Well, it's not the greatest relationship.' But then—and it was mentioned by others—I went to the Middle East with Don and a number of other members, including the member for Longman. I spent direct time with Don there, seeing what our defence forces were doing in Afghanistan, and I came to like him—I came to like him a lot. I gathered then, much more than I had before, the fact that he was a really genuine bloke. And the thing about him was that, although he always had strong views, you could actually talk to him; you could discuss issues. Although you would often agree to disagree, you could at least come away with a firm view that he understood what you were saying and that he appreciated it, even if he did not agree—and vice versa. I also found that in dealing with him around issues of Sri Lanka. I have a large Sri Lankan community in my electorate, and Don had very firm views about the need for peace in Sri Lanka and also about how you achieve that peace. I do not think we had substantial disagreements on those issues but we did have some disagreements on emphasis. You could talk to him about those issues. He genuinely wanted to know what you thought and he was prepared to talk it through.

And then he was a funny bugger. He was genuinely funny. I remember the last night that we were in the Middle East, when we were at dinner, waiting to leave from the airport in Dubai. After probably one bottle of red, or maybe it was two—there were four of us—I reckon I had one of the funniest dinners I have ever had in my life, and I think the member for Longman would agree. I came away from that dinner in stitches. You would have paid money to get that sort of entertainment.

He was a genuine bloke. He had a larrikin streak. He was the sort of guy where you might have looked at him and thought: what is he on about? But, once you actually spoke to him, once you actually got to know him, you realised there was a lot more there. To his family, to his staff, to his friends, I really, really, feel your loss. I think it is something that will live with all of you all your lives, but I think you will also have the memories of a great Australian and it will be something that you will also carry with you for all of your lives, because he lived life to the full, with gusto, and he left it all on the field. Vale Don Randall—a good bloke and a great Australian.

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join with others in the House in acknowledging the life of Don Randall, particularly recognising and paying sympathy to his family and friends and recognising his contribution to the parliament. He was genuinely one of the larger-than-life characters of this parliament. He was a formidable political advocate, but it is a good measure of the man that he was liked and respected by political allies and adversaries alike. I think all ministers in this place, frankly, those currently ministers and past ministers, can testify to the passion with which Don fought on behalf of his constituents. His tenacity, his unwillingness ever to let go on an issue that was important to his electorate made him a champion for his local communities.

In my own experience, his dogged determination to see the Perth to Bunbury highway, or, as it is now known, the Forrest Highway, built was unrivalled. Indeed, I found myself in the middle of some of those vigorous arguments, on the one hand, as minister, trying to work as cooperatively as I could with the Western Australian state minister, now the member for Perth, who had a different view on these issues from Don. Indeed, Don had some different views from his own parliamentary colleagues on this side; not about whether the road should be built but about how it should be built and in what order particular sections should be constructed. So it was a clash of really strong personalities. It was certainly an argument that gained a great deal of momentum. In the end, I guess the monument is a great road, but the way it was achieved certainly was very much the mark of the way in which Don was prepared to stand up for his electorate and the things that he believed in and make them happen.

He left us far too early, but he had already contributed a lifetime of dedicated public service—more than others who live much longer. As we have heard, he was a teacher for 20 years, including in schools dedicated to teaching students with intellectual disabilities, before becoming a councillor of the City of Belmont in Perth and, subsequently, a member of this House. He made marginal territory his own by being a strong and faithful local member. This is testimony to the respect in which Don was held in his electorate.

As the Prime Minister has said recently, Don was integral to the success of his party in Western Australia. With firsthand knowledge of the difficulties facing small business through his family-owned bakery, Don was a forceful champion of small business, which he recognised as the backbone of the Australian economy and of a strong and cohesive Australian community.

He was also a great proponent of genuine and practical environment rehabilitation. His maiden speech highlighted the need to bring the black swan back to the Swan River, and he was very committed, as the Minister for the Environment has just said, to Green Army projects, particularly within the Canning area. He was a strong supporter of the Peel-Harvey Catchment Council's practical work to protect the Peel-Yalgorup Ramsar wetland.

Don was a fierce advocate for a number of perhaps lesser known but very important causes. He was a longstanding supporter of autism in Western Australia and, in 2012, walked more than 100 kilometres across his electorate to raise money to support families with an autistic child. Along the way he visited 43 schools to explain the disability to children, teachers and parents. He also sought to highlight the issues facing grandparents caring for their grandchildren. No issue was too big or too small or too complicated for Don to be involved.

Within the parliament, his great energy and concern for a whole range of Australia's national interests were applied to his work on many committees. During his term in parliament, Don served as the opposition parliamentary secretary for roads and transport and then local government while I was the shadow minister in that area. It was a pleasure to work with him. Again, his dogged determination was very apparent in that work.

A number of people on both sides have referred to the relationship that Don had with his staff and his willingness and encouragement for them to be able to progress, even if it meant that he lost the opportunity to work with them at the local level. The Minister for the Environment told a story of how he had inherited one of Don's staff, and I have a similar story. Jess Finlay, who is sitting in the advisers box, was recruited, I think, initially by Don. Don strongly recommended that Jess was the right person to be involved in my own work. Indeed, I got to know her when Don was the shadow parliamentary secretary. Her work in shipping and transport and aviation has been particularly important to me. I know from Jess's own personal testimony that she appreciated Don and, like all of his former staff, deeply felt the loss of her former boss and mentor.

Outside the parliament, Don had a real enthusiasm for his community—many have spoken today about what convivial company he could be—and—I suppose you would expect nothing less from a former horse trainer—for horses and the track. He was a dedicated family man and adored his wife, Julie, and was very proud of his two children, Tess and Elliot, as we have so often heard.

Don was never shy at advocating his causes. But I think the motive for Don's community reports and the slogan on his famous notepads that are spread from one end of Canning to the other best sum up the reasons for his electoral success. His slogan, 'You talk. I'll listen,' is not only, I think, a good political message; it is a good lesson for all of us in this place. It is a straightforward motto; a straightforward lifestyle. We will miss Don. May he rest in peace. Our condolences go to his family. I salute a great colleague—a man whose place in this chamber will always be difficult to replace.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Assistant Minister for Employment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

While this House regularly pays its respects to distinguished Australians who have passed away, it is a particularly solemn day when we are here to speak of the passing of a serving member in this place. I was certainly shocked and saddened to hear of the passing of my friend and colleague Don Randall.

Don and I were both members of the class of 2001, although Don had the special privilege of also being a member of that very famous class of 1996. Don was one of those rare and talented individuals who manage to be elected to this place twice from two different electorates. When he was elected the second time, he was part of an elite group of some 25 MPs who had managed to be elected to represent an electorate other than the one that they had previously held.

When I first met Don Randall, he struck me as a genuine and honest bloke who cared deeply about his family and the Western Australians he represented. When we served on the Standing Committee on Employment and Workplace Relations together, I always admired his understanding of the challenges that young Australians—particularly those from regional and rural areas—had found in trying to find and keep a job. He would continue this advocacy over the years, and, whenever we bumped into each other in the corridors of this place, he would always raise the issue with me, in my capacity as assistant minister for employment, in his own frank and direct way, as has been recounted by many members today.

Don's sympathies about the issue of youth unemployment came from growing up in a farming family and from his years of experience as a teacher. Teaching is indeed a great profession, and I think a particularly great profession is caring for and teaching young students with disabilities. In his first speech, he highlighted the challenges that young people face in finding and keeping a job. He said:

I saw and continue to see many of my former students unemployed through no fault of their own …

He went on to say:

Recurring knock-backs and being trained for jobs which just don't exist are demoralising for anyone who has been unemployed, but significantly so for our young people who have never seen it any other way.

I think that shows a great understanding of the challenges that many young people face, and a great understanding of the importance of work, not only for the financial benefit that work can bring but also from those other benefits of self-esteem, of having a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Don was very aware of those. I will always remember Don as a passionate and effective advocate for Western Australians generally as well as the people that he represented.

Also, I would like to recount a moment that was alluded to earlier, and that was the arrival of 'cardboard Kevin'. Don carried 'cardboard Kevin' into the chamber, and I was actually at the dispatch box at the time. I must say that the clip of Don coming in and our discussion of 'cardboard Kevin' is still frequently viewed on YouTube. So there are still many hits on YouTube of Don coming into the chamber with 'cardboard Kevin'. Don and I recounted with some pleasure the fact that Deputy Speaker Anna Burke requested that we remove 'the offending object'. I think referring to then Prime Minister Rudd as an 'offending object' was the subject of some considerable mirth between Don and me at the time.

On a more serious note, it is certainly a great loss to this parliament that we no longer share the discussions and the banter with Don. He has certainly been a great advocate for the electorates that he has represented. It was a mark of the man himself when he wanted people to make a donation to the two particular causes that he cared about—the Autism Association of Western Australia and the Wanslea grandcarers group—in lieu of flowers at his funeral.

The parliament, the state of Western Australia and the people of the electorate of Canning have lost a great servant with a strong voice. I will miss you, Don. This parliament will miss you. I extend my profound sympathies to Julie, Tess and Elliott. Vale Don Randall.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sitting next to Don, I would say, was an event. An event began every time he sat beside me. It began the day. Those that sit around us know exactly what I am talking about. It is a very sad day, and we will miss him.

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to join the long list of condolences for our former colleague Don Randall. I knew of him long before his parliamentary career, because, before he was in parliament, he was a teacher and he taught at the primary school on the street where I grew up. I did not attend that school—I was Catholic and I went off to the local Catholic school—but all of my mates did. I used to hear of the legend of one of their teachers, who was universally only ever known as Randall. Randall had a different teaching style than some of the other teachers. He kept order by way of a squash ball that would come your way if you were not paying attention or if you were doing the wrong thing. If things got particularly out of hand, you could be removed from class. And you would be removed, yourself and your chair, sometimes via the door, in extreme cases, via the window. This is a style that endeared him very much to the kids who he taught. They remembered him very fondly and, since his passing, they have actually contacted me to remind me about the great teacher that he was, because he cared very deeply for his students and in return they had an enormous amount of affection for him.

He brought this rough-and-ready style, I think, to his parliamentary career as well. He was very genuine about representing his constituents in here and, as has been noted by many speakers before me, exceptionally dogged and relentless in pursuing their interests. He brought to this parliament, also, a very honed sense of what was politically important. I think he understood the sorts of issues that his constituents were concerned about. He represented them very effectively but also, politically, he really never missed a trick. He was exceptionally good at doorknocking, and the stories told at his funeral have been recounted by others, such as him doorknocking an elderly lady whose roses needed pruning. He pruned her roses that day, but he would return annually to prune her roses—somebody who he had doorknocked previously.

He was a hard fighter. He was a very hard-charging politician. He fought for the seats that he won in Swan and Canning in particular. Much has been made of his rivalry with the member for Perth. Their rivalry has been mentioned, too, about taking credit for who was responsible for the building of the highway to Bunbury. I remember seeing Chris Evans, who was the transport minister at the time, at an opening of a road in my electorate a couple of days after he had done the opening of the Forrest Highway, which was actually in the midst of the Canning campaign that was fought between Don and the member for Perth. He really had a form of trauma after having to be in photographs with Don and Alannah vying to take credit for this project that they both felt very strongly about.

At his funeral, other things about his character were made known that I am not sure that everyone would be aware of here: his love of gardening, his love of the violin, his beekeeping, his horseracing, his passionate support for the kids at Clontarf, and his passionate support for kids with autism. He brought these passions into the parliament, and he pursued them relentlessly to make sure that the causes that he had, the people that he represented, were very well heard. If he did not think you were doing the right thing by them, he would let you know. Quite frankly, he applied that rule from the Prime Minister down. If he was not happy with what was happening for his people, he would approach the person responsible and he would let them know that he was not happy. He would demand that we do better by them. That was why he was such an effective MP.

To Julie, who has lost a husband, and to Tess and Elliott, who have lost a father, I say: it is obviously terrible that he was taken and that he was taken far too early, but I do hope that you take comfort from the fact that as he moved through life, whether it be as a teacher or serving as an MP, he left his mark. He certainly left his mark on this place, and he was justifiably proud of that. I certainly hope that his family is as well.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to add to the terrific speeches that have been given over the last two hours, from the Prime Minister down to the member for Brand, who gave a very eloquent address on his friend Don Randall. Don Randall was a good man. He was a tough man who fought, as many ministerial counterparts have already mentioned, very hard for his electorate. We shared a love of golf and the ongoing challenge that that game presents to our character and spirit. We shared a love of red wine. Don was probably one of the greatest supporters of my electorate, truth be told, and the many wine businesses in my electorate!

We learned a lot from Don on how to run an effective ongoing campaign in a marginal seat by the way he represented his people first and foremost in this place. As a new minister last year, I was taught a lesson by Don on representing his people because of a particular constituent who he was representing to have a vehicle imported under the Motor Vehicle Standards Act, which I have authority for. The advice from my department was not to agree with the request of Don's constituent. There were quite difficult circumstances for that constituent. Don and I had several meetings, but the advice was consistent. I rang Don. I was very nervous about ringing Don because I knew the answer I would get from him. In that phone conversation there was no yelling. There was no anger. Don simply said, 'Well, Minister, it is ultimately up to you.' That made me think and remember the actual job that we as ministers have here. It is not necessarily always to be told what to do by our bureaucrats or departments but to make our best judgements. Don, in that instance, fought for his constituent, and his best judgement was right. Ultimately, I agreed with his position. I think, as many other colleagues have mentioned, that reflects how Don went about his job as the member for Canning, as a Western Australian and importantly, as the Leader of the House said, from our perspective, as part of the Liberal family.

We in the Liberal Party are all sad for the loss of Don. He was a fierce advocate for our side of politics. Politics is ultimately a battle of ideas and ideals, as the new Speaker commented earlier. Don was a fierce advocate for our ideas and our ideals. He stood on the right side of many of those debates. He will be missed in our party room. He was a good man who left us too early. I say to his staff, I share your grief. Don, I am sure your family will miss you immeasurably, as we all here will also.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Don Randall was a life enhancer. He was one of the great characters, one of the great indelible personalities that all of us encounter far too few of in our lives. He made everyone who met him more invigorated and more exhilarated. He was an exciting, electric personality.

He was also a remarkable grassroots politician. I do not say that in a technical way. His motto was, of course, 'You talk; I listen.' But he really practised that. Every politician says, 'You talk; I listen,' but Don Randall really meant it. On the various community forums I attended with him over the years in Mandurah, Champion Lakes and Perth, I could see that he absorbed the wisdom of his community. He absorbed the needs of his community. His brain was always thinking about how to find a solution.

This was particularly so in the communications area where the melancholy fact of life was that the construction of the National Broadband Network in Western Australia collapsed under the previous government when the contractor essentially imploded and virtually nothing was done. It was hugely disappointing. It took some time to get it cranked up again. Don was very alert to the needs of his community in that regard. He took me out again and again—both before we were elected and afterwards—to make sure that I understood the granular requirements of his community. He left me in no doubt as to the urgency of the matter. Needless to say, the construction of the National Broadband Network in the electorate of Canning accelerated following the election of the Abbott government. It was in very large part due to Don's advocacy.

He set a great example for all of us. Many of his colleagues have spoken today about some of his more outrageous statements. He could sometimes be very colourful. But I think he set us all a very good example not simply in his focus on his community, for which he was rewarded with continuing increasing electoral success, but through his focus on his family.

All of us talked to Don about many things. I have listened to his passions and concerns and shared them: on Cuba, for example. Even in foreign relations—and I address this to the foreign minister who is here—he was way ahead of his time. As we have seen, Obama is restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba; Don would have told him to do that years ago! Don Randall had diplomatic relations with Cuba well ahead of the United States. He was ahead of his time there.

But there was nothing of which he spoke to me or to his colleagues with more passion or more pride than his children. Tess and Elliott, you have lost a father—and it is a terrible thing to lose a father in the prime of life. It is a dreadful thing. We should all lose our fathers when they are very, very old men; when they are old and they have had a great innings. He was taken from you in the prime of his life. But you know, he was never, ever lacking in a focus, a pride, and a passion for you. It is so easy in public life—and we all know this: it is a terrible trap, this business—to get distracted with the events of the day, and the momentous things that go on here, and the debates, and the media, and all of that stuff. But Don was always focused on his family and on his wife Julie—Julie, he loved you so much, as you know, and he talked about you—but those two children of yours: he was so very proud . And he will always be proud—wherever Don is, he will be so proud of you.

He was a great man. We will all miss him. He was absolutely authentic—in many respects: family, love of his community, and service to his community but, above all, in being nothing other than himself. There are not many more things that a good man can do in his allotted time; and that is what Don did. We miss him deeply. We cannot plumb the depths of your grief but all of us, in our own ways, know how you feel. And you know, because you have heard today, that you have the love of all of this House in your suffering. That love, I trust, will help you regain the strength that you need to live as Don would want you to do. Farewell, Don Randall: a great Australian.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

American essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said of fate: a man is destined to be who he is determined to be. And Don Randall was always determined to be first and foremost a family man, and a patriot, and an all-round good bloke. I heard about the tragic passing of my friend and colleague, Don Randall, as I was making my way home from the funeral of another friend and former colleague, Alby Schultz. We had celebrated Alby's life that day—the fact that a man from the shearing shed could make his way through local government to state parliament and then to distinguished service in the federal parliament. And what Alby and Don show the Australian people is the breadth and depth of the life experiences that they bring to this place. So many Australians think that members of this House, whatever their political persuasion, are cardboard cut-outs, with the same backgrounds and the same political or party histories. In fact, in Don Randall we saw somebody who had served his local community in so many different guises before making his way to federal parliament—a councillor, as has been said, with Belmont City Council; a teacher for nearly 20 years, dedicated to the education of students with intellectual disabilities; someone who was a horse trainer; and someone who had a love of the garden and a love of nature. He then served in this parliament in the seats of Swan and then Canning for a total of 17 years.

We need to recognise the incredible service of Don Randall to the parliament. But I also want to recognise, as the foreign minister and others have done, his contribution to building bilateral relations with other countries; in particular, Sri Lanka and, as has been mentioned, Cuba. We also talked often about Israel, as Don shared with me his experience having been in kibbutz—and the member for Perth has said that people were reminded at Don's funeral that he was not on a kibbutz because he was a socialist. But he would tell me often what a strong supporter he was of the state of Israel and of all that it stood for. If you look at his speeches in the parliament about the issue of Sri Lanka, what comes through is his concern for the civilian casualties in that conflict. He said that neither side could be absolved of blame, but that our feelings and thoughts should be with the casualties and the families of those harmed civilians.

The other part of Don's life that I was touched by was when Gerard Neesham came to see me about the Clontarf Academy and what was being done to support Indigenous kids to follow their love of Australian Rules football, and Gerard Neesham did point out to me that Don Randall had been a standout support for that cause in helping to raise money and helping to garner political support.

I think the final word must be given to Don Randall, because in a powerful maiden speech in 1996 he talked about small business, he talked about jobs and he talked about his own grandparents—how they were founding fathers in the agricultural district of Western Australia's wheat belt, they came to a block of uncleared land with a tent, an axe and a toddler, and, like other Australians at this time, they survived the rigours of drought, recession, depression and war. In the face of adversity in difficult times, it was these types of Australians who helped form this great nation.

It was a wonderful maiden speech, and he talked about the Liberal Party's philosophy—the innate worth of the individual, the need to encourage his or her initiative and personal responsibility, and that all people should have the opportunity to advance and fulfil their potential. It was a wonderful speech, and it finished with these words, and these were Don's words:

Australia is a land of opportunity. We are a nation where people who are willing to make sacrifices can succeed and where people can take the opportunity to make their own luck … the worst thing that could happen to Australians is if they begin to believe … that 'this is as good as it gets'.

Don Randall never believed that it was as good as it gets. He gave selfless service in this place and to his constituents in Canning because he always wanted to make Australia a better place. At the end of the day, he was a family man, and we know for Julie, for Tess, for Elliott, for the extended Randall family and for the members of his staff: our thoughts are with you, our prayers are with you and we, in this place, will continue his tireless, important, and valuable work.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want today in particular to obviously note the contribution of someone I consider to be a former colleague, whom we are here respecting, regardless of politics and who was a member of this parliament, and to honour what he has contributed.

At this point, I think very deeply of the family: Mrs Randall, Elliott and Tess—and I deliberately mention Elliott first, because, in a family where sibling position is often contested, I respect that from time to time it is good to get your name up the pecking order, and I say that as the eldest born. I know in this place that consumes so much, particularly having heard, seen and known of the very onerous demands it places on family, that, as much as we respect the contribution of Don Randall, we also honour the fact that you made sacrifices to allow him to do all those things that people have spoken about today and remember warmly of him. He had to make sacrifices, and he was not always there as the husband and father that many others can rely upon, because of the dedication of his service. So, as much as we dedicate to him, we dedicate to you all here today.

If I may say so, Mrs Randall, people will remember your husband for many things. I remember him being softly spoken. This will sound, to some who have heard his robust contributions as has been reflected on, like not necessarily a thing they would remember. But I remember it for this reason: he was softly spoken with strong belief. He was softly spoken because he would also respect other views. He would speak with you if you had a different view, and his voice was never raised. In a place marked by raised voices and the fury of raised voices, this is something that I will always remember and respect him for. It is something that I think we all can learn from—that, despite the strength of belief and the vigour of that belief, you do so in such a way that you try to actually learn. He and I did have differences—today is not the day to mark, remember or recount those differences—but I will always remember his approach and use it as something not just for remembering but for ourselves so that we are better off through that memory. His mark on me, as an individual parliamentarian of a different political party, is to remember that.

There have been many things recounted about him today, and this is only my modest contribution in his broader memory. If I may say this, Prime Minister, I am not often one to compliment you, and I do not think you are troubled by that, but I do respect the fact that a person in your position has been here for the duration, and, Mrs Randall, I think this reflects on this side the Prime Minister's respect for your husband. I do not say that, and please do not read that, as any other thing but that, as much as we are combatants, I do respect the fact that you have lost one of your own, but we have lost a parliamentarian, and we have also lost an Australian.

The most eerie thing about these contributions, if I can end on this point, is that that clock does not record any time. It just stands still; every time we have these condolences, I think of that point. It reminds us we do not have time, but your husband always used every minute of his time and every second of his time doing what he believed was right, and he has no need for regret, because he did, with his full heart and his full sincerity, everything he could for the people he represented, regardless of our political differences. This is something that we should always be grateful for. Thank you.

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are a number of members here who have not yet spoken and who had deeper and longer relationships with Don Randall than I did and I do not want to unduly delay their contributions. I think particularly the member for Swan will have some things to say that will be important. I know that you have lost a terrific mate and I am very sorry for your loss. I wanted to put on record my condolences to Julie, Tess and Elliott.

I want offer two very brief observations, which I guess are more in the nature of lessons, that I learned from being around Don both when I was in state politics and also as a colleague in the federal parliament. The first of those lessons that I learned from Don is that there is a really important role for passion in politics. That is not just looking passionate but that sort of unbridled passion that makes you forget other stuff. For many people in this place who were legally trained, you have a drilled into you for 18, 20 or 25 years that the worst thing that you can possibly do when you are representing someone is to get too passionate about it. Don is the sort of person who can drill that out of you if you have had a legal career and you come into politics, because watching him firsthand showed to me the golden lesson about that importance of just sheer, unbridled passion.

Amongst the very lovely eulogies at his funeral, someone made the comment that Don was a sort of person who believed that all problems could be cured, or at least they should be amenable to being cured, by simply picking up the phone and speaking to someone. The other instinct, and certainly one that I own, is that the best way to pursue an issue is to write a letter, which is not a very glamorous approach I guess. When you think like a lawyer, you think that no problem is too small or too simple not to warrant a really long letter. But Don was the exact opposite of that approach. There is an enormous amount to learn from watching people like Don and Don particularly with respect to that approach. The lesson is that that Yin of the slower, detailed approach sometimes, maybe often or maybe always, is enhanced by the Yang of that Randall direct, frontal assault, which I have witnessed Don give to people on a number of occasions.

I worked really closely with Don on the APVMA's administrative decision to ban a pesticide called fenthion, which was very important to the growing of stone fruit in my electorate and in Don Randall's electorate. Don was very, very passionate about this issue. He enlisted my support, which I was very happy to provide. I wrote the letters and he did his thing. In fact, the letters would not have been read if it were not for the fact that Don was making that full blown, frontal, forceful, colourful, direct and passionate approach for which I think he has become famous amongst the members in this place. It just goes to show that that personal passion, as well as further and better particulars, reach the handmade into the other and that you cannot have one without the other in this place.

I would just say as a quick aside that Don had no great love for lawyers. Indeed, he had no great love for state government ministers, particularly from our own side of politics, who he found particularly vexing on times. If you were a former state government minister and a lawyer, you were often seen as very bureaucratic to Don; but he was very happy to enlist assistance if he thought it could produce a result. In fact, at the last WA senators and members' meeting he was complaining vigorously about a decision by a state government minister on a planning matter which was played out in the courts. A cost order was given against his constituent. The entire 10 minutes of it was directed straight at me, because at some point of time I had been a WA minister and I had been a lawyer. I had to explain to him that I was neither at the moment and I had nothing to do whatsoever with the situation, but his passion was just absolutely unbridled.

The second and final lesson, and the end of my contribution, is the importance of apologies in this place and particularly apologies that are genuinely driven by that desire not to have any unnecessary bad blood or, indeed, not have any bad blood or hold any grudges whatsoever. It was very interesting hearing one of the members opposite talk about time that they witnessed Don give someone a real serve in the airport lounge. I was on the receiving end of one of those serves earlier this year when there was some issues surrounding the leadership. I thought Don had done something passionate, but procedurally ill-advised and I put that view to him in the Perth airport lounge. He put a very forceful alternative view to me. It was not about the issue itself but about me providing him with my view. I will say that it was probably, after seven years in politics, one of the more tense, forceful and unpleasant exchanges that I can recall.

But the end note to that exchange is that the week after that, as we were both again in the airport lounge, I saw Don and I thought about, for my part, apologising. I did not do it, because the exchange was ferocious that I thought it would be better left another week or two. But Don came up to me and he apologised for his part, which of course elicited an ensuing apology for my part. Looking back on it now, I am so very glad that he did that and that it was him and not me. I guess it goes to that point that in this place you are much better off apologising and taking that opportunity as early as it arises, because you never know that it might not come your way a second time.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Don Randall's interest in foreign affairs and Australian defence has been spoken of by many members, including my friend Senator Hutchins—who asked the member for Fowler to pass on his regrets to this House and to Don's family. That is how I first got to know Don Randall: on the $2 bus trip around the big Island in Hawaii. And I can attest to the truth of everyone's remarks about his larrikin streak. We were both in Hawaii a day early for the important RIMPAC exercises that the Australian Navy engages in with the United States and other allied navies. In 40-degree heat Don insisted that with both catch the bus around the island, because it was only $2, subsidised by the Hawaiian state government, and going anywhere by taxi to any of the big beaches et cetera would have been a waste of money.

My respect for him and knowledge of him grew as the day when on. He was a numbers man in the Western Australian Liberal Party. He had very firm views about aspirants for the leadership of the Liberal Party, which he informed me about in great detail, particularly—since this was 2006—about the aspirations of the then member for Higgins, his lobby and his views et cetera. I really started to admire him because I understood the importance of people, on both sides of politics, in working the numbers and being a good local member of parliament. In a wonderful speech the member for Brand, in his commemoration of Don, talked about the Halls Head booth and how Randall turned that electorate of Canning around from being very marginal to being quite a safe Liberal seat. After all, it was held for a long time by a Labor member of parliament, George Gear, and later by Joan Garrett who, unfortunately, also passed away in office. The fact that Don was able to take a seat like that and turn it into a bastion for his own political party is something to be greatly admired. I admired Don for that and I admired him for his insights into the internal machinations of the Liberal Party.

More recently I had the pleasure of working with Don on several committees. It was when he was chair of the House procedure committee that we last worked together. Under his direction and leadership during the 44th Parliament, this parliament, the committee produced its two significant reports on the future of parliamentary operations and the use of electronic devices in the chamber and the Federation Chamber and on the role of the Federation Chamber, celebrating 20 years of operation. Don was a keen supporter of the Federation Chamber as an alternative site for parliamentary debate and for the additional opportunities for advocacy it afforded to members of the House. I think he was particularly keen on it because it enabled private members to give their views and make their contributions in this parliament.

The member for Wentworth said Don was authentic, and my friend the member for Chifley said Don was softly spoken. You cannot do this job without a love of your community. This was clearly evident in all of the speeches made today. If you knew and talked to Don, that was his attitude. And he had a love of local service. The story about Don Randall going to a pensioner's house to clip their roses and then going back every year is authentic. That is Don Randall. I do not think many of us could work in politics unless we had that Randall attitude—that we love the local community and like doing what others would consider to be crazy things such as clipping a pensioner's rose bushes and going back each year to do it again and again and again. Don will be remembered for many things—the Clontarf Foundation, his support for autism and his wonderful work locally. I say to Mrs Randall and to his two children, Tess and Elliott, that anybody in here who knew Don knew that he gave the full measure of effort in all the areas we work in. At 62 he has gone too early. Farewell Don Randall.

Ken Wyatt (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to offer my condolences to Julie, Tess and Elliott—Don Randall's family—and to Chloe and Team Randall. I wish to associate myself with the comments made by all of my parliamentary colleagues because they have encapsulated the essence of who Don was and what he meant to each and everyone of us in different ways. I first heard about Don when we both worked in education. He was at Lymburner Primary School and I happened to be in central office. My wife, Anna, taught with him 33 years ago and then she taught with Don's wife, Julie, at Tranby. I first met Julie when one day my wife and I went to Brumbies to get some bread and buns for a family event. When we got there Julie, who I did not know then, was busy talking to Anna. They had been speaking for about five minutes and then Anna said to Julie, 'I'd better introduce you to Ken.' That is when I met Julie. I will always remember her standing behind the counter and the conversation we had about Don's commitment to his work. After that, I went back and had a look at his parliamentary record in terms of the committees he served on and the delegations he participated in. More importantly, I looked at some of the positions he held in this parliament at different times. He was shadow parliamentary secretary assisting the Leader of the Opposition and Shadow cabinet secretary from 6 December 2007 to 22 September 2008; shadow parliamentary secretary for energy and resources from 22 September 2008 to 10 November 2008; shadow parliamentary secretary for roads and transport from 10 November 2008 to 14 September 2010; and shadow parliamentary secretary for local government from 14 September 2010. I know they were positions he relished because I often had conversations with him.

When I nominated for the seat of Hasluck, Don was one of the first people to ring me. He said, 'Mate, it's about time.' He had tried to talk me into it several years before and I had said I was not interested in standing for a seat. Hasluck was still open—it had not closed its considerations—and three of my state colleagues had been saying I should get a real job. I already had a job at the health department but I said I would think about it. They said: 'The seat of Hasluck still available. Why don't you nominate?' I had finished that conversation with the three state colleagues and then Lizzie Behjat, in particular, told Don Randall that she had spoken to me about nominating for the seat of Hasluck. Don then spoke to me on the phone for a good 30 minutes about why I should seriously consider becoming a member of the Australian parliament. He said there were things that we could do. He paid me a compliment by saying that the style of interaction I have with people would be good for constituents in my seat. I thought about it and then I eventually said to him that I would nominate.

What I did not know was that Don had rung Julie Bishop, who then rang Danielle Blain. Don rang several key people of the Liberal Party and started to lobby quietly. He never shared that with me until Danielle Blain said that the person who had been lobbying behind the scenes for me was Don Randall. She said he was very effusive and complimentary in the comments he made. So I started that journey. During the process, Don, Steve and I would often talk about things together, but Don always gave me advice. He would tell me about how best to campaign in a seat like Hasluck. He would talk about the dynamics of the relationships that one had to build up with constituents. He gave me tangible examples of what he did, and so I tried them. The best advice he gave me was: 'Do not listen exclusively to the advice of Liberal Party headquarters. Go with your own intuition; go with your gut feeling about how you are reading it with the people whose doors you are knocking on, because that is the thing that will give you the opportunity of being elected.' So the friendship grew strongly. I enjoyed all of the things that we did at different times.

One of the best nights we ever had was when Steve and Cheryle, Don and Julie and Anna and I sat on our front patio for a barbecue meal. We talked about politics. We talked about our families, the love for our families and the friendships that we had. What always came through with Don was: the people he liked, he cared for. He would always be there for them and he always considered them. There were times when I would be doing something in my office and the phone would ring. He would say, 'Mate, I've just picked up some information. I want to compliment you on what you've done.' He was always nurturing and mentoring. One of the things that I loved about him was that he gave of his time.

In the chamber, he would call out, I would look around and he would give me that cheeky smile. He would wrinkle his nose and say, 'Kenny, turn around.' The last time he did that was the last week he was here. He yelled out a couple of comments, and I heard Russell Broadbent say, 'That's inappropriate, Don.' I turned around and looked at him. He just wrinkled his nose and said, 'Kenny—shush! Turn around!' That is the interaction that we had with Don. When I sat on the other side of the chamber, I was just two seats away from him, so I would hear him call out frequently. Occasionally, I would look at him and he would say, 'Don't give me a disapproving look. I know what I'm doing. You should call out more often.' I used to call out, but my voice was always drowned out by others that were much stronger.

Don has been there all through my political career. He was there in many ways because I got to know Tess. There was an incident one time that involved Tess, and I intervened. I did not say anything more; I did not say anything to Don. The next morning he came in and saw me. He said, 'Mate, thank you for what you did for my daughter last night.' I said, 'It's just normal.' He said, 'No, no. It means a lot to me. Those who support my family, I respect. You took the time to do it.'

I loved his mischievous humour. We would have conversations. On the night before he died Anna said to me, 'Ring Don.' I said, 'No, I'll ring him in the morning.' She said, 'Ring him now before you go to bed. I know you; you'll forget.' So I called Don, and he and I talked for an hour. We talked about you, Bronnie. He shared with me a text message he had sent to you. What he demonstrated was the absolute care and respect that he had for the office of Speaker but also for a friend who was in trouble. I saw that time and time again. When Don was in trouble sometimes, there were people who contacted him. When he was under siege by the media in Perth over the Cairns incident, I used to ring him each morning from my car. Anna would be in the car and we would ring to have a chat to see how he was travelling. He said, 'I'm fine, but what's getting me is the media spotlight on my children, my wife and my family. To me, they are sacrosanct.' It reinforced to me the point that Anna had made to me several times because of her knowledge of the family and their friendships—that is, the love and strength of the Randall family. It was always evident, in all of the times she had dealings with them. On that same night, when we had finished the conversation, Don said, 'Julie, the kids and I are going to Happy Meals Chinese Restaurant in East Victoria Park; would you and Anna like to join us?' I asked Anna, and I said, 'Yes.' We were looking forward to it, but it did not happen.

Three weeks before that we had called Don and Julie to see if they were doing anything. We dropped over with a bottle of red. Every time that I took a bottle of red to Don, he would say, 'Don't bring that cheap red wine'—it would not matter how much you had spent on the bottle. I said to Anna the previous time we were at Don's, 'Have a look at the label of that bottle and then bring the details to me.' She did that—she took the details off the label. So, the next time, I bought a bottle of wine with those exact details and took it to Don's. Julie, Don and I were sitting there. Elliott was heading off to an event; he was in all of his splendour—black suit, white shirt—and was looking forward to an evening out. When I gave Don the wine he said, 'You've brought that same cheap crap that you always bring. I'll have to blend it with my red.' That is what he always did—he used to blend my reds with his. I waited until the end of the night and said, 'Mate, have a look at the label that you have over there.' It was the same. He just gave me one of those grins that he normally did.

It was so surreal for me when I was in my office and James Massola rang me. He said, 'Ken, can I just ask you if you are aware of something I've just seen.' I said, 'What are you talking about?' He said, 'Don Randall was found dead in his car at Boddington.' I just went cold. I said to James, 'You've got it wrong. I was only talking to Don last night. That's not possible.' I mentioned that he had events organised. He was playing golf with Steve a couple days later. Then they had golf on Saturday. We had talked about it. James then said, 'Well, mate, I'm, just telling you; I don't want any comment.' And I did not give him a comment.

To me, it signified the end of an incredible man whose commitment in this chamber, through his committee work, in his delegations and in his parliamentary secretary roles, was not matched by others whom I knew personally. He taught me to respect constituents regardless of the issue they had, that the most important thing you did as an elected representative was to focus on people within the electorate. We used to talk things through, and I understood exactly, when I started to do some of those things myself, what he had meant—that when you listen and you engage then you do win people's trust and they recognise that you are there helping them. I admired his capacity to stand up in the party room and challenge issues that were of concern to many. But Don was never afraid to speak his truth in those matters, and he would openly challenge the way in which our party was doing things.

I know that it seems strange that Don was born on 2 May 1953 in Merredin, in Western Australia—a country town, a country kid. He used to share some of his stories. I want to make a comment about the Apology. It is cited in documents, and I know, from my discussions with him, that Don was committed to making a difference for Indigenous Australians. There are people who attended his funeral who are strong in their Labor views—Aboriginal people. They were at his farewell, and I spoke to one of them, who said, 'I didn't agree with his politics, but I respected Don for what he did for us and what he did for Aboriginal people within his electorate.' So, I know that his commitment was not just the Clontarf Foundation; it went much further than that. There would be times when Don would ring me and ask for my thoughts on an issue, and we would share them. His country connection was strong, and, in a sense, he died in the country, at Boddington. So the rural kid who came from a country town and stood within this chamber and at the national level never lost his connection to country. He played a very critical and important role.

After I heard that information from James Massola, later than evening Anna and I rang Steve and Cheryle and asked, 'How are you guys?' They were feeling the same pain we felt, so we got together, and it gave us the opportunity to share our thoughts and feelings. I went back to Don's maiden speech, because I think these epitomised Don. On 6 May 1996 Don said this:

It is a humbling experience to join with these colleagues and newly elected members from around Australia to form the first federal coalition government in 13 years. It is with a sense of gratitude to the Australian people, and the people of Swan in particular, that I serve my first term in this House on the government benches.

Don was always humble. I was at a dinner on Saturday night and a colleague of mine who was at that dinner asked about Don, because he knew Don from education as well. He said to me, 'You know Julie and Don taught together, and that is when the relationship began.' He shared some views about what great teachers they were—but more importantly, he said, great people.

And that is Don. He was passionate and optimistic about the coalition's policies for the development of small business, the opportunities they provide in terms of the economy, employment and individual growth and determination. The only thing I did not do was play golf with him, and I wish I had, now. Steve had that incredible privilege. I know that if I had gone out with you two I would have been searching for my golf ball in the bushes, and I know that Don would have said, 'Drop a ball and hit it; don't worry about the count.' Don also said:

As a father and a husband I am aware of the difficulties which families in my electorate face on a daily basis. In a climate where the family's future has not had a great amount of security, it is important that this government supports the family in every way. In order to be truly representative, the government needs to respond to the family's changing needs and wants.

He went on to say:

I committed to the voters of Swan that I would represent them in this place with respect and dignity. The people of Australia cannot be expected to have confidence in their federal representatives if those representatives treat the parliament with disrespect.

I want to say that Don Randall not only was a good friend to Anna and I and other colleagues in this chamber but was a tremendous mentor and a great teacher. He leaves an indelible mark on so many because of the way he cared for people around him. And I saw his love for his family on many occasions. To Julie, Tess and Elliot, we will remember the contribution that you husband, your father, made.

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I did not know Don Randall as well as Ken Wyatt and some of the other contributors have known him, but over the years I did get to know him quite well. I would like to take this opportunity to offer my condolences to Julie, his wife, and to Tess and Elliot and other family members on the unimaginable grief that they must be suffering. I would also like to offer my condolences to his close friends, to his staff and, importantly, to his party members and the community members back in his electorate. I do so because I reflect upon the comments I continue to get as the member for Aston. As you would know, the last member of this parliament who sadly passed away in office was the late Peter Nugent, who in 2001, I think at a similar age to Don Randall, also had a heart attack while in office. There would barely be a week that would go past, even to this day, that local people do not raise with me Peter Nugent and his contribution to the Aston electorate. There would barely be a week that goes past that some of the staff members who are still in my office, who initially started with Peter Nugent, do not reflect upon him and what he did. I say that knowing that the memory and the contribution of Don Randall will live on for years and for decades, and to future members of Canning, they will hear about Don Randall for years and for decades to come as well—and quite rightly so.

I think the Leader of the House put it quite well when he said that when a person that you know well passes too early, you are reminded that life can be short and it can be unfair, and you are reminded to live each day as if it is your last, to enjoy each moment and to try to make a contribution to our broader society in every day that you have available. I think and I know that Don Randall certainly did this. When you go back and look at his first speech, he said abundantly clearly that the worst thing that could happen to Australians is if they begin to believe, to quote the former Prime Minister, that 'this is as good as it gets'. Yes, Don was at times controversial because he told it how it was, but he never ran away from the tough fight, from calling it how he saw it, and he thought that we as a country and as a people could always do better, and he would always push the envelope further and further to make it so.

I first met Don Randall back when I was a senior staff member, working at the time for Dr Brendan Nelson, the then education minister. It was Don who came to see Brendan Nelson and myself, attending those meetings and subsequently we were dealing with Don over an initiative which Don saw going on in his electorate at a little school called the Clontarf secondary school. He saw the profound impacts that were occurring at that school for young Indigenous boys, using football as a mechanism to engage the boys—but it was not about football; it was actually about their learning and having men who were there to mentor them through football and to keep them at school, and by being at school they would learn and go on. Don was an absolute champion for what he saw in this little school, and he believed that if it could work there at that one school—at Clontarf secondary college—it could work in other schools as well, not only in that state but right across the country.

He pressed for Brendan Nelson to provide some public funding to what was an initiative called the Clontarf Foundation, headed up by Gerard Neesham. Don was successful in getting that funding, and he continued to press education ministers subsequently in years to come for further and further public funding to be provided to the Clontarf Foundation. As you may know, today, that little foundation which Don prosecuted, which Don supported and which Don was so very passionate about has grown from operating in one school with a couple of dozen boys to now operating, I think, in about 70 schools supporting 3,700 boys today, and it continues to grow. Just at the last budget we put an additional several million dollars into that foundation. I think if there is one lasting legacy from this place, certainly from my perspective, it is the Clontarf Foundation which he so strongly supported, got off the ground and has seen roll out across the country, and it will hopefully forevermore continue to support thousands of young Indigenous men and support them in their education and in their employment prospects.

I joined Don in the parliament in 2010. It is from there that I started to see Don's other attributes and his other passions. I saw him being an absolutely relentless advocate for his community. He was unbridled in his passion for his causes everywhere he went. I enjoyed reading the column from one of his Western Australian colleagues, Senator David Johnston, who wrote in the column: 'Don had doorknocked every house in the seat of Canning several times. He could not walk down to the local supermarket or grab a coffee without running into someone he had spoken to and, importantly, helped. He was a giant in the community. The people of Canning knew that if they had a problem they could not fix, Don could and Don would.' That was the person that I got to know, and he had that fierce reputation for being an absolutely passionate advocate for the members of his local community, and in doing so he became a model for myself and for other members of the community who had seats which they were representing and which they were fighting for. I got to know Don as being a fierce defender of the family as the key social unit in our society. I reflect on his maiden speech, where he said that it was the most important asset the nation has.

I also remember and recall Don as being a very passionate advocate for the people of Sri Lanka, not only because he had many Sri Lankans in his electorate but because he deeply believed in seeing Sri Lanka become a peaceful and prosperous community again once the civil war was over. I think that the comments which the high commissioner and the Sri Lankan community themselves made in relation to his contribution to them say it all.

Finally, I will remember Don for his courage. Don was, as all of us on this side of the chamber know, one of the absolute characters in our party room. Whenever Don stood up to take the call, we knew we had to stop and listen. He would often challenge us, he would challenge the Prime Minister and the cabinet, and he would do so because he fundamentally believed in what he was saying—it was important to his electorate, it was important to his values and what he stood for. I think that is a courage that we do not always see amongst parliamentarians. He had it in spades—deeply rooted in his convictions and in his desire to serve. It is certainly something that I absolutely admired in him. Don was a great parliamentarian who left his mark on our nation. I have been proud to know him as a colleague and as a friend. Again I pass my condolences to his family, his friends and his loved ones.

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with deep sadness that we acknowledge in this place the passing of a unique Australian and an incredibly hardworking colleague. Don Randall was most certainly one of a kind. For the last 14 years Don Randall was a very dedicated representative of the people of Canning. Don's parliamentary career was simply the latest incarnation of a life steeped in service—a life steeped in service to and for the benefit of others. Of particular note, separate to his work as a local Perth counsellor in the Belmont City Council and as the federal member for Swan, Don was a special-needs teacher for almost 20 years. In my view, those who teach deserve special recognition for the precious role they play in the formation of young lives. While the rewards are priceless, the demands are also constant—requiring patience, judgement and incredible energy. Those who work with children with special needs need these skills and more.

We are incredibly fortunate in the Liberal Party to have people who come to parliament from all walks of life. Don's belief in people, family and community ultimately led him to serve in the federal parliament on behalf of his community. Don understood the importance of hard work and was a very strong local advocate, both for Canning and Western Australia. In his maiden speech, Don spoke of three key areas where he was keen to see greater individual responsibility, reward for hard work and dedication. These were: family, jobs and security. He worked in Canberra and his electorate towards achieving these things. Don also believe that he could always do more—more for his community, more for his colleagues and more for his family. This extended to his belief that has Australians we must always strive to be our best and never give up. Don spoke about the need for everyone in the community to work hard and to learn from one another. He particularly understood the importance of helping the most vulnerable in our society.

Don worked tirelessly to deliver for the people of his electorate. Over the years he was instrumental in getting the Perth Bunbury Highway moving and securing investment for sporting and community facilities in his community. This work with families with autism and Clontarf Foundation, helping young Indigenous Australians, was something he was particularly proud of. As chair of the Sri Lankan-Australian Parliamentary Friendship Group, Don fostered to a great relationship with members of the Sri Lankan community. He spoke often of the need to help the Sri Lankan people achieve peace in the region.

From a personal perspective, while I did not agree with Don on all issues, I certainly respected his ability to stand up for his beliefs and to be true to himself. There are, in my view, too few people in this place who are prepared to be counted, especially knowing it will not always make them popular or help their career. Don was a man of great courage and a man of great conviction. I think everyone in this place respected him for that.

The passing of Don came as a great shock to everyone in this place. The passing is a terrible loss not only for those in the federal parliament but more importantly for his constituents and especially for those who loved him most. When all is said and done, it is our personal relationships that are our most treasured legacies. To Don's family—Julie, Tess and Elliott—I send my deepest sympathies and hope that you find some comfort in the knowledge that the thoughts of those in this place are with you during this terrible and difficult time. Don, you have left us far too soon.

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I offer my condolences to Julie, Tess and Elliott, to the extended Randall family and to Don's staff. My contribution today will be brief but no less heartfelt than those who have spoken before me. Today there have been some outstanding speeches where people spoke from their heart about Don Randall and the Don Randall they knew so well. I have had the opportunity to sit here and listen to them and to remember the Don Randall that I knew.

Many of the discussions I had with Don were about our respective families and our children in particular. Neither of us ever tired of talking about our children's achievements, even though to many people they might have been small achievements, to us they were achievements that were pretty outstanding and pretty wonderful. When I first heard of Don's death I was actually on a plane that had just landed and I switched my phone on to receive the text message that Don had died. I immediately thought of Tess, whom I knew, and then I thought of Julie and Elliott, whom I had not met, but felt I knew through listening to Don speak about them. My first thoughts were: Julie has lost her husband and Tess and Elliott have lost their dad. I know what it is like to lose a parent and I know that, whilst time does certainly take away the sharpness and the acuteness of that pain, it takes a long time for that hurt to ease. It was a comfort to me after my dad died to know that he was well regarded and well loved. I hope it is a comfort to Don's family—to Julie, Tess and Elliott—to know that their father was well regarded and well loved, particularly in this place.

I had a lot of time for Don. I enjoyed the opportunity not only to work with him but also to speak to him and get to know him. He will be very sadly missed. He made a great contribution to this place and he will be remembered for a very long time. To his family, I again pass on my condolences. It is a very sad time for so many people here but not as sad as it is for his family. Don was well regarded and he was well loved. May he rest in peace.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise, Julie, Tess and Elliott, to say that Don was a wonderful friend—generous, caring and loyal. In the recent troubles that I have endured, the very first message I received was from Don. As we have just heard from Ken Wyatt, the very last one I received from him came in those circumstances where he was once again thinking about me. Don and I enjoyed a terrific friendship—full of fun, of dinners, of my being able to be a guest in your home and know you as a family and how you cared for each other. We shared many friends in common outside the parliament as well as in. When I received the news of his death I, like others, was just leaving the funeral of Alby Schultz, the member for Hume, about whom we will no doubt be speaking later in this sitting of parliament. I had just buried one friend about whom I had spoken and then lost another. My tears flowed—and then I thought of you and how you were going to face the loss of someone who loved you so desperately. What we have heard in this place about Don's love for his family was very true. It was palpable—you could see it; he expressed it continually. Julie, you were his soulmate. Tess, he had such ambitions for you—and for you, Elliott, as well. When I spoke to Chloe on the phone, because I wanted to get a message through, she told me the sequence of events as they had unfurled. I thought how appropriate that he had pulled that car into the kerb—he would have been thinking about others right then.

We have heard a lot about Don the local member and, I have to say, I share every sentiment about our first duty being as a local member and caring for the people in your care as your constituents. Well I remember when Don lost the seat of Swan, and well I remember his determination to win Canning. Well I remember campaigning with him often in the seat of Canning—and to campaign with Don was to have a packed itinerary. It was full of people—interacting with people, hearing their problems, what could we do to assist them, how could we improve their lives. That was always at the forefront of what we were doing in that campaign. But Don was also a shadow frontbencher. He served as the shadow cabinet secretary to the Leader of the Opposition, he served as the shadow parliamentary secretary for energy and resources, and he served as the shadow parliamentary secretary for local government and for roads and transport. He, like others in this place, served as a person committed to his electorate but who was able to take on other tasks and do them well. He suffered a disappointments, too, but I guess those things bind friends together even more strongly.

The friendships that he developed in what we have heard was his foreign affairs role were genuine and real. We have heard a lot about Sri Lanka and we have heard about Cuba, but he also had a very strong commitment and friendship with Japan. Many a dinner would be shared with people from the Japanese embassy talking about the ways in which the ties between our countries could be strengthened. Shortly after the news of what had happened to Don became public I received in my office a call from the former High Commissioner for Sri Lanka, Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe. He rang as a friend; he rang as someone who as High Commissioner had benefited from the parliamentary friendship group which Don had put together and led and strongly supported in all the ways we have heard other people speak of. He rang, most importantly, to say that he wished he could come across for the funeral, but he did not think he would be able to. He told me about the new job he had taken up, which he knew Don would be so pleased about. He told me about how he would still be working with Australians in this new task he had been given, which was in the maritime sphere, and how, building on all those linkages that he had been able to develop through the parliament, he was looking forward to working in the memory of Don to strengthen those ties.

Julie, Tess and Elliott, he made the friends that he made here friends with you as well. He made us know about his pride in his family; about the fact that he had just moved into a new house—'just been there 12 months, loving it'—and about what he hoped to achieve in the parliament after this and what he wanted as a future.

One of the things he always gibed me about was, as he said, 'You're always late, Bronnie. You're always late. Get here on time.' He would tell me to be there a little bit earlier than the real time. That way, he thought, he would get me there. You heard from Ken Wyatt about the bottle of wine. It is quite true. It did not matter how good the bottle of wine was; it was never good enough. We always had to have his wine first because he knew better and, 'This is absolutely beautiful.' He would chide, 'Well, if you can't bring something else, don't bring anything at all. We'll just have what I've got.' But his wanting to always be on time was what alerted Chloe to the fact that something was wrong on the day. But he still had enough consideration for the people in his electorate to pull the car over.

Don was a remarkable friend, a remarkable man. As I said, he was generous, caring and loyal. All the words we will say here today will never, Julie, as you would hope, bring him back, but the memory of him will be firm in our hearts. His contribution will not be overlooked—the hopes and aspirations he had for his constituents and for our country, understanding that every individual is important. Whether one has a disability, whether one is ordinary or whether one is terrifically bright, he knew that every individual mattered, and that showed in so much of the work that he did.

I say to his wonderful staff and volunteers, whom I have also had the pleasure of meeting over many years: his efforts to make emotional ties and real connections with people was the force behind his ability to keep winning the seat of Canning. It was that connection with and the understanding of the wants and needs of Canning that kept him being sent back to this place.

I was very proud to know Don Randall. I am missing him very much. I simply say to you, his family: thank you for sharing him with some of us.

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not the first time I have spoken about Don since his death, but I say to Julie, Tess and Elliott, and the rest of the Randall family; and to the many of you who were his staff and his friends, as I said when I spoke about him on a previous occasion, it is very hard to encapsulate the life of Don Randall in 10, 12 minutes. I thank the parliament, because we have heard many stories about Don today and, hopefully, we will have enough time to encapsulate the life of Don, his character, his love of life—'the lotto life'—and his love for his family. I appreciate the many contributions made by members on both sides of this House to honour our former colleague and friend and to try to give an idea of what he meant to this parliament and to his family.

I know what he meant to his family and I know how much his family meant to him. He was so proud of them. When he played golf, we always used to ask him, 'How did you go at golf?' Recently, he came off the course and he said, 'Don't worry about my score; Elliott had 37 points.' He was happier telling me about Elliott's score than about his own score. But I do thank the parliament for their contributions about Don. I am sure he is sitting up there somewhere watching us and saying, 'Go and have a drink for me; don't worry about speaking about me.' That was the character of the man.

As Ken Wyatt mentioned, just after Don passed away, we caught up and had a toast to Don. Someone who has been mentioned only briefly here is Senator David Johnston, who was the rock for the Randall family, and I spoke to him on a few occasions. The contribution and the efforts that David made in helping to organise things and in being involved with the Randall family after Don's death should also be recognised in this place.

I first knew Don as a person in politics but also as a member of the Royal Perth Golf Club. He joined on 1 November 1999, so it was just a year after I joined. It was a place Don was passionate about. He loved to spend as many hours as he could there and he was looking forward to spending a lot of time there with his son, Elliott, as well. He joined Elliott up in 2005, but Elliott just started playing recently.

When I first came to parliament, Don and David Johnston grabbed me in the first week we were here and we went down to a little restaurant where you used to cook your own meals. It was a great night. We had the wobbly boot on by the end of the night and we all walked back to the Forrest Inn. Somebody spoke about Don being a creature of habit: No. 7 room was always Don's room, every week of sitting. The whole time I have been in parliament, he always had room No. 7. If anybody tried to take it off him, Don would be straight down to reception to let them know that there was someone in his room and they had to go; it was his room. That was just Don, being the creature of habit that he was.

The next day, the first Tuesday I was here, he said, 'Come on, we're going to Timmy's.' I said, 'What are we going to Timmy's for?' and he said, 'You've got to come and meet all my parliamentary mates.' The member for Mackellar, who is in the chamber, was there. There were quite a few of us, and it was referred to as the 'book-burners club'. Unfortunately, I did not get to spend too much time at Timmy's, because after the next election things changed and the Tuesday lunches were no longer allowed to be had.

I just want to reflect on his time at the golf club. As I said, he joined on 1 November 1999. He played regularly with the same group—again a creature of habit. There was the same group of people he played with—Mel Dragicevich, Steve Erceg, John Collins, Danny Murphy and a few others. Don was very proud of being a member at the golf club. He was not what you would call the greatest golfer, but he had passion, as we have heard. He was very passionate about his golf, and as many times as it frustrated him he also had days of glory. The golf club for him as well was a place where both of us could go and not be scrutinised, and it was a bit of a sanctuary—besides our own homes, which were our major sanctuary. Don actually won a trophy in 2006—it was called the Walter Harper Trophy—and he also won a couple of club trophies, but the last one he won was at the Perth International challenge, where they gave away a couple of double passes to the Perth International. That was on 28 September 2013, and if anyone is interested I think there is still a photo on the club's Facebook page about Don winning that. Shortly before that, he also had a 'thought he'd won the golf' day. He brought Julie down to the club and he got a special bottle of wine out, and unfortunately he was pipped at the post by one of the last cards to come in on that day—but I am sure he still enjoyed the wine! On the day that Don won the trophy, he played in the morning and the trophies were announced at night time, at 6 o'clock. Don actually had gone down to—was it Villa Roma?— his favourite restaurant in Fremantle, and by the time he was rung up and told, 'Don, you need to come back to the club because you might be winning a trophy,' he had to get his daughter Tess to come down and pick him up in Fremantle to bring him back to the club. Don was super excited about winning that trophy, and it was a crowning moment for him; he was so excited that he shouted the bar. He did not realise that amongst his colleagues one of the things that was said about the Royal Perth Golf Club is that it is called 'the working man's royal club', and the working men in that club made sure that they got the best out of Don's shout. I think it cost him nearly $800 for that shout at the bar that night, but they all made sure that they drank a decent bottle of wine.

We have heard about Don's maiden speech, and one of the things I related to the people I spoke to previously was his love of his family. In that speech, the one paragraph which I picked out—and people have picked out their own—was, 'Last, but certainly not least, I thank my wife Julie and children Tess and Elliott, who were my greatest source of support and comfort during the campaign.' I have described Don as a lovable rogue, and he has also been a fantastic mentor to me and many other people in this place as well. He was a great representative for his constituents in Canning, and no issue was too small for him to look at, as we have heard. Don had that cheeky smile and often tested people with confronting words, while really having a good laugh inside, while he was testing them and winding them up. I know when my wife, Cheryl, first met Don at Perth Airport, I introduced Cheryl to Don and said, 'This is my wife to be.' Don turned around and said, 'Who is paying for the wedding?' The first words Cheryl said to me afterwards were, 'That bloke is a bit strange, isn't he?' I said, 'No, he was just testing you.' Cheryl got to know and love Don, like the rest of us who knew him well.

Don and I often sat down for a bottle of wine to discuss issues of the day and also our brothers-in-arms confrontation with the media. We were both tested at the same time and we often spoke about our joint dislike of the media. On the day that Don passed away, one of the media places rang me and said, 'Would you like to make a pre-recorded message?' I said, 'Unfortunately, no, I won't, because I have not spoken to his family yet and I think they deserve for me to speak to them before I make any public statements.' During that conversation, I mentioned that we did often sit down for a bottle of wine and we had a joint dislike of the media. That particular media person said, 'Well, I guess that was aimed mostly at—' a particular media outlet that we will not mention, but I said: 'No, no, do not get it wrong. It was a mutual dislike of all media, not just a particular outlet.' Unfortunately the press gallery are not here to hear me say that.

There were many things about Don—he was always up for it; we heard about the cardboard cut-out. His middle name, as Julie tells me, was 'Front', and he was always up for the battle. He had a great relationship with Clontarf, and we have heard about that, so we do not need to go further into that. He loved his office and I know he loved the staff in his office as well, and he always spoke highly of them and loved the fact that they looked after him as well as he looked after them. They ran protection for him sometimes, as we heard, during the campaign, particularly with the speaker.

He had the seat of Swan and he had the airport there, and there are many people in the airport and in the Perth Airport corporation who have had letters and phone calls from Don about spending time on the tarmac when we got back on Thursday night fights because there were no gates for us to come into. We also heard about his love of wine, and I know Patrick Secker, the former member for Barker, was the brunt of many a pointed barb about Patrick turning up at a restaurant with a bottle of unlabelled wine. Every time we went out for dinner after that, it was always Patrick who was the brunt of Don's messages.

We also heard about the hairdresser. I know that the member for Perth is here. During the 2010 campaign, I know Don and the member for Perth were both running for Canning at that time—and this is one of Don's cheeky statements; and the member for Perth may correct me, but this is my memory of it—it was asked if they shared any common interests at all. Don's retort was, 'We certainly don't share the same hairdresser.' In the face of that, that was Don delivering what he was thinking at that particular time. Again, sometimes it was not appropriate and sometimes it was, but that was just the mirth of the man and how his brain worked.

The Royal Perth Golf Club made a trip to Canberra last year. When I had to leave them for a day, Don took up the opportunity to host them. These 25 people came back to me and told me great stories about Don. Don was supposed to take them up to the dining room for lunch; instead, he organised to get all 25 of them into a barbecue that was being run in one of the courtyards. He got them the best food—the best feed—and free beer and free everything. They all thought Don was a champion because he had organised getting them in. They said, 'He's a very generous man.' That was their first experience of dealing with Don. As I said, if you get to know him, you get to love him. That is what a lot of us did.

We heard about his new house. I know that he loved his new house. He was living the lotto life. Cheryle and I were lucky enough to have dinner there with him one night. No-one has mentioned Bruno yet, so I had better mention Bruno. Bruno was his British bulldog. I hate to say it, Julie: he is probably one of the ugliest dogs I have ever seen. But he is a fantastic dog, and I know Don loved him dearly. I am sure Bruno misses him as much as the rest of the family do.

The other story I need to relate about Don is his time as a goal umpire. He used to go down and watch Elliott play football. Don used to love going down and goal umpiring. Someone came to me once—because I was involved with the South Perth Junior Football Club at a coaching level—and said, 'We've got a bit of trouble going on.' I said, 'What's that? He said, 'Well, Don is the goal umpire but we think there is something wrong with his eyesight.' I said, Why is that?' He said: 'There was a ball that missed. It went through the points, and it was that far out but Don still gave it as a goal.' I said, 'Why do you think that was?' And they said, 'His son kicked the ball.' I said, 'Well, you have to forgive one-eyedness sometimes.' I know Don would have done anything to make sure that Elliott had a great time and got a great goal, whether it was there or not. That was the legacy of the man. He also wanted to look after his son and boast about his son's achievements.

One of the things that has not been talked about either is Don's commitment to franchisees. One of the first things that I did when I came into parliament was work with Don in supporting the franchisees and franchisers. Jo Gash was also supporting them. I think some of the important changes that have been made for franchisees and franchisers across Australia were because of the work that Don did. He did a fantastic job. It was his passion for and his commitment to those areas that indicated to me that he was a man who would have done anything for his constituents and for his family.

In closing, I welcome the opportunity to talk about Don. He was a mentor to me, and I guess I felt at times a bit like an older brother to him. There were other times—and I cannot forget to mention this—when we went to functions in Parliament House. He would always ring me up and say: 'I'm going to this fabulous function. You should come along and meet all these people. They are going to have some really good food and really good wine on.' You knew the ones where he did not like the wine, because he would not ring, but I might run into him at them. Don must have lost a bit of weight, because at one stage I saw him at a couple of functions where he had his own select bottle of wine in his pocket. He would bring it from his office and pour his own drinks. That was his love of wine and his love of life.

He will be sorely missed by this parliament. He will be sorely missed by his family and his friends—the cheekiness, the 'upfrontness' and the man he was. For all those who have made contributions and who are going to make contributions, I am sure Don will be up there saying: 'Thank you for that. Thanks mates. Let's have a drink.' To the Randall family: I wish there was more I could say about my dear friend. I am sure that you will miss him dearly. If there is anything this parliament or this Liberal Party or any of his colleagues can do for you, do not ever hesitate to contact us—we would love to do it, and we love you all. Thank you.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In starting my contribution, could I firstly acknowledge Julie, Tess and Elliott Randall, and also Don's staff: Chloe Lawler, Claire Tegan and all of the Randall team that are here today. It must be really tough for all of you to sit here and listen to all of our wonderful tributes. You have been through such a tough time so far. I acknowledge your courage in being here today to listen to us and I thank you for being here to be part of this condolence motion. I know why you are here. Don would have wanted you to be here, and that is why you are here. I think the shock and disbelief that all of us felt as his colleagues is minimal compared to the shock and the loss you felt. I am so sorry you have had to go through this. None of us, as colleagues, would have wanted this, but for you, for your husband, father and brother, it is the last thing you would have wanted. I am so sorry for what you have had to go through and are yet to go through. I read this quote:

We understand death only after it has placed its hands on someone we love.

That is where you are now, and I am so sorry for you.

My mum was a war widow. She said goodbye to her husband as he got on a train. He went off to war and she never saw him again. One of the things that she lived with all of her life was the fact that she never got to say goodbye. I know that is something that you share Julie, Tess and Elliott and that you will find very, very difficult to come to terms with. It is so difficult when you say goodbye in the morning to someone you love and care about and they just do not walk back in the door. That is so difficult for you, and I feel so greatly for you in that space. It is a sense of unfinished business. I know how much he loved you, and I know that you love him. It is the same for Don's staff, his team. It is the same for you: your boss did not walk back in the door. It is an immense sense of loss. I know you have had support, but how can you replace Don Randall? You just can't. He was a unique character, and that is what we have heard from the tributes to him today on both sides of this place. He was a unique character, gone far too soon. We wanted him around because he was Don. That is the tough thing about this.

I was actually coming back from committee work in Tasmania—I was on a plane with the member for Makin, Tony Zappia—and we had come in from Hobart. When the plane landed in Melbourne there were messages on my phone and people ringing me, desperately. I will never forget it. It was such a sense of disbelief, sitting in the airport waiting for my next flight back to Perth. I want to thank Tony Zappia as well. He is also a good friend of Don's. He and I sat there together in an absolute state of disbelief. I know that is how all of my colleagues felt, in the same way that all of you would have felt the same.

We have heard so many wonderful stories of Don's life, and there are some wonderful things that you can keep—the fact that it was a life so well lived, in spite of its perhaps being shorter than we wanted. There was nothing that Don did not do his own way, and how wonderful that is. That is a wonderful legacy for him to leave behind for each one of you—an example and a legacy. He never wasted one moment of any day, whether it was for you, as his family, or for his constituents or his friends or for the causes that he felt so strongly about. We all know that tomorrow is guaranteed to no-one. Don, at the end of every day, could face the end of the day knowing that he had not wasted one moment of the day but had spent every moment on the people or causes that he cared most about. So, in spite of the fact that we have lost him so early, there is that sense that he never wasted a moment of his time either with you or with those that he cared so much about.

We have heard about the strong, the fearless, the irreverent—some of the characteristics that we loved so much about him. As an advocate for his electorate, he was second to none. It did not matter what level of government; we all knew, and so did some of our state colleagues as well, that Don did not discriminate. If someone needed to be dealt with, he dealt with them—and Chloe would attest to that very strongly. He did not suffer fools gladly either. If he thought you were out of line or he did not agree with you, Don would certainly tell you in a very forthright way, which is why you were never in any doubt. What a great attribute to have.

There was one thing Don learnt that he spoke to me about, and I think a number of our colleagues. He learnt very quickly, Julie, as you would remember, how quickly a member of parliament becomes yesterday's news the minute they are not the member, be it for Swan, Canning or whatever. We all know in this place, and we should remember, that it is the position that we hold in this place—as the member for Forrest, in my case, or the member for Canning in Don's case—that is so important and valued by the broader community, those that we deal with on a daily basis. I remember Don saying that the day after he was not elected his phone stopped ringing. There were people that he expected to hear from that he did not. He also learnt very quickly that as a member of parliament the reason to make the most of every single day is that the day after you are not the member the position goes on and the importance of the position goes on, but your role in that has changed. He learnt that very directly, and that is why he fought so hard. He not only knew what he had to offer; he had a sense of unfinished business at that time. So Don learnt an incredible, indelible message, and that is what he brought to the seat of Canning—an absolute gutsiness and a determination. He knew what it was like not to be the member and he knew he still had so much to offer. But he also knew that he needed to make the most of every day, because at any time, being such a marginal seat holder, it could have been Don's last day in that job. So he never, ever had anything to regret. I hope that brings you comfort, because Don had nothing to regret. In everything he did, he gave 110 per cent. There was nothing left on the table, in spite of the fact that we lost him so young. So I hope that is something that you can hang on to.

He was such a wonderful source of support. You need to know that in this place: yes, he was Don, but there were very marginal seat holders who learnt so much from him—and I am sure they are yet to speak. They learnt some of the simplest things: that people matter. We always knew with Don that people mattered. People mattered every day. So for marginal seat holders it was a very good lesson. If they wanted advice, not only would they come to people like me as a whip but they would also go to Don, because he worked the street. He worked his electorate and he knew about people. One of the things that I did after I heard of Don's passing was to call Bronwyn Bishop. You have heard Bronwyn speak. Don had an enormous respect for Bronwyn, as you know very well. He would have been devastated to see what has transpired here. He loved her very much and treated her beautifully. He always looked after her. You always saw Don looking after Bronwyn.

He died doing his job. That probably was overlooked so much in the media—that Don died doing his job. He was going to see and talk to people whom he cared about and wanted to hear from. He was desperately angry when the media turned their focus to you, as his family. He took that particularly badly, and I do not blame him. Because of the way he felt about you, the last thing he wanted was to see you having to deal with the issues that we as members of parliament deal with in full knowledge of what we bring on ourselves in a tough and relentless environment. But he felt it very, very personally when it was you. I have no doubt that you knew that.

One of the things I kept thinking was: I will not see Don at the airport. We will not share discussions about whatever is affecting our electorates, our state. He was a fierce and ferocious representative for Western Australia. He was also a great person to have at your side. If you were in a stoush, he would not just stand beside you; he would stand in front of you. How many people can you say that of? That is who Don was. He would stand in front of you. That 1D, 1Don, seat is very special. When I got on the plane, that is what I thought.

Don was with me in the Federation Chamber one day going back to 2009 when we heard some discussions about the school chaplaincy program. He and I were listening to what was coming from the other side of politics. It was about the potential that this was going to disappear. Don and I looked at each other and thought, 'We need to work really hard on this', which we did. We went to the minister. It was one of the things that Don and I worked very hard on together, and I am pleased to see that it has endured. It was something he felt very strongly about—the importance of that to the schools and the communities in his electorate.

I would like to finish my contribution here just to recognise that you, as his family, are showing enormous courage to be here and listen to all of us. Can I hope that the courage that you have shown today, and the support that you can and will receive from each other and your friends, helps to sustain you in what is yet ahead on a tough road? We understand what is ahead for you; we cannot share it in the same way, but we feel for you. I leave you with this to finish:

Before us great Death stands

Our fate held close within his quiet hands.

When with proud joy we lift Life's red wine

To drink deep of the mystic shining cup

And ecstasy through all our being leaps—

Death bows his head and weeps.

Thank you so much for being here to listen to us all. And in memory of Don—our colleague, our friend—may he rest in peace, but he knows that our thoughts go with him.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In this condolence motion for Don Randall, we have heard many speakers reflect on where they were when they heard the news about Don's sudden and untimely death. In my case, I had just finished a community meeting in Turramurra. As we were leaving, a member of my staff, without saying a word, handed me a smart phone with the news item that was running. Like everybody else who heard this news, I was shocked, and I found it difficult to believe that this large and vigorous personality, this man with such a zest for life, was suddenly no longer there.

I was a parliamentary colleague of Don's for a little over five years, and he made an impression on me in a number of ways, as he made an impression on so many of us. He made an impression first because he was so clearly a knockabout bloke, a man with a broad life experience, not a silvertail—a man who demonstrated in every aspect of his life that ours is a party for all Australians and that parliamentarians in the Liberal Party come from all walks of life. We have heard about Don's 20 years as a teacher—a special needs teacher—and it is hard to imagine a more important and worthwhile contribution than that. We have also heard about Don's many other life and work experiences. And softly be it said, but there is no shortage of former lawyers and corporate executives in the parliament, but it is very important that the parliament reflect the full diversity of our community. In his background, in the way that he conducted himself, and in his vigorous use of the Australian vernacular and the rich and colourful language for which he was so well known, Don is somebody who demonstrated the diversity of our party and our aspiration to represent everybody in Australia.

Don, of course, made an impression on me, as he has upon so many, through his remarkable effectiveness as a campaigner in not one but two seats and as an advocate for his electorate and the people he represented. Of course, the numbers speak volumes. The first election he won in Canning he won by a narrow margin and, as the years went on, the margin got stronger and stronger and stronger. It is a reminder to all of us in this place of the importance of the work that we do as local representatives and the fact that the individual efforts that we make, the meetings that we attend, the doors that we knock on, and the times that we spend standing on railway station platforms or in shopping centres are noticed. And, over time, if you work hard, you can build up some credit in the bank. Nobody has done that more effectively than Don Randall, and the numbers speak to that powerfully.

At its worst, politics can be pretty disappointing. But, at its best, politics can deliver outcomes that no other process can deliver. It is timely to be reminded, in the life and work of Don Randall as a politician, of the importance of representing your electorate and of the outcomes you can deliver for individuals. Not always—perhaps not even on the majority of occasions—but from time to time, as a local member of parliament, you can deliver an outcome for a constituent which makes their life better. And Don did that so many times. One of the reasons that he did it was, as so many speakers in this debate have remarked, that he was a fearless, relentless and consistent advocate for the interests of his electorate.

In March last year, I visited his electorate for a series of meetings that Don had organised in relation to the question of whether there were any locations in his electorate that were suitable for the provision of new mobile phone base stations under the Mobile Black Spot Program. Don very effectively arranged for a number of local leaders and local citizens to make the case for the needs of their communities.

We were able to deliver one new base station on the Pinjarra Williams Road. But Don made it clear to me that, while he welcomed that, he felt we could have done better. Indeed, in a moment that I think was pure Don Randall, at the media conference when we announced the national outcomes of the Mobile Black Spot Program, after a series of questions that were not tough questions because the program had been well received, Don decided that he was not going to wait for an opportunity. He stood up and asked the question why his electorate had received only one new base station. I thought that was absolutely Don, not missing a chance to stand up for his electorate and make the case as to why the people he represented deserved outcomes. That was an example of his determination to do everything he could to deliver them the outcomes that he believed they deserved.

The final aspect of Don that I want to reflect on briefly is his character and his conduct as a wise, experienced, long-serving, very senior parliamentarian in this place. Don was generous to a fault with his counsel and his support for more recently arrived colleagues. I recollect very fondly just three or four months ago a dinner at Italian and Sons, I think it was, with the member for Swan, the member for Longman, the member for Wright and, of course, the member for Canning, Don Randall. I was a late ring-in. The table was a little too small for the group, but Don was very, very generous and welcoming. It was a privilege to share some time with him then, as it has been a privilege to share time with him on other occasions during the all-too-brief time that I was able to be a colleague of Don's.

Like all in this place, I am saddened at his untimely death. I want to convey my sympathy to Julie, Tess and Elliott and to Team Randall—Chloe and the team. Don was known for having an efficient, hardworking office. Certainly on the occasion of my visit to the electorate of Canning, I was extremely impressed. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to be a colleague and friend of Don's for a period of time. I only wish it had been so much longer than it was.

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is an honour to speak on the life of Don Randall, a friend, a great colleague and a real leader in so many ways in this place. It is an honour that I welcome but it is not something I ever wanted. I would not want any of our colleagues on either side of the House to depart early. To depart in such a way is an absolute tragedy.

I guess when these things come upon us and these tragedies occur, it is a moment to think about the impact someone has had on us. This is a moment to think about the impact Don had on us. I have heard lots of great stories this morning and this afternoon about some of Don's great moments. They were, indeed, great moments. He was certainly fearless in the way he approached his duties and his work for the people of Canning. He was an absolute role model for so many of us. He really wrote the book not on the politics of being a member but on being an authentic local representative. These things are hard to emulate. We have heard stories today, and we heard stories on the day of the funeral from Chloe, Tess, Elliott, Andrew Southcott, Bob Baldwin and others. When you hear those stories on the background of Don that was not immediately apparent to most of us here, you start to put that in the context of your own interactions with the man. You start to think, 'Oh, so that is where that advice came from' or 'That's where that action came from.' I always considered the advice that Don gave me as extremely good. Now when I hear these great stories it really does make sense. That is the sort of guy he was. There was a consistency across his whole life that he brought into this place. In the interactions that he had with all of us, we saw those things play out.

He was a great friend. He was a very reliable guy. When Chloe mentioned those times she slightly misled the whip's office about Don's progress on his movement to the House to relieve somebody else, that put something in perspective as well. When the whip's office would assure me, 'Don't worry; you'll only be there for a minute or so. Don's on his way,' I would rule out the next five minutes. I knew I would still be here for that time.

The guy was something special. He was an excellent colleague and a very entertaining guy. There were a number of times that I walked down the corridor past his office and, if I showed even a hint of wanting to see him, he always said, 'Come in, come in.' It was never a problem. He was always there for us. He always made time for us. I really did appreciate it.

The first time I met Don was back in 2004, just after I had been endorsed for Cowan for the first time. He said, 'Come and see me.' I went down to his office and he gave me some great advice. It was not so much what he talked about as the things he actually did. I got a bit of a hint of the interactions he had with the people in his electorate. I do not think I got the detail of pruning roses and all that sort of stuff, but he always impressed upon me the importance of interacting very closely with people and of being genuinely interested in their lives and their challenges, because that was always the sort of guy he was. And again, it was not about the politics, it was not about the numbers game—moving people from one side of the ledger to the other—or anything like that; it was about the authenticity of purpose that Don Randall was a great exponent of. He lived it, he breathed it. He talked the talk and he walked the walk. And that was the charm, and that was the reason why he was so well regarded in his electorate—that is very hard to beat. There were other moments, where he entertained us: the action he used to do when he was sometimes called to account for what he did—where he throws his arms out like this—in my view, it was not like, 'it was not me'; it was more like, 'well, that is the truth, isn't it?' He really was a special guy, and very entertaining for us.

When I was unsuccessful at the 2004 election, he called me again and said, 'Come and see me.' And he gave some advice about carrying on and not giving up, about trying again and trying to finish the job. We have heard about that time that he had between Swan and Canning, and that was exactly that experience that he had—the disappointment he had, and being left to that harsh solitude of election defeat—that made him want to make sure it did not happen to others—to people like me, even though I had not been elected in the first place. But that advice he drew upon was most excellent for me.

The day before Don's funeral, I decided that I would drive to Pinnaroo—I thought it was very nice of the family to select a final resting place for Don so close to my electorate, and only 10 minutes' drive from my electorate office. I thought I would go out there and just make sure I knew exactly where I was going, so nothing would go wrong and so I would be there on time, because I did not want to miss his funeral for any reason whatsoever. When I got there, the first thing I saw was this magnificent marquee sitting on the grass near a beautiful lake, and shortly after that I saw Gemma Whiting, who is a very well-known staffer and Young Liberal in Western Australia, and she was looking after things for the funeral. It was great to see her there, and great to see that it looked so well planned and under control. So I knew it was going to be a good and fitting send-off for Don the next day. I certainly put it on record that I pay tribute to Gemma Whiting and her efforts, and to Don's entire staff as well, for the magnificent effort they made in rising to the occasion under very difficult circumstances. I would also like to thank Senator David Johnston for his magnificent work as MC and in delivering the eulogy as well—again, in very difficult circumstances in that moment—he did a great job. It really was a wonderful occasion, to be able to look back and hear about the different aspects of Don's life brought to us by people that were there.

It was just last Friday that I was sitting at a coffee shop talking to some constituents and someone came up to me that had actually been taught by Don Randall—so quite a few years ago—who saw me and came over and specifically said, 'so sorry to hear about Don; he taught me'—at a particular school—'and he was really something special'. And Don had a great impact on this young bloke's life. It is interesting, where we see that Don was a very important figure in Canning and before that in Swan, and in this place here, but his influence has impacted around so many places in the wider area of Perth as well, and people remember him so fondly and so dearly. It is pretty amazing, really.

I guess the last thing I would finish with is that on Saturday afternoon, I decided that I would just go and visit Don's grave; something that I thought I was going to do in the months ahead. Obviously, the day of the funeral was so busy—Don always could pull a big crowd!—and there were hundreds of people there; I would think that 700 would be a conservative estimate. It was very busy, so it was hard to have much of a personal moment on that day. So I looked forward to that opportunity where I would go and sort of sit with him for a while. When I look back on what happened, and on that funeral, the quietness and the solitude was something pretty special for me on Saturday. Surrounded by not much more than 100 kangaroos—part of the charm of the Pinnaroo cemetery—and just to be there with Don for a quiet ten minutes or so was pretty special. It is something I am going to do fairly regularly; I think I will probably go out to see Don every two or three months. I do not think that it is too much to ask, when someone has had such a positive impact upon a part of your life, that you should go and pay tribute to somebody like that and take those quiet moments, when it is just you and them, to say thanks—thanks everything he did for me, and thanks for the things he did for the electorate of Canning, and for the great impact that he had on this parliament. To conclude: my greatest condolences to Julie, to Tess and to Elliott; and to the wider family, and of course to Don's staff.

I would just say one more thing, because you guys were so magnificent on the day. At various times since I have been here, I have talked to Don about staff issues. We all try to get the best possible team we can at times, but almost always whenever I asked Don about these matters he would say, 'Oh, you should get people like I've got,' because he was obviously so proud. So well done to you guys from the staff, and, again, condolences to Julie, Tess and Elliott. Don, it was great knowing you, and I really appreciate the support you gave us.

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This has been a remarkable day, because I think it reflects the very best of our parliament when people come together to be able to reflect on the very significant contribution of one of our colleagues so sadly taken away from us. As I have listened to all those who have participated in this debate, I could not help but be very much aware of the contribution that Don was making to this nation but also of the impact that he had had upon his colleagues and friends. The camaraderie of the Western Australian members has been demonstrated by those who have spoken and those who are yet to speak.

For my own part, I regret very much that, at the time of Don's passing, I was away; I was with the intelligence and security committee in Europe. I read of it and was very shocked that it had happened in this way. I have been in the parliament for a number of years, and I recall the last occasion on which we were deprived of one of our colleagues—Peter Nugent, the then member for Aston. It is remarkable, in a sense, that with so many of us so few are taken tragically in this way. I do not know whether it says a lot about medicine of today and the way in which people look after themselves—it may be we do not have members of parliament serving as long in the parliament as we may have had in the past—but it has been a significant change.

I have heard members regale the House about their involvement in various ways, and I do not wish to unduly detain members with a lengthy repetition of those matters that have been so adequately addressed by those who have gone before. But for me, as whip, I am very much aware that Don used to take a few liberties; we have heard of that today. Given the exigency of getting back to Perth and the time we rise on a Thursday night, I am conscious of it. I do not know that I was ever able to reform him, but what I am pleased about is that when I was no longer in that role as whip he had some comments to make about it. I am grateful that he saw my role in such a positive light.

It may reflect something of our friendship over the years, because I do remember his advocacy as the member for Swan in relation to Clontarf and the Clontarf Foundation. I do remember, as I know others who have been associated with Indigenous affairs will, the unique model that they had hit upon to embrace young male students through sport and to give them a better educational outcome because of it. I was minister for Indigenous affairs when I was apprised of those matters, and my recollection is that I may have even provided a little support for the Clontarf Foundation along the way. What I am pleased to hear about is the number of others who have followed and who have seen fit—and I have no doubt because of Don's advocacy, amongst the undoubted demonstrable success—to continue support for it.

I had the opportunity of seeing him, as member for Canning, when I went with the Save the Children organisation to look at programs that they were conducting in his electorate and, I might say, in the electorate of my friend Ken Wyatt. They were very focused not only on ensuring that people were aware of what Save the Children were doing abroad but on what they also do here in Australia.

For my own part, I was particularly pleased when Don was prepared to take up issues in relation to discrimination in migration programs. That is an issue on which I have carved out, I guess, my own reputation in this place for conscience, and I was pleased, not that he had to do it but that he was willing to engage in relation to some of the discriminatory practices that he thought may have been being pursued in relation to 457 visas. I am always very keen to take that matters up.

Again, you could see his understanding of where we are in the world and of the need for a broad view in relation to different cultures, different races and different religions by the very fact that he played such a significant leadership role in relation to Japan and Sri Lanka, amongst others, here in this parliament through the friendship groups. I do not think we talk much about fundraising these days, but I remember meeting a fellow—I think he is a Western Australian of note, Len Buckeridge—and it must have been an occasion on which my colleague was getting to the Pitt Street of Perth when he was raising money from Len, I think. All of us obviously have worked at various times to ensure that people like Don are able to come to this parliament and play the very significant role that he has. I lament very much that I was not there at the time of his farewell, but I do want to be associated with this condolence motion. To Julie, Tess and Elliott: I give you the condolences of the Ruddock family, who share with you your grief.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

May I join with all the others who have contributed to this condolence for our late friend and colleague, Don Randall. May I extend my condolences to his wife, Julie; to his children Tess and Elliott; to his extended family; to his staff and to all of his friends. In Macbeth, Shakespeare wrote:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more.

Those words could be applied to some who have passed through this place over the decades, but certainly not to Don Randall. He was neither vexed nor will his deeds be forgotten, as indicated by the many contributions today. Don was always a great advocate. In the party room, he was direct and effective. As many others have remarked, none were left in doubt as to what Don was on about. Equally in this chamber, he was an effective debater and effective contributor to the many discussions that he participated in over the years.

I wanted to remark very briefly on another aspect of his advocacy that was less public. That was, as the member for Swan and then subsequently as the member for Canning, to his ministerial colleagues. Over the years, whether it was advocating for the extension or the expansion of aged care in his electorate or arguing passionately for greater flexibility, particularly for his beloved small businesses; the cause of immigrants from various parts of the world or for the care of the disabled, Don was there knocking on the doors of ministers such as myself, advocating persistently and with great perseverance and dedication for those things which he believed in and those people he represented. It was always a strong and persistent debate.

In these brief remarks, may I conclude by recalling that it was John Donne who said:

No man is an island, entire of itself.

That is why there is such a great feeling in this chamber today about Don's passing. May he rest in peace and may some of that peace be shared with his wife and family.

Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join my colleagues in expressing my deepest condolences and sympathy on the passing of the late Don Randall to his wife, Julie; children, Tess and Elliot; members of his extended family; staff and close friends. There is an old saying, which goes: 'Show me your friends and I will tell you who you are.' If this is anything to go by, then the collection of friends in attendance at Don's funeral, who came from far and wide across Australia, reflects the calibre of Don as an esteemed and respected character in the community.

I first encountered Don through the Liberal Party in the mid 1990s, seeing him at Liberal Party state conferences and various functions; but it was not until election night in 1998 that I began to understand his character. When it looked likely that he was going to lose the seat of Swan, he telephoned my predecessor, Dr Mal Washer, who had just been newly elected, regaining the seat of Moore for the Liberal Party from an independent as a result of a group of Machiavellian outsiders living outside the electorate of Moore who were manipulating the preselection process and consequently led to losing Moore in the 1996 election.

Don asked Mal if he would take on his existing staff, who were likely to lose their jobs. Dr Mal agreed and that was how two of Don's staff came to work in the Moore electorate office based in Joondalup. I must say that they were very good staff members. This illustrated how Don was genuinely committed to the welfare of his staff. Many of Don's former staff have gone on to serve in higher positions within government. He was a tough taskmaster who demanded excellence, but at the same time mentored and developed his staff. At the next federal election in 2001, when Don contested and won the seat of Canning, he swiftly poached his staff members back.

I got to know Don better as the years progressed, through my best friend—who is now a senator—Michaelia Cash. As part of her duties as a Senate candidate, Michaelia went out to support regional electorates and would always invite me to accompany her on the long drives to semirural areas such as Waroona, Pinjarra and Kelmscott. I fondly remember attending the Kelmscott Agricultural Show and inflating helium balloons at the Don Randall stall with Tess and other volunteers for Michaelia to hand out to children; she resembled Mary Poppins with her enthusiasm.

I enjoyed attending the Waroona branch Christmas functions, where Claire Jones would bake and decorate the best Christmas cakes as raffle prizes. One evening, it was getting dark and we were unsure of the correct turn-off to take off the Forrest Highway to get to Waroona. We managed to get the vehicle bogged on the median strip and nearly ran out of fuel as a result of backtracking. We arrived at the function half an hour late, looking very dishevelled and dusty in our formal clothes. Don was there and he gave us the most quizzical look.

I enjoyed attending Pinjarra branch functions and lunches at which Don Randall was the guest speaker. As a result, I made many good friends within the Canning division members including Ron and Sue Warren, Kristy Oosthuizen, Richard and Bev House and many other great supporters of the Liberal Party. That close connection continues to this day, I am humbled that a number of Liberal Party stalwarts from the Canning division drive more than 100 kilometres to support functions at my home. It is from visiting regional and rural electorates such as Canning that I have gained a better understanding of the wealth-creating industries and agriculture which are essential to the prosperity of all electorates.

Don's commitment to his electorate as a strong advocate and good local member must be acknowledged. I have fond memories of Don edging towards the House of Representatives doors every Thursday afternoon with his luggage a few minutes before the adjournment concluded. As soon as the bell rang, he rushed off to the airport so he could arrive home late that night and be in his electorate office first thing the next morning.

In parliament Don was an active member of a number of parliamentary friendship groups and had a good working relationship with ambassadors and consular representatives from a diverse selection of nations. At the opening of parliament he introduced me to the High Commissioner of Sri Lanka, and more recently he asked me to join the Cuban friendship group.

Don was a jovial character. He had a good sense of humour and was supportive of colleagues. It was a privilege to serve with Don on the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Procedure. He was the chair and always gave members from both sides of the House a fair opportunity to express their views. Don also served as a mentor to new members and was always helpful.

Don regularly expressed his views in the party room—sometimes they were controversial—nevertheless he had the courage of his convictions to express his beliefs. He was a solid campaigner and chaired the federal campaign assistance program to assist marginal seats in Western Australia. We will sadly miss Don from our regular Western Australian members and senators meetings in which we discuss ways of advancing the interests of our state.

I express my deepest condolences on the passing of a truly great Western Australian in the late Don Randall.

Mal Brough (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I came into this parliament in 1996 with Don. Like only a few others, such as Teresa Gambaro and Bob Baldwin, we found ourselves out at the request of the public and have come back—we have joined a select group. One of the last things Don did in welcoming me back was to present me with the last bottle of wine that was produced to commemorate the class of '96. It was a nice little thing—it had every member of the class of '96 on it from the Liberal Party and the National Party, and the margins we came in with. You look at it and you wonder where they are now. Don put a few of us—Joe and Bruce, and our other colleagues such as Teresa, Warren, Bob and Sharman—from the class of '96 together, and we shared a drink on my return and he gave me that last bottle. It was an end of an era. Little did we know that today we would be standing here remembering fondly the memories that we have of Don.

I particularly wanted to speak today because a lot of people have mentioned in generic terms specific things about how he has been so passionate with his electorate, and it is true. I just wanted to recount that when I was the Assistant Treasurer, Don advocated for years on behalf of a group of his constituents who had been caught up in a tax minimisation scheme and could get no joy. He never gave up, because he felt for these individuals. And I have got to say it looked hopeless. I will never forget the day that they were all coming to see me two at a time—it was almost like at school going in to see your principal. Don was with these families, and sometimes their tax advisers, and they would come in with brave faces and then both the husband and wife would break down and cry because they had sat there with these bills from the ATO for sometimes $200,000, $300,000 or $400,000 which they never thought they could pay. Everyone had basically deserted them bar one person: Don Randall. If it had not been for his personal advocacy then those people's lives could have been destroyed—some were destroyed; there were reports of suicide. His personal conviction in standing by people—some people call them the little man, but I think that is a derogatory term—just average people, who found themselves in tough conditions, turned to their local MP and found that they had a champion, a champion that did have tenacity.

Someone else reflected today on a similarity with John Howard. When asked what John Howard's greatest attribute was, they said it was tenacity, and can I tell you that Don Randall had it in absolute spades. It was tenacity not for his own betterment—there was no bitterness in him for not being a minister; I never once saw him complain that he was overlooked or there was some personal gain that he missed—but simply that he was able to advocate for his constituency in an effective manner.

I think Don learnt a lot by losing. I saw him come back as an even more effective member. If any prospective politician from any political persuasion should take today's debate and read it from end to end then they will understand what it is to be a good member of parliament. They will also understand what is to be a good human being, because, unlike what we are sometimes portrayed, the two go together. It is the human values of the Don Randalls of this world that come into this place with a life experience that is rich and a value system that is based on integrity that actually endeared him to his electorate—not whether they voted for him or not but whether he could achieve things for them.

You will often hear people say that X, Y or Z did not make a big contribution because they were not a cabinet minister, but that belittles the role of the 150 of us who are here as private members of parliament, and it is the individual life that you have changed. He and his staff worked together tirelessly to change for the better the lives of the people that he represented. For those of us who have had the privilege to represent a marginal seat, it is not Don and his family; it is Don and the team—and the team is his staff, his federal divisional council and his family. You do that as one and you grow close together, so I know now that the pain that they will be feeling, they will be feeling equally.

I want to say one other thing about him in regard to courage. It is not an easy thing to tell your leaders what they need to hear. It takes great courage to do that and to do it with integrity—not to hold grudges and not to do it for personal gain, but to do it because it is what you are hearing from your electorate and you believe it is the right and proper thing to do. Don Randall did that. He did not ask someone else to do it on his behalf; he did not stand behind anyone else; he put himself forward. As someone else said here today, he would not just stand next to you, he would stand in front of you. We in this place have to ask ourselves: how many of us have that level of courage—the courage of our convictions?

As a former soldier, I once had a colonel who would write our reports. The last comment would always be a rating. You would love these ratings, and only the military can do it: 'don't want'; 'take a chance on'; 'happy to have'; one more, and then the last one was 'fight to keep'. He would put a line through them all and say, 'I would take this man to war' or 'I would not take this man to war.' That said it all. For me, if I am in the trenches, I want Don Randall next to me; I know I have a man of integrity that I can rely on and have my back.

To his family, thank you. Thank you for giving up so much of what you could have had with your father and your husband to the community that he served and to this parliament. We are richer for the sacrifice that you have made on behalf of democracy and our nation. We ask that he rest in peace and we give our peace, our love and our prayers to his family, as they continue the mourning process.

Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in this condolence motion to a very dear friend of mine. I met him when I came into this parliament in 1996, along with the member for Fisher, and we struck up a friendship. One of the things that we found was a lot of commonality between the members from the west and the members for Queensland.

Mr Brough interjecting—

'Frontier states,' he says, and there may well be something in that.

Don's first service here was as the member for Swan. In him we found a very interesting character and somebody who was nobody's fool. I think Don early in his political career made a conscious decision that he was going to be there for the people of his electorate and certainly not there for his own political career or the benefits that he might derive through promotion, et cetera. Unfortunately, in that first instance, his service was relatively short. He was defeated in 1998 in the general election, and that was quite devastating for Don at the time. Even though I had only known him for a couple of years at that point, I made an effort to contact him. I was so pleased I did because one of the things Don said to me was: 'When you're in this place everybody wants to know you, but the moment you become the feather duster suddenly the phone stops ringing and you never hear from any or very few of your colleagues.' He said to me that the value of a friendship is those who pick up the phone and want to talk to you. I was so pleased that I was one of those who picked up the phone and talked to him at that time. I think that really gives me a right to say, 'Yes, he was a true friend.'

I reflect on losing Don. I was in the Darwin airport ready to board a military charter aircraft to go into the Middle East and I was about to remove my SIM card, as instructed—I was told I had to take the SIM card out of my mobile phone so it could not be tracked while travelling to the Middle East on this short deployment. The last message I received was: 'Do you know whether it is true that Don has passed away?' I could not believe it. I rang several colleagues, but I could not get anybody. I did get the foreign minister, and she confirmed it. It was very difficult getting onto that plane; at the time I was quite emotional, not knowing exactly what had happened but knowing that it had happened. I thought, 'In the eight days I am away, there is nothing else I can do.' I had arranged that, when I returned, instead of turning right to go to Cairns, I turned left to go to Perth. I had the privilege of attending the service for Don. I found it amazing: I thought I knew someone but I really did not know very much about this man at all.

In preparing today, I looked over at the seat Don occupied and I thought, 'I want to put something there so people realise that Don sat there'—that every time they look at that empty seat, they will see that white rose and they will reflect on Don. I have asked that, while that seat remains empty, I would like that rose to stay there so people can remember that he is still here with us in one way or another. That rose symbolises that. I do not want people to forget him like they did in 1998—when he came back in 2001, he came back with a vengeance. He really did some amazing work.

As the member for Fisher said, Don had no fear. Often Don's contribution in the party room would be controversial but you could never argue that he was not being absolutely straight to the point. He would say exactly what he thought. People knew that. But, he could walk outside the room and have a civil conversation and move on. I think that was his greatest strength. We have heard so many different achievements that he has had in his electorate, and all that praise is well deserved. His service to his constituents is legendary, and in the funeral service we heard about the mobile maintenance unit, the burying of the rabbit, the pruning of the rose trees—which he kept doing year in and year out. The number of people at his funeral service was extraordinary—his constituents. The Green Army turned out in force in respect for him, and there were many stories told.

We talk about Don's history, coming from the Wheatbelt in Western Australia. I thought I knew a lot about Don. I knew he was a school teacher, and I knew that he had an absolute passion for educating and supporting disabled children. We know about his focus on autism and his walk around his electorate and how it raised money, and we know about the Clontarf Foundation, which thrives because of Don identifying the value of that foundation and then making sure that it got the appropriate level of financial support. I knew those things—I knew he was a crusty old bugger and I knew he loved Italian and, I have to say, his love of red wine was pretty special. Whenever I would take a bottle, he would look at my bottle with absolute disdain and reflect on how it was nowhere near as good as what he had. Interestingly enough, I could usually take my bottle home because he would have two or three there to enjoy. That demonstrates some of the very special character of this wonderful man.

I knew that Don had an interest in horses, but usually when somebody has an interest in racehorses the racehorses are slow, but he actually won races with horses that he trained. I did learn at his service that he had often secured interests in horses without the knowledge of his beautiful wife, and they were looking for people to come forward to let them know where the interests were. What I did not know about Don was that he was a bronco rider—a rodeo rough-rider. When I walked over to the marquee where they were doing the service I wondered why in the hell there was this hat and all this garb, and I suddenly realised. He was a beekeeper, and somewhat of a connoisseur of roses. You would not have expected that. There was a young fellow playing a violin, and there was this beautiful old 100-year-old violin sitting there on a stand that he had gifted to his daughter. I thought I knew a lot about Don but, frankly, there is so much that I did not know. I can tell you that when I was the Chief Whip in the last parliament he was an absolute nightmare— he was the one guy that I could not corral. Come Thursday night, no matter what the pressure was in this place—we had a hung parliament—Don was gone. I would say to Don when he came back, 'Look, mate, we really have to work something out here', and he would always say, 'Mate, I've got to get home to the family; I've got a commitment in my electorate.' Without fear or favour he just said, 'Sorry, I'm going to go,' and he did. While it was frustrating for me and it took about two of the three years of my tenure in that role to work out an arrangement that was acceptable for both of us, it reinforced his commitment that, no matter what, he had to be home with his family and with his electorate.

Many members have referred to Julie and Tess and Elliott, but there is another member of the family that has not been mentioned very often—and his name is Bruno. Bruno is the most unattractive English bulldog that I have ever set eyes on. He is seriously ugly. Yet in Don's eyes he was absolutely beautiful. At the service they made reference to the fact that Don grew up in a household where dogs belonged in the back yard and the people were in the house. Bruno had crossed the threshold and was allowed just inside the front door. I am told that Bruno is actually suffering quite severely from the loss of Don—he is feeling it quite badly—and Julie tells me that he now has much more liberated access to the house.

The last time I had some time with Don was only a few weeks before he passed away. I was in Western Australia and I was due to go on the red-eye back to Cairns. I spoke to Don and he said I might as well come around and he would show me his new house, which he took great pride in. He said to go over and have a meal with them. Julie was out at the time, and Don had been given the responsibility of looking after the lamb roast and the veggies, which he was quite happy to do. We sat out on the balcony and we enjoyed a Cuban cigar and several of his top-quality reds. Unfortunately, in the process, we forgot about the vegetables in the oven. By the time we sat down, we had seriously burnt offerings.

We grieve for Don. I do. I look across at the white rose at his place in this chamber, and in my view that is the spirit of Don sitting here. He loved his roses, so part of Don is sitting there.

He was never an ambassador officially, but there was the work that he did in Sri Lanka and the love that that community had for him; the work that he did in Japan and the respect that the Japanese embassy had for him; and the wonderful work that he did for the Cubans in recent times. I have seen some great photographs of Don in one of those beautiful old Cuban motor cars—with, of course, a Cuban cigar and a good Cuban rum! They are big shoes to fill. I think he made a huge difference.

Finally, I would like to mention Don's staff. Chloe was with Don at the time, when he left us, and you can imagine just how difficult that must have been for that young woman. But she was very, very strong. At the service, she spoke brilliantly and she gathered together all of the staff. When you see them all together with young Chloe, who actually wound up the service with some great stories about Don, you have to admire Don's people, if you like—Don's staff. They did a fabulous job. I say thank you to Chloe and the team for what you did in organising that. From the moment this dreadful tragedy happened, they were there, backing up and supporting Julie and Tess and Elliott through this difficult time. They are still with them here, as we speak, offering them that very, very strong support. I was absolutely overwhelmed by it, as I think were so many of Don's friends who were able to make it to the service. He is resting in a most beautiful place, an absolutely beautiful place. The tragedy is that he was taken far too soon, far too soon. I think it makes us all reflect a little on our own mortality.

One thing that I say in all honesty is that I regularly would give him a big hug and tell him how much I loved him as a person. That sometimes did not rest too well with Don! Nevertheless, he appreciated the gesture. To Julie, and Tess and Elliott: my deepest condolences for such an untimely and tragic loss. We still love him to bits. We are certainly going to miss him—no doubt about that. He was someone who had a profound impact in this place. As Chloe rightfully said at the service, 'Don never lost Canning; Canning lost Don.' Vale, my friend, and have a good journey. Love you to pieces.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a difficult day for all of us, right across this parliament, as we say goodbye to the great friend we had in Don Randall. I was part of the 'crew of 2007', as I think the Minister for Social Security referred to us earlier. There were only seven of us, I think, that year. It was the Rudd-slide, after all. Don was one of the first outside that group to offer me the hand of friendship. This can be a lonely place. So, for someone as affable as Don to come up and say, 'No, you're going to be on my table; we'll look after you, mate'—that is what he was like.

Over the years that we were here together, almost eight, he became a very good friend to both me and my wife, Teresa, normally making sure there was room at his table or organising either for a small group to slip out for dinner between 6.30 and eight o'clock or something less rushed on a Wednesday evening. A few people have referred to Don's predilection for a good red. He would normally leave you with the comment, 'Make sure you don't bring a lousy red.' He told me one day, quite candidly—and I thought this was a very good reading: 'I like South Australians; they normally bring good wine.' In fact, Don normally brought a South Australian wine. So be it.

He was passionate about his electorate and about politics, and a lot has been said about that today. Of course, he was the political comeback kid, having lost the seat of Swan after just one term, in 1998. But he was elected member of Canning in 2001, and, if he was not already a relentless campaigner, he became one then. He had spent a long time teaching, he had devoted much of his life to it and he had a great passion for it, but he confided to me, 'Having to go back to it, I hated it. I hated it. I wanted my job back here.' He said, 'I was determined to work to get it, and, once I'd won the seat, there was no way in the world I was going to lose it again.'

I was always interested in Don's opinion on lots of things. After all, he had the runs on the board. He was a member who had been here longer than me and was widely respected, and he had strong views on many issues and was not shy about telling them to us. Many of us in this place are involved in the parliamentary committee system, and most of us think we do pretty fair work in it. Don was normally not involved in the committee system. He would say, 'There are no votes here in Canberra,' with a bit of a growl, actually, as he headed back to his electorate.

In our party room—much has been said about that—he was a frequent speaker and he was listened to. I always admired the way he could put his finger on the issue. Sometimes he raised controversial issues; other times he raised issues that we all had been dealing with but had not had the foresight to raise in the party room. Don would say his piece and I would listen to him and go, 'Yeah, that's right.' After he sat down I would go, 'I wonder why I didn't raise that before Don did?' He just seemed to have a way of seeking out the issues that were cutting through with the public, the issues that were hurting us politically or the things that were helping us politically—he knew what was popular on the ground. He frequently spoke up about his electorate, and in particular about jobs for skilled people that could not seem to get on the starting blocks in the resources boom. He would frequently take it up with the resource companies and say, 'You are sourcing workers from all over Australia and from all over the world, and yet I have got people in my electorate with good skills that can't seem to get past the starting gate.' I think it is still a very relevant question, and Don was not scared who he put the question to.

I was part of a bilateral delegation to Sri Lanka in 2011—the first, as I understand, by an advanced Western nation since the cessation of hostilities in the 30-year civil war. Don was not on that delegation, but he was a great friend of Sri Lanka and a frequent visitor. He sought me out after that visit and drew me into the parliamentary friends of Sri Lanka group. While he acknowledged the brutality and the pain of the long civil war, he was of the opinion that that country, and Australia as a friend, needed to make the new Sri Lanka work as a modern, inclusive society as soon and as much as possible. Many others have spoken of his great love of Sri Lanka, and he believed what a great nation, what an important nation, Sri Lanka can become and how it can become a very inclusive democracy. So he was a great friend of Sri Lanka. He was also chair of the friends of Japan and Cuba, a country visited recently, and was keen to help as much as he could.

Others have spoken out about Clontarf. It was through Don that I met Gerard Neesham, the CEO of Clontarf and the original coach of the Dockers, and was caught up in at least a bit of the enthusiasm that Don and Gerard have for Clontarf. It is one of my great disappointments that we do not have the Clontarf program operating in South Australia. The South Australian government seems to be on another horse and have selected another way of trying to engage Indigenous kids. I think they have probably made an error and we are dealing with an inferior organisation, but it is my hope that sometime in the future that might change and I too can become as engaged in Clontarf as perhaps Don was. But he was a great champion of Clontarf and he made sure that Gerard had the right people to talk to when he came to Canberra.

He had a wide array of colourful friends—and I mean that in the widest term, not in the terms that are sometimes used in Sydney newspapers—and I remember one night with my wife and I, and a small other group, Don said, 'I've got some friends over from WA and I would like you to meet them. Why don't you come out?' We went out and I sat down with a gentleman called Johnny Miller. Johnny Miller was a jockey. I do not reckon I could name more than about five Melbourne Cup winners off the cuff, because I am not really a racing man, and I would be struggling to name most of the jockeys. I looked at Johnny Miller and I said, 'Galilee in the '66'. I think I went up in Johnny Miller's standing, probably not justifiably, but he was one of the very few I did know who rode the horse and I did know what year he won the cup. He was pretty impressed. He was a great raconteur; it was a good evening. While we were sitting there listening to the tales of Johnny Miller, we looked around the room and at the next table there was a fairly familiar looking face, and it was Normie Rowe. Well, before long the two tables had joined up and we had a very memorable night. It was just one of those things that happened when you were around Don. He was good with people; he was good at drawing people together.

In 2011 I was fortunate enough to participate in the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program, and we visited Afghanistan and the troops there on the ground. Don was on that trip with me and it was a place that I got to know him even better, even though—as many pointed out already in this condolence motion to Don—maybe I did not find out as much about him as I thought, because it seems that much more has been revealed about him in the last few weeks than we knew. But we shared a room together; in fact, we shared a shipping container together. We eyed each other off, wondering how loudly the other would snore. As it turned out, I think we made good company, because I do not think either of us kept the other awake. He was a wonderful travelling companion and, as always with Don, he was great for breaking the ice and encouraging people to tell us about what it was like for them to be serving in Afghanistan.

However, it will always be as an organiser of evening dinners in this place where I shall miss Don the most. He always made sure that, when time permitted, we got together, because he understood that it was important in this place that we support each other. He was a great lover of life and lived his life to the full. But my loss, and I will miss Don badly, and our loss, this parliament will miss him, will pale into significance of course to the loss of his family, that of Julie, Elliott and Tess—the loss of a partner, the loss of a husband, the loss of a father and the loss of a friend so unexpectedly, so early. Unless we have been through similar or the same circumstances, it is difficult for us to fully understand what they are dealing with at the moment.

I am given to reflect here. I attended a funeral a couple of months ago of a close friend who died prematurely. He had the opportunity, or the burden, of knowing for 12 months or more before he died that he was going to die, and he had a hand in writing his own obituary. It was a very moving piece. One of the things that Tuck my friend said and that he left us with, as he dealt with his illness, was: 'It is what it is.' I think that is a powerful phrase. For all of us who miss Don, it is what it is, but life goes on. We have to deal with a parliament without Don and his family have to deal with a family without Don—but we will, because that is what we do. We do front up the next day and get on with life. I pay tribute to a great friend and parliamentarian.

Louise Markus (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I open my contribution in this condolence motion by expressing my deep condolences to Julie, Tess and Elliott, to the rest of the family and also to the team who have served Don and the electorate of Canning. I want to say what an honour and a privilege it has been to have served the Australian parliament and the Australian people at the same point in time as Donald James Randall did. To have had the opportunity to share in this place the responsibility and, I suppose, sometimes the burden that that encompasses and involves has been, I think, a privilege.

Don was a man who was not afraid to take risks—firstly, to try and win Swan and then to have another go at Canning. When he stood and fought for his people, whether it be one-on-one talking to a minister or their staff or whether it be in the party room, he at times took risks. He said what he thought. He was no respecter of persons, but he valued everyone. He loved people. A word that we do not use often enough is that word 'love'.

We have talked today about him being a wine connoisseur, and I have to say that I am not one. But, if I was to go out to dinner or lunch with Don, I did have to learn what a good red wine was, because you did not turn up without a good red wine. So I did have to learn what he liked, at least.

As a colleague who had to battle to hold or win seats, he was indeed someone who knew what it was like to be up against it. On many occasions, whether it be over dinner or lunch or whether it be sitting in the chamber here during a division, the conversation would often go to what is important to the people of Australia. What are the people that we are representing saying? What is important to them? What do we need to do differently? What are our responsibilities? And I have to say that, with Don, he respected what those of us had to say who held seats that were tough to hold. If I talked to Don about something that I thought was important for us to listen to as a government or even as an opposition when we were developing policy, as somebody who held a tough seat I did not have to argue with Don; he listened. He valued what I and many others had to say. You always knew you were listened to. I suspect that that is exactly what he did for the people in his electorate. He said: 'I am here to listen to you talk to me.' I have to say that I experienced that firsthand.

On our side of politics, we value the uniqueness of the individual. We value of the rights of the individual, and Don expressed that. I had a look momentarily at what his names, Donald James, mean. I think the meanings of his names actually reflect who he was and what we will miss. I will miss my conversations with Don. I will miss having the opportunity to look for him in a division and find him and just to have a chat about what I think we need to do. If you look at the name 'Donald' it is Scottish in its heritage and means 'great chief', 'world mighty'. The name has often been borne by a number of early Scottish kings. I think it is very fitting for Don. Don, through his own efforts, positioned himself amongst leaders in this nation of Australia and also, as we have heard today, with leaders in Sri Lanka, Cuba and Japan—to name a few. 'James' has a little more contentious meaning, and I will take the risk that I think Don would have taken in talking about what it means. It means 'to grasp the heel' or 'a supplanter'. When you look at the meaning of supplanter, it often refers to governments and rulers of countries. It comes from the verb 'supplant', which evolved from the Latin 'supplantare'. Its meaning is to 'trip up' or 'overthrow'. With all due respect to my colleagues opposite, I think Don was quite delighted to be able to trip up and overthrow the other side as he held his seats and the fought battles for what he believed in and what was important to him.

He definitely believed in people—and that brings me to Julie, Tess and Elliott. Many a time at dinners when we were all talking about our families, he would talk of Julie, Tess and Elliott with very deep pride. He certainly, without doubt, believed in his wife and his children. He believed that Tess and Elliott would achieve the best that they possibly could. Tess and Elliott, if you get the opportunity to hear or read what I am talking about, as someone who lost a father at a young age I understand somewhat what you may be experiencing. There will be many days ahead when you will wish you could talk to him, when you will have those opportunities sometimes to celebrate and sometimes to experience challenge, and he will not be present with you.

Yet, at the same time, knowing that he loved and believed in you, I hope, will be a great source of comfort and strength to you over the coming years. Don, we bid you farewell for the moment. I will miss you.

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Don Randall was elected to the federal parliament the same day John Howard became Prime Minister. He was part of a bumper crop that year—the class of '96. Just like the '49ers, who were the backbone of the Menzies government, to be part of the class of '96 is a badge of honour in the Liberal Party, celebrated from John Howard down. Don was very proud to be part of this group. Over the last 20 years, we have witnessed the great national events, the ups and downs of politics, and have each been through the fire more than once. As a result of this shared experience, the bonds of friendship are very strong.

I first met Don when we were seated next to each other on the plane heading to the new members orientation in Canberra in 1996. It was like Harry Potter meeting Ron Weasley on their first day at Hogwarts. We were thrown together—different in some ways. He had heard that some of the South Australian Liberals were less ruggedly individualistic than would have been acceptable in Western Australia. I must have reassured him, because we got along well and have been great friends ever since.

Don became the convener of the class of '96, and over the next 20 years the group would hold an annual dinner. Guest speakers included Laurie Oakes, Pamela Williams, Alan Ramsey, Michelle Grattan, John Howard, Chris Uhlmann and Janet Albrechtsen. It is somewhat ironic that, while Don had a love-hate relationship with the media, he never had any problems securing the very best journalists to speak at his dinners. A difficult relationship with the media is really part of politics. Don understood, as a public figure, he was fair game. But, when his family was dragged into it, it broke his heart. For Don, loyalty was such a big part of his personal code that he could not understand why journalists he had trusted could be so personally nasty. In the end, he felt quite burned by the fourth estate.

Most adjournment speeches in parliament sink without trace. They are recorded in Hansard but otherwise unreported. It is almost unheard of for a Thursday night adjournment speech to grab national attention, but in 1998 Don achieved this rare feat. As a shadow minister, Cheryl Kernot was due to visit his electorate, and Don decided to launch a pre-emptive strike. It was an explosive speech. It did reverberate around the country. But there was a lighter side to the aftermath. It was the day before the Liberal Party's federal convention in Brisbane—the first time we had held this. This was a key set piece for our re-election later that year. The press were out in force and the only pollie they wanted to speak to was Don Randall. Journalists were sent to Brisbane Airport to meet each plane coming in from Canberra. A tall man with silver hair in a suit disembarked, and one journalist thought, 'Got him!' Witnesses describe a journalist with a mike following his target, saying: 'Will you apologise?' 'No.' 'Why won't you apologise?' 'What for?' The journalist hounded this man through the terminal, and he only gave up when the unknown businessman finally shouted, 'I'm not Don Randall!' I should thank the new Speaker—and congratulate him—for providing me with that story.

It is now safe to reveal Don's undisclosed location. While the media were scouring Brisbane Airport for him, Don was actually bunkered down with his family in the Qantas lounge. What followed was like a John le Carre novel. Don was given detailed instructions: a car would arrive; Don and his family would travel to a safe house on the Gold Coast; they would go down such and such a corridor; a hotel room was booked under a false name; tickets were waiting for him to take his family to the theme parks. Don was asked to wear sunglasses and a baseball cap and disappear over the weekend. I do apologise to senior members of the Liberal Party for revealing some of our tradecraft here! A Labor senator spotted him as he was leaving, and Don would often recount how he could see her through the car's rear window frantically dialling her phone to alert the media as his car sped away.

This was a win-win situation. Tess and Elliott got to go to Movie World, and Elliott still remembers getting his Tasmanian Devil cap on that trip when he was only four years old. So, for them, this was great—they got to the theme parks. For John Howard, he had a successful federal convention, and I think for Don Randall, who was a family man and also a team man, he would have regarded that as a pretty good outcome as well. But, in all seriousness, for a new member it was a chastening experience. Not for the last time, the media were camped outside his house. Don apologised for it. He learnt from it. But years after that speech he would say with a big, cheeky grin, 'Well, I was right, wasn't I?'

As previous speakers have said, Don lost the seat of Swan in 1998. About six months after he lost his seat, Don came over to Adelaide, and my wife, Kate, and I took him for the day to the Barossa Valley to show him some of our favourite places, including the Rockford and Greenock Creek cellar doors. He remained a lifelong fan, and we had planned to drink a special bottle of Rockford Basket Press Shiraz the next time we caught up. This will shock members, but, while Don was in every sense a champion of all things Western Australian, in all the time I knew him he did much prefer the big Barossa shirazes over the silky cabernets of the Margaret River. Perhaps, much like Don, faced with a choice between big and bold and refined elegance, Don would choose big and bold every time.

On that trip we were also able to show Don the world famous Lindsay Park Stud, given his interest, but, most importantly, make a pilgrimage to where his father and grandfather had come from in Angaston. We visited Randalls Road, named after his family. That trip was very special to all of us. I know Don really appreciated that, while he had lost his seat, he had not lost his friends.

Don, as previous speakers have said, learnt a lot from his defeat in 1998 and from his time out of parliament. It was time that he was able to reflect, and it did show his depth. It was a real credit to his persistence, grit and determination that Don was able to make himself known in another seat and win that in 2001. There are not many members who have done that in the history of federal parliament. As the Prime Minister said, he and Bob Baldwin were the two MacArthurs who had returned to parliament after losing.

On this side of the House, we all have fond memories of Don's blunt talk in the media, and here are some of my picks for Don's highlights reel. Don would often say things that others could not or would not. During the 2004 election campaign, Don was waiting for John Howard to arrive for a meet and greet with constituents at the Perth Christian Life Centre in Canning. This is Don in his own words:

I think it's quite opportune and quite the decent thing to have the Prime Minister at the centre such as this, being a Christian. I don't know if Mark Latham would feel quite as comfortable here.

The journalist asked:

Why not?

Don Randall said:

Being an agnostic or atheist or whatever he calls himself these days.

Just in case the point was missed, Don repeated that in his introduction of the Prime Minister. That night, a story ran on PM about religion in politics, and it may just have helped inform faith based voters of something that they did not already know about Mark Latham. Marion Maddox, in her book God Under Howard saw this as a very sinister, Karl Rove Republican inspired, sophisticated political tactic, and quite deliberate. In my view, that interpretation is wrong, but what I do think is that Don had good political instincts. He was making a pitch. I do not think Don was especially religious, but he did have those good political instincts, and I think that it certainly did help some voters in that election make a decision about the two leaders.

We will all miss Don on the doors. He was always worth listening to, and he was certainly colourful. He was not one to read bland talking points, but he would make substantial political points in language that people related to. In March 2007, when the polls were predicting a wipe-out for the Liberal Party, Don drew on his horseracing and horse-training experience. This is what he said:

I think of things like the Melbourne Cup where Kiwi came from well back in the field and barnstormed home.

The ABC journalist did point out that 'well back' was right, the only horse running behind Kiwi was lame and that Kiwi only did it once, failed the next year and was retired to the farm. At the very least, thanks to Don, the 7.30 Report that night had footage of Kiwi's great run in the 1983 Melbourne Cup in the middle of its political report. Don also was often proven right. This is Don on Kevin Rudd in 2007:

I liken Mr Rudd to a sparkler. It's all glitz and it's fascinating everybody, but eventually it goes out and you've got a burnt stick in the end.

Compare that with John Howard who's like the eternal flame.

Catching up with colleagues over a bite to eat was important to Don. Over the last 20 years, it has been an important part of our Canberra routine. MPs spend long hours in the house on the hill, so these dinners were an important way of chewing the fat on the issues and sharing the challenges we all face. If it was Don's choice, it was always Italian, and we trusted his judgement better than any restaurant reviewer. Don loved his Italian food, and he had a real knack for finding the best ones in Canberra. His favourites were La Capanna, La Cantina, Italian and Sons, and Santa Lucia. He loved teasing Gino at La Capanna, who was a Canberra institution for 20 years. It will be very hard going back to these places without Don. It will never be the same.

Don could be remembered in so many ways. People have mentioned his role in delivering the Perth to Bunbury highway, his role with Gerard Neesham and the Clontarf Academy, and his role in helping families with autism. I have seen Don in action: speaking Italian at his local small businesses; on the floor of the Western Australian State Council; at the Royal Perth Golf Club, one of his favourite places; and at his blockbuster Matilda Bay fundraisers. When you saw him doing these things, you came to a realisation that Don liked people and loved life.

He was highly effective as a local member, as a campaigner and as a fundraiser, and he had worked incredibly hard to carve out his place in federal parliament. Everything had finally come together for Don, and he was in a great space. Don was a loyal and generous friend. He always had a twinkle in his eye. He was a mentor to young people and colleagues alike. He was also full of surprises. He was a blunt, straight-talking MP, who kept bees and doted on his British bulldogs—his latest one: Bruno Randall. He was an Aussie bloke, a man's man, who was at the same time perceptive and thoughtful with wide interests. He was a larrikin from the Western Australian wheat belt, who was deeply interested and engaged in foreign cultures including Sri Lanka, Italy and Japan.

Don should be remembered as someone who was always up for the fight and was prepared to have a go on behalf of those who had no voice. The fight of his life really was the 2010 campaign against the member for Perth. Don knew this was a serious challenge, and he was relentlessly focused on that campaign. I really welcome the remarks from both the member for Perth and the member for Brand, who are probably the members of the opposition who knew Don the best. As David De Garis said, Don had a very healthy respect for the member for Perth as a campaigner, and he knew that 2010 was the fight of his life.

Don had a big heart, and he was a great person to have in your corner. Above all, he had a strong and loving marriage with Julie for 31 years and raised a wonderful family in Tess and Elliott, whom he was so proud of, whom he loved so much and whom he looked out for. He had so much to live for and so much he was looking forward to. Words cannot describe how much Don will be missed by his friends and colleagues. See you later, mate

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This guy, Don Randall, was a very special bloke, and let those simple words never disappear among the many lesser speeches that we give here. He was a MacArthur. He lived through the finest of political margins, and that made it part of his longevity. When, in 2004, I was elected, I remember looking at the swings and hearing about this Don Randall who had pulled off the nine per cent impossible result. I looked forward to meeting that guy not just for his stories of campaigning but because Cheryl Kernot was my English teacher and, for five years, my debating coach. So, with some equanimity, I wanted to know who this Don Randall was. Of course, I had spent my boarding house years peering through the window, watching the movements of my English teacher and, at other times, wondering about whether I would ever be able to tell her about a life in parliament sitting next to Don Randall.

He was a frank and fearless bloke—with many battles fought and many of them won. He won them for his people—canny as he was Canning. He was obviously the last thing we would want as a minister. Don won far greater battles by not being a minister and not taking on that role. A Praetorian Guard of people have spoken today—mates recalling our moments, never forgetting his style, the people he served and the nation that he aided. Yes, sure, he spoke his mind unapologetically, regardless sometimes of the consequences. That might be somewhat unfashionable in our circles, but today let's celebrate that. Let's mourn that we have one less of the few amongst us still prepared to do it.

This place has its hereditary peers, those of our colleagues who hold down seats that have never been held by the other side of politics—at least not in living memory or in a generation. Don was part of that ephemeral group who fight harder than most of us can imagine to hold a seat to hand incumbency to political parties and yet do not necessarily advance through the ranks quite simply because they have an electorate far too demanding to allow them to do it.

The other thing I loved about Don was that he could never suppress a laugh, even—or particularly—at his own jokes. Sure, he would try, but his shoulders always gave it away. You could see him sniggering away with the largest smile on his face, a little like a child, a bit like playing a violin like no-one was listening or drinking a great red wine with it barely showing.

The last electronic record I had on my phone of being in touch with Don was from back on 24 February. It was the Sri Lankan dinner. We met there. There were, it seemed, almost interminable servings of tea. It was only Don Randall who could lean across to the ambassador and say, 'Can we get this show on the road? The food is getting cold.' The rest of us would not dare say anything like it.

But his approach to nations was little different to his approach to his constituents. He talked to those in his office about the one per cent—the one per cent of people who you focus on because your intervention can truly make a difference. If you look after that one per cent, it is extraordinary how everything else will follow. We devote enormous amounts of time to people for whom the energy we devote does not manifestly change things. But Don never lost the ability to do it. I note the countries that he served—Sri Lanka, Japan, Cuba and Mongolia. These were all countries that needed Don so badly to do what he did best.

His approach, then, was focusing on really making a difference when he devoted energy to something. He was not sycophantic. He told Cuba things straight. At the last dinner that we had together in the dining room, he invited the Cuban ambassador and a coterie. He refused to accept any money for this dinner for 20 people in the parliamentary dining room. In the end, we had to find a way to cancel his transaction and then a number of us paid because we thought it was completely overly generous to fund the entire luncheon himself. But he was determined to do so. During that discussion, there was not a romanticisation of Cuba. During the discussion, he called the ambassador to account when he spoke about property being for sale for the first time. Don said, 'No, it's not.' The Cubans said, 'Yes, it is. Here are all the properties.' He said, 'There's no fluid real estate market in Cuba—no way. You can't show me properties that are for sale in ordinary towns that can liberate a family and allow them to devote their resources into some other area.' He was holding them to account, far from sucking up to them. Coming from the fellow frontier state of Queensland, I really respected that. I would love there to be more people like Don here in Canberra.

Don also had a fascination with health—although, as I am learning, he had a fascination with each of us. I thought I was special! I really thought that Don really, really liked me, and I could not work out why. I did not feel worthy. Don could reel off your resume; it was embarrassing! He would send visitors to this House down to you. He would say, 'You've got to go and meet the member for Bowman. Go and tell him about this issue.' He would reel off your resume and these people would come down thinking you were a cross between Fred Hollows and the Dalai Lama! But now I realise that Don had this incredible regard for a lot of people in this building.

My great regret is that I never ever invited Don to the gym. As the only practising doctor in parliament, I try to keep a sharp eye out for people who I think should come along and swim a couple of laps with me or spend a bit of time in the gym in the morning as a way of building camaraderie but also often to turn a corner in health. I do not think it is right to feel some guilt that I did not do that with Don. He always seemed so happy, I just never raised it with him.

We often talked about fate, and I think that was a great thing. I used to explain to Don that there was a doctor I trained under who said, 'There are three doors in life that we all have to go through one of eventually. One is cancer. One is dementia and Alzheimer's. One is a heart attack. Overwhelmingly, we are going to have to pick one of those three doors.' Don, you found another bloody door and you took us completely by surprise. I guess my great fear up until now has always been of dying alone. In that first moment, that is what I thought had happened to Don. But I guess what I have realised since is that Don did not die alone. I want to talk more about that in a few minutes. In a world where we often call each other fearless advocates for our electorates, you were the metaphor, Don Randall, not just the chief adjective. He did so much to reach out that many people do not know about. I think that is partly a measure of him.

I wonder if the highest honour in politics is to have your surname turned into a verb. I am not sure if people have been 'Kellyed', 'Ewaned' or 'Keenaned', but I know plenty of us here have been 'Randalled'. Bringing wine was usually the first way of being 'Randalled'. I have to confess that I love my wine but, when I head out to a dinner, I am more than likely going to take a bottle I do not care if I never see again. But when you would turn up for dinner, the first thing Randall would do is pull out a 10-year special, open it and fill your class to the top. Then he would fill his glass halfway and then grab a cheap recent red and top it up, as has already been referenced. It was a bizarre practice. He would say old wine had too much alcohol in it and he insisted on blending. It was absolute sacrilege, but Randall got away with it.

We will all never forget exactly where we were when we heard the news about Don. For me, I was at home, sitting with my two kids, and it came up on the autotext on Sky News. It just made no sense at all. Like many of us, we thought it was a typo, or a mix-up. I rushed to the computer: there were just two paragraphs there, but I think I then believed it. This was obviously an incredible tragedy. It is tragic if it happens before your time. It is very tragic if you have an unreconciled relationship, or words that you have never said. But I can pretty comfortably say—without speaking for his most intimate friends and family—that Don really had said it, and felt it, and meant it. I remember then I just turned to my phone, like most of us do in the generation of electronic media, and I found the last SMS that I had sent to Don—I had written it in response to his but I had never pressed 'send'. And I had this sort of strange feeling, like we do when we are in an aircraft flying up out of telco range, that if I quickly sent the message, he might get it. So I said to him: 'This is the message that I typed to you, Don, but I never sent it. It was back in February when we had that wonderful dinner together at the embassy. I am going to miss you, my best mate in parliament, and I am going to give the speeches in your name if ever you need me to.'

This job of politics, of course, is not one with a punch clock, overtime or penalty rates. Sometimes we think that we tread a unique course. But today is not the day for parliamentary exceptionalism. We do a hard job, but there are plenty of people out there who work much harder. They do antisocial hours and, in many cases, they are taken away from their families too often and for too long. I know Don had many other jobs before politics; he would have done those jobs exactly the same way that he did politics. Our job is trying; it is difficult, but far from the hardest one in the game. Don put his heart into everything that he did. Many of us only learned about it at the funeral. I always thought Don was roughly my age—he felt like my generation. I was stunned to discover that he had 15 years' start on me. Evidence only came when I saw these black-and-white photos from the 60s being shown at the funeral. I was just stunned at where he had been and what he had done.

I think that deep down, though none of us ever articulate it, our deepest fear in doing this job is that when we come to the end, we will discover that we do not know our own children. I have two little girls: Isobel has turned three, and Sophie-Claire is seven. My great fear as a parent is that their childhood will escape me completely. That is why what was incredibly inspirational at the funeral were the speeches of Tess and Elliott, and not just because, as two children, they stood up and held it together—and because they did, I think everyone else realised they had to as well. I do not have a son, but Elliott's speech in particular really meant a lot to me. He talked about kicking a football and how he remembers that dad always found time to do it, and how the ball always ended up on the roof of neighbours, and how Don had no problem with knocking on their door and crawling onto the roof—I suspect, Don, that you kicked at least half of those balls yourself! Don also gave up on golf when his son was old enough to be playing regular football—and that was a passion of Don's. But I will never forget the story from Don's big send-off, which was that the boys in Elliott's team said: 'Is that your dad playing goal umpire? Isn't that a little bit beneath a politician?'—well then, you do not know Don Randall. Don, those words from Elliott and from Tess were really special. They inspired everyone who was there. What I walked away with—and I think I said it to Michael Keenan at the time—was that this job of politics never ever thieved you from your children. That was incredibly special. If nothing else, I challenge everyone here: to return to our own kids, to our own families, to those that we love most, and make sure that we do what Don has done—that we look after those people in our lives and make that same pledge to them that I know Don did. A lot of us go through our lives in an emotional gridlock—we are focused on net preference, politically; having superficial conversations; avoidance; sometimes being passive-aggressive; asking the same old questions; blurting things out and then regretting it; not saying other stuff, and regretting that too. That cannot be said about you, Don. Forget the timidity, the diplomacy—you were able to retell it after you had done it, laugh about it and, I am telling you now, from today onwards you will never apologise for it.

We have managed to pull together a few fabulous quotes, as the member for Boothby has also done. I want to run through these very quickly. Back during the climate change debates in 2013, Don Randall said:

I do not think calling the member a clot is unparliamentary.

In 2012:

Saying 'Is anyone home?' is not unparliamentary, but to assist the House I will withdraw.

On an MPI on small business:

Mr Randall: Is 'clown' unparliamentary?

From questions without notice:

Mr Randall: Mr Speaker, I did not know 'Juliar' was unparliamentary. But in this case I will withdraw.

Don Randall on asylum seekers:

Mr Speaker, saying ‘soft on crooks’ is not unparliamentary.

In debate on a West Australian gas explosion:

Mr Randall: It was not unparliamentary, Mr Speaker. The word ‘Gollum’ is not unparliamentary.

During questions without notice:

Mr Randall: I withdraw that statement about being on the bottle, Mr Speaker.

And on the migration amendment:

Mr Randall: It was not an imputation. I am not going to withdraw.

And we have to smile at that resilience and determination.

So Don, I want to remember the times every one of us spent together. They have been articulated today. I will excuse the Russian patriarchal wisdom, but they say—and apologies to Tess—every man must have a son, build a house, and change the world in a tiny way. Hundreds were at Don's send-off simply because they were touched in that way. They referred to 'the Lotto life'. But for Don Randall, it was not the trappings—the Comcars, or souveniring the hot chocolate for his beloved family at the Chairman's Lounge—but it was the privilege of serving, and the bizarre notion of being paid for something you really love doing. This is a profession where we all feel and look a little older than we are. As Tolstoy would have said of Don's life and his impact: you cannot measure the time, but later by the furrow left behind when he is gone. Thanks Don: you have lived that life so precisely that, in the quiet moments, many of us wish we did. To family, to special friends: I know your loss is really raw and insoluble, but at the same time, each of us here is a better person because of the job Don has done for his people and his friends. As we walk past the cartoons in the window of his parliamentary office one more time, I will be expecting Don Randall to be there at the door, gesticulating quickly, 'come in, come in, come in'. He always had a story to tell.

Mate, you are in our hearts forever. You are missed, loved and admired—sometimes misunderstood; that is what is special about you—and always passionate and unerring. Vale the Don.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the evening of Don's passing, I was driving back to Sydney from the funeral of the late member for Hume, Alby Schultz, which was held down in Cootamundra earlier in the day. It is about a five-hour drive back through some fairly winding country roads, and on the way I thought that Alby was the first member of the 43rd Parliament who had actually passed away—the 43rd Parliament being the first I had served in. I thought that, after some time, every single member of that first parliament that I served in will actually pass. I was wondering how long that would be—how many years that would be in the future.

As I was pulling into Goulburn, I heard the news come across the radio that Don had been found dead in his car and had passed earlier that day. It came as an especially great shock for me, because the following week I was actually scheduled to go on a parliamentary delegation with Don to India. This was a trip that had been planned for several months, and Don and I had got together several times and had talked about it—how excited we both were about going on that trip. I can say, with all honesty, I could not think of a better bloke to go away with, to travel with. With the greatest respect to all my colleagues, if I could have hand-picked one member of this parliament to travel with, it would have been Don Randall, for his sense of humour, his love of life. It would have been a fantastic trip.

But we all know about Don's sometimes wicked sense of humour. In the window to his office, which is on the way to the government party room, I know many times when, in the first term of parliament when I was in opposition with Don, Don would have great pleasure going through the pages of the local papers and picking out the most humorous political cartoon he could find attacking the then Labor government of the day. You could almost see Don laughing as he would stick that cartoon up in his window, knowing that every single member of the government, as they filed and trudged their way down to the party room, had to look into Don's window or turn away for fright of what cartoon Don would have put up.

Don also loved his golf, and in our last parliamentary sitting week before the winter recess Don was actually sitting in the chair where you are today, Deputy Speaker, and we were swapping chair duties, and I asked him, 'How was your golf on the weekend?' He said, 'I had 32 points, a couple of bad bounces, a few putts slipped out, could have been anything.' Don actually kept a set of clubs down there in his office, and there was many a time that I would wander down to have a bit of chat with him, and I would pull his putter out and we would have a few putts on the carpet and discuss the wonderful game of golf that it was. In fact, it was only a few weeks ago that Don, the members for Reid, Macarthur, Forde and Swan, and I enjoyed a game at Royal Canberra. It was a fantastic day—something I wish I could have done more of with Don.

I did have the wonderful opportunity to travel across to Perth for Don's funeral. I would like to remark what wonderful speeches Don's kids, Tess and Elliott, made. Don would have been very proud of them. At the funeral grounds where Don was buried and where they held that service, there were the most beautiful grounds. It actually reminded me of a golf course with a beautiful lake, and I am sure, if Don had been there at his own funeral, he would have wanted to say, 'Let's throw a few golf balls down and let's punch a couple of nine irons across the lake.' It actually reminded me of Augusta National with the rolling grass, the flowers, the lakes and the water. I am sure Don will be very much at peace there.

There is a bit of a myth that is often spread out there in our society that members of the government, and politicians in general, never really had much life experience before they came into parliament. Don was a living example to prove that wrong. He was someone who had a background as a jackaroo, someone who was a teacher, someone who was a horse trainer—not the sport of kings, the gallopers, but harness racing; he actually trained harness racers. He was a rodeo rider, a beekeeper and many more things. He had a very diverse career before he came into parliament. I think that is one of the things that made him such a great parliamentarian.

Ultimately, Don's untimely passing reminds us all that life is short. We wake up every morning and we should kiss the ground, put aside our petty squabbles and seize the moment of every day to live life to the fullest. Don never gave a final speech in this parliament, but if he had he would have rallied against political correctness. I have looked back to Don's maiden speech to think of some of the phrases that Don would have said if he had had the opportunity of a final speech. I would like to quote a few of those paragraphs from his maiden speech, which I think are fitting. These are Don's words from his maiden speech back in the same chamber on 6 May 1996:

I look forward to seeing the decline of the welfare state mentality, with a greater emphasis on hand-up instead of handout … I am passionate and optimistic about the coalition's policies for the development of small business and the opportunities they will provide in terms of the economy, employment, and individual growth and determination—a sense of pride which has been hindered for so long.

…   …   …

It is not government's responsibility to prop up businesses with funding but rather to guide them towards standing up for themselves, being productive and efficient, and requiring minimum assistance.

…   …   …

Australia is a land of opportunity. We are a nation where people who are willing to make sacrifices can succeed and where people can take the opportunity to make their own luck.

He said:

Historically, Australians have proved they can face and conquer economic and social challenges.

…   …   …

I believe Australians still have this spirit and the desire to achieve … We are making some changes because we want to properly deliver the services for which they are paying. The reason for these changes is as important to the people of Australia as it is to the government which makes them: to stop overspending on the things we do not have the money to pay for, and to implement long-term goals, not short-term fixes.

Don also said, which I think would also be part of his final speech if he were able to make it:

Part of the Liberal Party's platform states a belief in the innate worth of the individual and the need to encourage initiative and personal responsibility. The freedoms of the individual must be protected, and all people should have the opportunity to advance to their full potential. …

Finally, the worst thing that could happen to Australians is if they begin to believe, to quote the former Prime Minister, that 'this is as good as it gets'. Very rarely do we reach that point where there is no more to strive for, that all has been achieved.

Don strived to make this country a better place and he succeeded. Ultimately, that is the job of us all: to hand this country on to future generations in a better condition and with more opportunities than when we inherited it. In that respect, Don succeeded. May he rest in peace.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I always thought that Don was his second name, because every time you heard someone refer to him it was, 'Bloody Don Randall!' Every time, you heard something like: 'What happened here?' 'Bloody Don Randall.' Unlike a lot of other speakers, we were not close. It was one of those things that happened in the 43rd Parliament; we never ended up at the same dinner parties and we never ended up at the same discussions. But we did share a great love of Johnny Cash.

I also share his commitment to, and I want his family to understand this, and will continue his work on the inclusiveness of education, where his great thing was compassion around autism. I believe that the work we can do in relation to the inclusiveness of Down syndrome children going into everyday schools is something which will benefit the child, because if they go into to a special school then they sink to the lowest level. What I like to see, when it comes to in the inclusiveness of people in everyday schools, is what they do to enrich our school environment, what they do to enrich our school community and what they do to add to what our children experience and what their education should be, in that things are not always that easy and parents do have different challenges. I want them to know that we have that in common and that I will always be working in that space.

A lot of words have been spoken about Don Randall and his love of his staff. Those of us here who have succeeded owe a great deal to our staff. Everyone who works for me is familiar with the refrain that I use: 'I hate to say it's all about me, but it's all about me. The more that you can do to make me look good, the better off we all are.' I am very lucky that I had two staff taken on, one by the Prime Minister himself and one by the federal secretariat—both came through. As Don did, I think we all wish for our good staff to make sure that they do go on and do things. Equally, you have to be very honest with your staff as to where their performance actually is. Sometimes those conversations are not easy. The thing I know about Don Randall is that he was never afraid of having a conversation.

My words, however, in relation to the passing of Don Randall, are for his family. This job is never easy. This job takes us a long way away from home for long periods of time. I am from North Queensland and Don was from Western Australia. We travel similar distances, but I do not know how anyone from Western Australia can do this job for a long time. It is a killer: the amount of time that they have to do away from their families. Seeing the age of his children now and having him being in there since 1996, they have grown up with this. I know that is the only life that they know, but you know it is not natural to see your father go for that long. I am very lucky that my two girls went through and were pretty much finished school before I got into this caper. But with my son, it will always be my greatest fear that he has never really had his dad at home. If Don can be that sort of example to me as to the amount of time you spend in cherishing your family, then know again that his legacy will live on.

I just want your family to know, Don, and I want his kids to understand that they can be very proud of their dad. He was liked and respected inside this place across both sides of the chamber. Paul Keating once said that very few people get to choose their time of exit in this place and the manner in which they do. It is a very tough gig. It was not his way of going and it was not his choice. To die in the service of your electorate is a bad way to go. You could think of a lot of other ways you would like to do it. But you cannot change it.

I would just like to close with the words of his favourite singer, Johnny Cash. I can just imagine Don Randall now:

Like that lucky old sun, give me nothing to do but roll around Heaven all day.

Vale, Don Randall.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in this condolence motion to a very good friend of this whole parliament. Obviously, to his constituency he will be a great loss. Can I just say firstly to his wife, Julie, and his two children, Tess and Elliott, I extend on behalf of my own family—and I think I should say also on behalf of the constituency of Maranoa—our deepest condolences on the loss of your father and your husband.

Don, coming from Western Australia, and myself, coming from Western Queensland, both know the tyranny of distance to come to this place. We know how it taxes your family and we know it taxes yourself as a human being. But Don, with his passion, was always there for his constituency. I think in many cases, probably many in this place, occasionally your family come second. But knowing Don as I did, I think I learnt more today in this place from people who have spoken so passionately and in a way intimately about the Don Randall that they knew, I have learnt a lot more about him myself.

Don had a similar background to myself, growing up in a rural town—a rural background. In fact, he had a rural upbringing similar to my own. Had I known that he was pretty handy on a horse and in fact liked the odd rodeo, I would have made sure that he could have come out to my constituency in Western Queensland. He would have fitted in and would have loved some of the outback of my electorate. Knowing also about his love of tea and his relationship with Sri Lanka and the wonderful teas that we get from that part of the world, particularly Sri Lanka—once upon a time we called it Ceylon, and Ceylon tea was famous, obviously—I would love to have seen him in the outback of my electorate sitting down not with the Don Randall teapot making tea but with me, boiling up with my quart pot. I think I could have shown him real bush tea with a little flavour of eucalyptus smoke. That did not happen, but I learnt so much more about Don today that I did not know when he was in this place.

I would like to mention Don's work not only in this place but for charitable organisations, for autism and also for building relationships. This is an important part of our work that often is not necessarily appreciated or acknowledged: building relationships with countries in our region and in other parts of the world. An important part of our job—not the most important but an important part—is building on the relationships that have been established over many years with our diplomatic corps here in Canberra. I know that he recently established the friendship group with Cuba, which, of course, is now coming into the fold, with the United States recognising it. Once again, there was Don Randall, out there early in the piece, understanding that the most important thing you can do to help countries like Cuba that want to participate in the broader world is by recognising that we in our small way here in Australia can also build on the work of other countries—in this case the United States. The fact that a diplomatic post has been established here in Canberra also demonstrates our willingness as a country to cooperate and build that relationship.

Don did work like that, particularly with Sri Lanka. We all know the troubles that the Sri Lankans have been through, particularly in the north of Sri Lanka. He had quite a constituency of Sri Lankans in his own electorate. He made them feel part of Australia. We as Australians had established a relationship, but he also did his bit to reinforce that at a diplomatic level with the ambassador here in Canberra.

Don was also on the Speaker's panel. I, as the Deputy Speaker, and my office always found him cooperative, always wanting to do more. He was always willing to swap with someone else on the panel if they needed to because of another commitment in this place, such as a committee hearing, or if they were unable, perhaps, to be on duty on a particular day. Don was always there for the parliament. He was there for his other colleagues. I want to acknowledge the great work that he did as a member of the Speaker's panel and as a Deputy Speaker in this place.

He was also on the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade and served on the committee's Trade Subcommittee. We have been conducting an inquiry into trade and investment opportunities into the Middle East. I know that in those public hearings Don was always there, passionate about the trade and investment opportunities that his state of Western Australia could benefit from in building those relationships and understanding where the opportunities may be not only for Australia but, very importantly, for Western Australia. Whilst all of us who come to this place have our passion for our own constituency and our own home states—that is almost a given—Don was never diminished in his desire and his passion for Western Australia, for his own constituency in Western Australia and for the trade and investment opportunities that we all hope will continue to develop and grow over the years ahead, particularly if we can establish a trade agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council.

In fact, Don was to be a delegate, were a committee visit to the Middle East to be enabled. I know he would have loved to have gone. Sadly, now that he has passed away, that place will be filled by someone else, but I know that whoever fills his place on that committee will always reflect on the great work that Don had done and the passion he had for his work as a member for his constituency, for Western Australia and, importantly, for the people of Australia.

I say in conclusion that, when somebody dies in office, it affects all of us in this place. It reminds us all of our own mortality and to make sure that we keep focused not only on the work that we have to do for our constituencies, but on our own families. As many have said in this place, let us make sure that we do not forget some of the things to do with our own families from time to time, because our own mortality is something that in many ways we have no control over. The fact that Don has, sadly, passed away so suddenly is a great shock to all of us and reminds us all of our own mortality.

I say once again to his wife, Julie, and to his two children, Tess and Elliott: I offer you my condolences and, I know, the condolences of this House. Our thoughts and prayers will be with you in the days and months ahead. I thank the House.

Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great sadness that I join my many parliamentary colleagues in this condolence motion for Don Randall. It is still hard to believe that Don Randall is no longer here with us. His death, of course, came as a terrible shock. A beautiful white rose sits in the place, just over here, of a great member of parliament, a fearless warrior and a wonderful family man. To Julie, Tess and Elliott, to other family members, to his friends, to his staff, to his Liberal and Canberra families and to the people of Canning, I offer my sincere condolences. You have lost a great husband, father, brother, friend and advocate.

To Julie, Tess and Elliott in particular, I too have sat in the gallery listening to a condolence motion—for my mother, Ann, a Victorian MP who, like Don, died far too young. As tough as it is, I know that, like for me, these tributes will give you great comfort in the days, months and years ahead. It was today a great pleasure to meet Julie, Tess and Elliott for the first time when we gathered for afternoon tea. It is very hard to imagine what they are enduring at the moment; but, as I say, I know that the incredible tributes we have heard in this place today will give them so much comfort at these very difficult times.

I regret that I did not get to know Don as well as others in this place, yet in a funny sort of way he became my spiritual guide during my 2013 election campaign. My campaign director was Jocelen Griffiths, who worked with Don and for Don for six years up until the end of 2010. The many lessons that Don taught Jocelen about winning a marginal seat from Labor Jocelen was able to pass on to me. This was underpinned by the philosophy that every community matters. In fact, at one stage before the 2013 election Don called me to wish me luck and to give me some advice. The most important message was, 'Doorknock your heart out,' and that I did.

We have heard about Don's legendary doorknocking efforts and suggestions that a restraining order would have to be taken out because he doorknocked so many homes over so many years and we heard earlier today in this condolence motion the Treasurer speaking about his times hitting the hustings with Don doorknocking. Before the election I took one of Don's great friends, the then shadow minister Julie Bishop, doorknocking in suburban Highton in Geelong with the media in tow, which is always a little daunting. I have to say for the record that I am pretty sure that the member for Curtin well and truly met Don Randall's expectations, unlike the Treasurer, who I feel had a bit of difficulty converting a few votes, from what we've heard today! Julie was able to convert more than a few swinging voters.

There was no better campaigner than Don Randal. Every single vote mattered. That is because every single person in Canning mattered. He put community first and politics second. Whether it be his tireless support for those with autism, his fight for young Indigenous men through the Clontarf Foundation or Australia's relationship with Cuba or Sri Lanka, Don Randall never did anything by halves. The Clontarf Foundation, for instance, started with 25 boys in the year 2000. It now looks after some 3,700 boys in 70 schools across Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. This is a great testament to the man that Don was.

Don had great compassion, and I know Don shared the importance of speaking often about governing with compassion. As a special needs teacher for some 20 years, he had an extraordinary ability to empathise with the plight of others. In his first speech as the member for Canning he vowed to work for the most vulnerable. He said:

Nothing upsets me more than to see good, decent breadwinners working long and extensive hours to provide a better quality of life and opportunities for their children and to sadly observe that they are making little headway. For those who genuinely want to work to improve their lot, I support measures that will ensure that they get to keep more of the money that they earn.

We have heard many stories about Don today, and I certainly do agree that he was a lovable rogue, a scallywag, sometimes even a ratbag; but, even when he spoke out in his direct and often controversial way, he had a twinkle in his eye. He did like to make mischief, but this was also underpinned by a great conviction in what he believed to be right and just, fair and equitable.

He was also famous, as we heard at his funeral, for his one-liners, and one of my favourites went along these lines. Don said: 'I liken Mr Rudd to a sparkler: it's all glitz and it's fascinating everybody, but eventually it goes out and you've got a burnt stick in the end. But compare that with John Howard. He's like the eternal flame: steady, constant and always there doing the right job.'

I do regret not getting to know Don better than I did know him. He had many more lessons to share, many more stories to tell and more great advice to give. He was gutsy, and I really love that about Don. He was brave. He was courageous. It did get him into trouble, but I truly admired him for his courage. Canning and Corangamite are not dissimilar in their characteristics: large and diverse electorates made up of farming and coastal communities, sprawling suburbs and many country towns. If I can do half the job that Don did at consolidating a marginal seat, winning people's respect and fighting for his electorate, I will be very proud.

It has been very moving hearing the wonderful contributions of so many members in this place today—including some of Don's closest friends, particularly the foreign minister; the member for Paterson, who did an amazing job; the member for Hasluck; the member for Warringah; and the member for Swan.

Don reminds us once again that life is too short, and in Don's case it was way too short. In this place we will miss him dearly. Vale Don Randall.

Fiona Scott (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with a lot of sadness that I rise today to talk about my good friend Don Randall. I will keep my condolences quite short today because, really, I have only had the pleasure of two years with Don, here in this place. But in that short time I feel I got to know him quite well.

Don was a man who cared deeply about his family and passionately about his community; he cared for his colleagues and he loved the Liberal Party. He did not care much about the glitz and glamour of Canberra or about the protocols or pomp and ceremony. He was a man who cared about his mates and mentoring everyone around him.

As a new member in this place, I have to say, you knew when Don took you under his wing; you knew when Don really thought it was worth investing in you. I remember one of those first meetings with Don. I was sitting in Bob Baldwin's office after a spectacular meal that Bob had prepared and there was some spectacular sushi. I think it was salmon and one of Bob's—no, I think it was one of his spearfish and wonderful tuna that he had caught himself. We started talking about FoFA because it was on the agenda at that time or was just starting to come on the agenda. Everyone was talking about it in the sense of the bankers and what have you. For some reason—maybe I had had a glass of wine and a bit of Dutch courage—I started talking about it from the context of the self-funded retirees and the pensioners in my community and how this legislation, as it stood, was going to hurt people who were not necessarily foreseen at the get-go.

There was another young and would-be minister at this table and we were robustly debating it—me from the perspective of a constituent, and the soon-to-be minister discussing it from the perspective of the bankers and merchant banker land. It was quite a robust conversation, and Don was sitting back and enjoying his glass of wine. It was at the end of this that Don turned around and said to my now fiancee, 'The conversation tonight gives me faith in the class of 2013 that they actually do get it, that it is about the people we represent.'

I always feel blessed by that and feel blessed that it was at that dinner that I met my fiance. Aaron and Don struck up a very good relationship and a good mateship. In fact, Aaron thinks of Don as a second father. The last week Don was in parliament Aaron came in here—I would go looking for my fiance and he would be down in Don's office; every single night he would be down in Don's office, chatting to Don. Don's thoughts were always to the mentoring and stewardship of his colleagues. He was so selfless, in so many ways.

I remember Don quite often coming into my office. His stewardship was not just to us members. He would come down and sit and talk with my staff and have a chat to see how they were going. We heard today about the staff who worked for Don. But his mentoring actually went further, and I thank him very much for the words of advice that he gave my staff.

Don is such a loss to our parliament, but his legacy will live on. We have all learnt so much from him. For me, what I have learnt, in my two years here, from Don is that at the end of the day my job is to represent my community and to fight hard for the people I represent. That is a wonderful lesson from a man and it is a wonderful blessing that we have. Standing here today, as the member for Lindsay, it is an honour. To Don: thank you. Vale Don.

Wyatt Roy (Longman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join with my colleagues in saying goodbye to our mate Don. When I think of Don I think of somebody who was completely fearless. He lived his life liberated from the fear that would hold so many of us back. He was completely resolute in the convictions he held. Don was never intimidated. He often accepted very significant personal political cost to defend the views he held in the face of very significant adversity.

In a building where, too often, people—sadly—make a political calculation about almost every word they utter to you, Don never suffered that character flaw. He was completely comfortable in his own skin. While his mouth would often get him into trouble and his tough persona was out there for everyone to see, that tough exterior would mask a heart that was so much bigger. As many of our colleagues have recounted, Don was one of the most generous people you could ever meet. He brought to this place—a place that is often stale and partisan and overtly political—a real sense of life and passion. A lesson that he passes onto all of us is that we should live every day as if it were our last, and no-one could say about Don that he did not enjoy life. He enjoyed every aspect of life: his work, his family and his mates.

Without going into those personal stories, I will miss the ability to walk into his office. When you wanted to put the day-to-day politics and hypocrisy that often infests this building aside, you could go into Don's office and have an honest chat about what you thought of the world and what you thought of politics and have no fear that it would go any further.

Ultimately, the best thing Don did was make us laugh. He could make us laugh in the absolute darkest of political times and bring that life and passion back to the discussion. I will miss Don for many reasons but, above all else, I will miss those discussions, just the two of us, in his office. If there is any justice in this world and in the next, when Don made his journey upstairs there would have been a very good glass of red and a very big cigar sitting there waiting for him. To Julie, Tess and Elliott: all of us in this place grieve with you. We share your pain and we share your sense of loss. If there is anything you need, you only have to call. Don, mate, you will be missed but you will never be forgotten. Rest in peace.

Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last month the Australian parliament lost a good man—there is no doubt about that—whom I was proud to call a friend and colleague. Today we stand here to acknowledge the achievements of Don Randall and the great loss to his loved ones—his wife, Julie; his daughter, Tess; his son, Elliott; and others in his extended family—and to reflect on the impact that Don had on us all. When we left the House for the winter break, there were 150 of us. Sadly, we return with 149—and Don is the one who is missing. Don served the parliament for 20 years. Before that, he was a city councillor. It is clear from his record that he was devoted to the wellbeing of his community. Don always stood up for his constituents, even if in some instances it meant taking opposite views to those held by his colleagues. It was his passion and dedication that made him a powerful local member. Our electorates may have been on opposite sides of the country, but I can feel the impact of Don Randall from my base in Queensland. He was such a loyal and honest member, and he was someone whom other members would look to for advice.

But there is more to Don Randall than a political warrior. He was admired by both sides of this House, which is very important. He had an extremely varied and interesting career before entering public life—horse training and teaching. He taught in special needs and in a mainstream school. He was listened to and he was heard. He had a keen interest in flowers, bee keeping, cigar smoking and red wine drinking, especially shiraz. He took in the finer parts of life. Only last year we went on a delegation to look at the free trade agreements with Japan and Korea. That meant talking to the parliaments of those two countries. Don was the leader of that delegation and he handled the situation so well. They had not signed the agreement at that stage, but they went on to sign a week after we left. That was thanks to Don and the delegation and the efforts they put into the free trade agreement. I recall Don's happiness at the end of the day in Japan and Korea. He would sit at the bar and have a scotch and a cigar. He loved that. He also loved having raw fish on the menu. I didn't fancy raw fish, and Don would continually rib me about that even after we got back home. He enjoyed his shiraz, cigars and cigarettes at the bar.

Don will be sorely missed by all who knew him. He was a good man, an effective member of parliament and a respected member of his community. He was my colleague and my friend. Vale Don. We will miss you a lot, mate. See you later. Bye.

John Cobb (Calare, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is one thing to have condolences for past members but when it is one of your current colleagues it is a shock to the system. Don Randall, Tony Smith, Bob Baldwin, Russell Broadbent Luke Hartsuyker and I were all members of the class of 2001. Don, Bob and Russell had all been members of parliament prior to that; they had lost their seats but they came back that year. It was the year of the comeback. I have heard a lot said today about what a great campaigner Don was and how tough, invigorated and totally fearless he was about making his point—as I am sure he did for Swan before he became the member for Canning. One thing about Don which I absolutely admired—and the Prime Minister mentioned it this morning—was his disdain for political correctness. I believe political correctness has got to the point where it is strangling our country to death. No-one could ever accuse Don of having being politically correct. The first time I am ever accused of being overly politically correct I hope that you, Kenny, will hit me over the head and say, 'Remember Don!'

You can be here a long time with somebody—and we were here a long time—but I would not claim to be Don's best mate or as close to him as a lot of people. I would say Kenny spent more time with him, certainly in the last three or four years, than I did, but in the years that we were in opposition, and I was a shadow minister for nearly all that time, I did get to know Don. I think various people have spoken today about all of the things he did. The PM mentioned a few things that I was not aware he had done. But all of them were down-to-earth; none of them were intellectual. The same guy, actually, was a little intellectual—probably more than he wanted to be.

I found that Don's knowledge of, and his care about, his electorate was quite amazing. He did not have a huge rural electorate but he certainly had a rural one. People have mentioned beef and one thing or another, but the problems he had regarding agriculture surrounded the fruit growers more than anything. He had problems with fruit fly, and the fact that one of the great chemicals used all around Australia on fruit fly was being banned was, I think, more out of political correctness than there being anything wrong with it. I got to know Don well because we went to see his orchardists quite a lot. He had some amazing, well-informed young guys there, and I am sure they are still there and still well informed. The position that Don was putting forward on their behalf was so correct. This stuff was not actually doing anyone any harm. There was a one in 500 million chance that if people ate enough of something—if they stuffed themselves 24/7 for 10 years straight—at some stage they might come to some harm. Don correctly saw its banning as the problem it was, and these guys very definitely did. It took away their ability to export. It hurt them badly. No minister then or since has dealt with this as it should be dealt with.

I do not want to say a lot more, except that Don was a man I respected; and he was a man I liked because, like me, he really hated political correctness. If ever anyone acted out what they thought, Don did. The people of Canning, who got to know him so well over the 14 years that he was their member, will never forget that they had a non-politically correct, incredible champion.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I recall the shock that I got when James Massola texted me and said, 'What's this about the rumour that Don Randall has passed away?' At first I was not sure if it was a joke. I called him up and said, 'What is this?' Then he said that this was the rumour that he had heard. I remember being really shocked and really hopeful that it was incorrect. Then, unfortunately, as events came to pass, we found that, in fact, it was correct. It is something that shook me quite a lot, I have to say.

In talking about Don's career, there was some discussion about the importance of the Halls Head booth in 2001. This is something that I had not realised. There is a certain irony there for me personally and certainly a connection. I had just moved to Australia and guess which booth I voted in at the 2001 election? It was Halls Head. So it is quite staggering that there is a certain synergy there.

Don was a character who was often misunderstood. Certainly, I have to say that when I first came to this place I misunderstood him. He came across as quite gruff. He spoke his mind. You did not have a real sense of the caring nature that was actually inside the man. It is something that, from a personal perspective, I have to admit, took me a little while to develop. The first time I got some inkling of both Don's personal concern for people—his caring nature—and how well connected and how well respected he was politically was when I had my first preselection hassle. Don was tasked with the job to speak to state counsellors to see their views on things. He phoned me and said, 'I have to say, there's an awful lot of support for you with state council.' We had quite a lengthy discussion. It was very clear that he had a very significant personal empathy. I think that part of that, obviously, was Don's very caring nature, but also part of it was that Don had a knowledge of what I went through, certainly, in losing the seat of Swan in 1998. He would know the gut-wrenching feeling that you get with that sort of thing—I guess, a level of being irrelevant to a certain extent. Don was very personally supportive at that time, and that is when I first started getting an inkling of Don's caring nature.

There has been a lot of discussion about Don's career, but I would like to talk a bit more about Don the man. The next area where I got a very clear understanding of Don's personal caring for people was when my wife left in July. I would like to think that I presented a face that showed I was not really adversely affected at all, but family for me, like for Don, is something that is critical and it was something that really did shake me. The marriage was one thing, but the devastation of the smashing of the family was something that hit me very hard, and I tried not to let that show. But Don, being incredibly empathetic, obviously perceived the level of my distress as far as that smashing of the family was concerned. He was very personally supportive at that time and was always ready to speak to me and always asking how I was going. He would not just take, 'Oh, yeah; it's all good'; he really wanted to know.

The next time I got that feeling was during the events of February this year, when I went on the infamous 7.30 program and made certain statements. It feels very lonely when you have openly criticised your leader and were the first person to come out on it. It was very hard, and I was in turmoil. Don obviously realised I would be feeling very nervous. He was the first person to call me to see how I was going. He said, 'You spoke very well', et cetera—once again, someone who had very clear empathy for people and realised what they were going through, showing his caring nature.

The member for Calare was talking about political correctness. The problem in this place is that you cannot tell most of the really good, interesting stories about Don here, because of political correctness. So I feel somewhat hamstrung given some of those personal stories that I cannot relate in order to show just what a character Don was.

Much has been said about Don fighting for what he believed in. I have certainly seen many instances of that, as have the other members on our side of the House. They have seen Don in the party room, making very certain that people knew his view if we were doing things incorrectly. I very much respect that. It takes a lot of guts to stand up and say things that people do no want to hear and that will not necessarily be popular but that need to be said. Don is one of the people in this place who genuinely would stand up and be counted for what he believed in. I have an enormous amount of admiration for Don in that regard. I know it is not easy to do, yet Don would do it consistently.

The member for Brand also spoke of Don's love for his Falcon XR6. I have to correct the member for Brand here, and I know this is pedantic: it was an XR6 Turbo. The reason I am being pedantic is that I got an XR6 Turbo in 2005 and Don came to me and said, 'How did you manage to get that?'—because it was not on the list at the time. I said to Don, 'I got the manual version, and that actually comes in under the price threshold'. So, I take it from what the member for Brand, as the Special Minister of State, was saying that Don went to him and said, 'Hey, I want this car on my list.' I can also really empathise with Don for not wanting to put magnetic plates on the side of his car. I have to admit that I drive a little bit too fast, so I would have to be very careful about having magnetic plates on the side of my car to readily identify me when I am driving a little bit too quickly. So, similar to Don, I do not drive with magnetic plates on the side of my car.

Don spoke to me about some of his political career, and one of the things he said was that he learned from his experience with Swan, where he lost that election in 1998. He said he realised how much he loved the job here and that he would do anything to get back and would never forget what it was like to lose it and that, in effect, he would never take things for granted again. That is why he worked so incredibly hard for his electorate. Part of it obviously was the fact that he cared so much for people. But part of it was that he was determined never to lose that seat again. I spoke to him about his doorknocking. He was an awesome campaigner. Don said to me: 'Doorknocking's not something I love. It's hard work, but it's something I do. It's very valuable, because you learn a lot about what people are thinking.' That is something that really characterised Don. He had a very clear view of what his electorate was saying and thinking, which is why he knew that things like asylum seeker policy had to change and why he so strongly defended the policy we took to the last election despite the fact that a whole lot of people, particularly in the media, were saying how uncaring it was.

One of the things I certainly remember about Don was when he would make interjections during question time and get ejected under 94(a). Just about every time, he would throw his hands up and say: 'Who, me? I'm completely innocent!' Yet I hear from others that he probably got off lightly, because there were probably a lot of times when he should have been thrown out but was not. Don, calling things the way he saw them, obviously felt very passionately about this place, which is why he fought so hard, even in that context, to make sure his views were known.

Another thing I remember about Don is his sense of humour. You could always tell when Don was going to come up with something, because you would see that devilish look in his eyes and that slightly cheeky half-smile he would give before launching into something—and, as I said, very often politically incorrect; I wish I could relate some of the stories, but unfortunately in this place I cannot. All I have to say is; Don, I will really miss you. Don and I flew together an awful lot, because Don't favourite seat was the aisle seat in row one, and mine was the window seat, so we sat together and spent a lot of time together. I still find it hard to think that when I fly in future I will not be sitting next to Don. Vale, Don. I will miss you.

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with a heavy heart that I rise to speak on the condolence motion for Don Randall. At 62, Don passed away far too soon. I remember receiving a text message from my office, when I was leaving a meeting, to hear the terrible news of his passing, and I remember sobbing uncontrollably in my car.

Don was one of those incredible people. He was in the class of 1996. He was cheeky, he was honest, he was outrageous, but he was a dear friend. When Don gave you advice, you trusted him wholeheartedly. You could talk to him about anything at all and you knew that it just stayed there. He was an incredibly politically astute person, and many people have spoken today about his endless doorknocking and how he had this incredible pipeline to the heart and soul of his electorate. I inherited a couple of very slow horses when I married my husband, Rob, some eight years ago. I was constantly lamenting at how much money they would cost, and I know that Don gave me some very good advice on what to do and to be patient. He knew quite a lot about the horseracing industry because of his background.

There is so much to Don that many people did not see—the way that he would laugh, the way that he would joke. A member earlier spoke about that cheeky grin that he would get on his face when he was about to say something that he knew was going to be absolutely outrageous. He was an absolute joy to be around. He had a great love of Italian food and all things Italian, and he spoke Italian quite well. He was so proud of his daughter, Tess, and her Italian-speaking ability. He spoke very often to me about his trips to Italy and how he was intending to visit, again and again. He loved every Italian restaurant in Canberra, and I am sure that those of us who were his friends know all those restaurants off by heart. He knew the owners' names. His great love of wine and great love of all things Italian were there for everyone to see. Going out to dinner with Don was an adventure—he knew what to order; he took charge. He was one of those people that everyone trusted wholeheartedly to do the ordering, and he relished every moment of going out and entertaining. He loved Cuban cigars. Many people today have spoken about his great love of socialising and having a good time. He cherished every single moment of his life that he was here and he enjoyed every single aspect of it.

I was absolutely honoured to be able to attend his memorial service. His family and friends, his staff and hundreds of people from the community attended. He was much loved by all of the representatives that were there from Canning. His daughter, Tess, and his son spoke beautifully. Don, you would have been so proud of them. I know that you were incredibly proud of your children and your family. I would hear about Tess's Italian lessons all the time. I would hear about Elliott's football prowess. I know that you enjoyed your father-son times together, and they are the most precious things that you can have with your children.

As far as Don the international diplomat went, he was a passionate advocate for many countries. He was chair of the Australian-Sri Lankan parliamentary friendship group. He was very passionate about his latest role, which was the chair of the Australian-Cuban parliamentary friendship group. He was chair of the Australian-Japan parliamentary friendship group and was also on the Australian-Italian parliamentary friendship group. I was very pleased that I had the opportunity to dine with him and Tess at the last sitting of parliament at the Italian ambassador's. We had a wonderful evening and we shared some very good times that night, and I will treasure and remember them forever. He enjoyed visiting Cuba recently, and the Cuban ambassador was able to attend his service. He was an absolutely fearless advocate that a greater relationship be formed between Australia and Cuba, and I am sure that he would have done everything in his power if he were here today to make sure that those trade embargoes came off a lot quicker.

When he was part of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, which I chair, we would have visitors from all over the world visit us. We would have speakers, we would have experts in defence, we would have ambassadors who were returning to Australia or we would have ambassadors from any of the diplomatic communities that would come and talk to us. Don was not very diplomatic at all sometimes when it came to question time—he would just get straight to the crux of the problem. Whether he was talking to the visiting Turkish speaker or whether he was taking to a defence expert, there was no political correctness; Don called it the way it was. He did not mince his words or opinions, and for that I must say that I always admired him.

I will miss you very much, Don. I will miss going out on our regular Tuesday lunches, I will miss your smile, I will miss your compassion and I will miss your advice on how to get closer to my electorate. You had so many campaigning tips, even for someone like me, who had been here for a very long time, and the advice you gave me, Don, was always true and honest. You were taken from us far too soon and you will never be forgotten. You will always be remembered and you will always be in our hearts. I pay tribute to your wonderful family. I pay tribute to Tess and Elliott, your beautiful children, and to Julie. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and his wonderful staff at this time. Vale, Don.

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk on the motion of condolence moved by the Prime Minister in relation to the death of Donald James Randall. Don Randall's death came as a shock to me. He was such a sharp and strong personality; he filled this place with wit and with passion. The hole his death has left in many of our hearts, particularly on this side of the House, will be there for quite a long time.

As a new member, elected in 2013, I got to know Don through him reaching out to me. I sat near him in the coalition party room and he invited me out to a few functions. I went out to dinner with him a couple of times in Kingston. In the last sitting week before the winter break I was supposed to catch up with him for dinner, but the backbench committee on small business had something else on with the Prime Minister. We said to each other, 'Well, we'll catch up next time we're down here after the winter break.' I think that is why, when his death occurred on 21 July, it was such a shock. I had thought, 'We'll get to catch up next time,' but it was not to be. It was a terrible shock at the time.

In the first six months of my being here, he invited me along to the Sri Lankan High Commission to have dinner with the high commissioner. I like to have the chance to go out with different people; I did not know Don so well. I thought, 'That would be great. I'll come along to dinner with him.' I and a couple of other members got to the high commissioner's residence early and we had the chance to sit down and chat before Don arrived. Don turned up and came into the room and said, 'Right, let's get moving. We're hungry; we want to eat. We haven't got long.' We sat down to dinner; the conversation was great. I learnt that night that he was very frank. The Sri Lankan High Commissioner would raise something and Don would raise something—he would say it directly how he saw it. As a new member who had only been here a few months, I was slowly sinking under the table and thinking, 'Gee, this guy's pretty direct. He's pretty straight.' We all had a great night and I learnt a bit about Sri Lanka. We all left on great terms; the high commissioner and the staff were on great terms with Don. I appreciate that he invited me along.

I say quite often, and I said in my maiden speech, that life is about relationships; Don was certainly someone who valued relationships. He was ruthlessly honest, as I learnt that night at dinner, and just as ruthlessly determined to serve his electorate and the Australian people. I want to thank his family—his wife Julie, his children Tess and Elliott—for sharing Don with us here in the parliament and with his constituents throughout Canning. We all know as members of parliament that we cannot be effective here without the strong support of our families. Obviously, Don's family supported him over the 17 or so years he was a member of this place and before that as a councillor. So, to his family: thank you for sharing him with us and my heart is full of sympathy for you at this time. It is devastating to see someone so young go so suddenly. When you work with colleagues, you expect them to turn up for work next day or to be here the next time we sit.

As the member for Wentworth was saying, we expect our parents—our fathers—to die when they are very old, and so 62 is very young. It reminds us all that death is inevitable and that life is always too short. We come into this world with nothing and we cannot take anything with us when we go, but we can leave things behind. Don has left many things behind—incredible relationships and experiences—not just for his family but also for those people within his electorate. Other members today, from the Prime Minister onwards, spoke about some of the different services Don provided to people in his electorate—whether it was trimming someone's roses or fixing someone's taps when he was out doorknocking. I am sure he enjoyed those experiences very much, not as part of his campaigning but just chatting to people as he did his rounds. Those experiences and memories will be left with people in his electorate as well. There are fond memories for all of us in this place to look back on.

He was outstanding; he will be missed. May Donald James Randall rest in peace.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand to offer some comment on the passing of Don Randall. Today we have heard some very moving statements from members from both sides of this place and we have heard some rather humorous anecdotes. I am sure some have learnt today things about Don that they were never aware of. Until I attended Don's funeral there were things I was unaware of. The funeral was well attended in Western Australia by members of both sides of the House and by the community at large—as well as state members, ambassadors, the Prime Minister, past premiers and the current premier of Western Australia. It showed the mark of the man. I was not aware that Don had an affiliation with bee keeping. Who would have thought? In addition there was his love and passion for playing the violin. Don never struck me as that sort of person. What I saw was the robust character whom you could always go to for advice, and he would give it to you straight between the eyes. When my cigar cabinet was low, I could go to Don and get a fine Cuban cigar that he had choreographed through his relationships with the Cuban Embassy. I will speak to his relationship with many countries during this delivery. Don was genuinely a man you could learn from—a man we could all learn from.

Don's passing teaches us in this place a lesson. It teaches us that life is a precious gift and that life should never be taken for granted. The age of 62 is far too young to be leaving your family and far too young to be leaving work that still needed to be done, as I am sure Don would attest was the case in his electorate. From attending the funeral and knowing the man during the time I have spent in this place, I know he jammed a lot into his life. His family, who were here in the gallery today, should be very proud of the accolades that have come Don's way. They should be very proud of his achievements. It makes you wonder how the parliament will remember you in your passing What will be the legacy you leave behind in this place? It is a question I ask of all members on both sides of the House. A common thread of Don's legacy here was the cardboard cutout. If you were to ask Don, I am sure that would not have been how he scripted the final speeches about him, but it is interesting how people recall different things and spark those memories.

For Julie, Tess and Elliott, it is a sad day for them to come and rehash the passing of a father, a husband, an uncle, a brother-in-law. For all those in the gallery today it was a sad day. Having lost a father myself at a young age, in trying to offer some comfort to families, in trying to offer some comfort to friends, Don would want you to be reminded of the good things he has done. He would want you to remember the good times that you had had with him and embrace those times. Yes we would all love to think that life is infinite and that we will go on, but if you were to script your own exit, being here today and gone tomorrow is not a bad outcome—no pain, no suffering, hours after coming off the golf course with friends that he continually played with. I had the pleasure when I was in Perth of going to the Royal Perth Golf Club, which was Don's golf club, and playing with some of the members that he played with, that he drank with, and meeting some of the ladies that he offended. He wrote a letter to the president of the golf club saying something about women being too slow and they should not be allowed on the golf course, and there was an uproar. Don did not see the political kicker in that but, by crikey, every lady in the golf club knew of the letter that Don Randall had written to the club president.

Don was a wily old character, and he was truly a chief government whip's pain in the backside—not only for me but for my predecessors before me. Don liked pushing the envelope. I can recall a story that a member of the House shared with me about Don. It was Steve Irons. Steve Irons had said, 'I've got the direct flight back to Perth this Thursday afternoon at five o'clock.' Don said, 'Don't go back on the direct flight. What I do is I fly to Sydney and I get on the Sydney flight direct to Perth—the movies on that flight are much better. Why don't you get off your flight, come with me and we will fly together to Perth?' Steve Irons was a new member and said, 'Okay, I'll take advice from you—you've been around for a while,' and subsequently Irons changed his travel arrangements on Don' advice. Don chose not to make the travel arrangements out of Sydney, and when the vacancy became available when Steve got off the direct flight from Canberra, Randall booked it and flew direct back to Western Australia on the seat that Steve Irons left. Steve Irons never flew on that other flight ever again, and he never took advice from Don Randall about leaving a direct flight again. That was the character of the man. He reminds us that we should live life to the fullest, and I encourage members to think of their own families. This place can be ever so smothering of your time, and it is your family that ultimately suffers. As members of this House we sacrifice time with our family so that we can contribute to our community. Don's passing should be a measure for all of us on both sides of the House—we have to make sure that we invest time with our family, because Don has taught us indirectly that we do not know when our time is going to be up.

There will be tough days ahead for the family. There is the shock of losing Don in the first instance, the hustle and bustle of organising and choreographing the funeral, and being shuffled from the west coast to the east coast to be here today, very generously to listen to members offer their contributions to this condolence motion for Don. They will go home, eventually, and there will be nights where Julie, Don's wife, will sit and wait for Don to come through the door and there will be a stark realisation that Don will never walk through that door again. They will be difficult times for the family; they will be difficult times for the children. If you knew Don and if you knew Julie, I encourage members to reach out to the family—periodically, when Don comes to your memory, just ring and say 'How are you going, I'm thinking of you and I'm thinking of the legacy that Don Randall has left behind.'

Don had a great passion for golf. I mentioned the Royal Perth Golf Club, where he was a member. As part of that, he had reciprocal membership rights at the Royal Canberra Golf Club. Twice in the last 18 months—regretfully, on the passing of former prime ministers Whitlam and Fraser, when the House suspended as a mark of respect to those fine men—as a keen golfer Don took the opportunity to reach out to members from all around this great country who like playing golf and said, 'Let's go down and mark our respect and have a game of golf.' He spent a lot of time on the golf course, but he was a hacker. He was not a great golfer by any stretch of the imagination, but he would give it his best.

I would hope that one of the traditions that Don's passing leaves in this place is that, when time permits, members of this House—and I know the Western Australian members will join me in this—have some type of memorial day or recognition day for Don conducted at the Royal Perth Golf Club. We will take some members of the press with us who have played with Don and members who have previously played either directly or indirectly with Don. I think there are about 12 or 15. I would like to propose that that happen at a point in the future so we can acknowledge and remember Don's contribution to this place and, like all good golfers, sledge him as hard as we can, because that is what you do on a golf course.

Don's commitment to this place was vast and varied. He sat on a number of committees, He sat on the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment and Workplace Relations. I sit on the Standing Committee on Economics because small business is my background. But Don's background was as a schoolteacher, an educator. Wanting people to be better tomorrow than they are today, Don was also a natural fit for the Standing Committee on Employment, Workplace Relations and Workforce Participation. He was also part of the Joint Statutory Committee on Native Title and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Land Account; the Standing Committee on Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government; and the Standing Committee of Privileges and Members' Interests.

When he went onto the local government committee, Western Australia was a growing, emerging state and, as we heard in speeches today from members, he was always in the minister's office advocating for his electorate, shouldered by either a mayor or groups he was sincerely advocating for. It is ironic that he sat on the privileges and members' interests committee, because everyone will remember the issue that got Don got into hot water for—travelling from Western Australia to Cairns, spending time with a colleague up there. Entitlements will always haunt this place. Don was no stranger to it.

During the Howard government, he held the position of Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration. He has been most recently a member of the Standing Committee on Procedure. Under this procedure portfolio, he had just undertaken a comprehensive review of the Federation Chamber, which the Deputy Speaker, in the chair at the moment, presides over. He had just presided over a review of electronic use of equipment in the chamber, conducting roundtables with the members of this place. He religiously attended the Selection Committee—the committee that determines the private business that comes before the House—and always had comments to offer.

Don was a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade. I think it was the trade part of that that blew back Don's hair. His relationships internationally extended to the Parliamentary Friends of Japan and the Australia-Cuba parliamentary friends group, and it was lovely to see that the ambassador for Cuba, who Don had a very strong relationship with, attended Don's funeral. His Excellency will not mind me sharing with the parliament that he stood at Don's coffin, put his hand on the coffin and blubbered and cried for the loss of a friend and the loss of a friend of Cuba, because that is what Don was.

Don was also chair of the Sri Lanka friendship group. I had the opportunity today to catch up with one of Don's colleagues from Sri Lanka, Noel, and I have given him a personal commitment that I will do my best to fulfil the duties Don was doing. I will try and take up that role, because any work Don has done in this place was invaluable.

In opposition, Don was the shadow parliamentary secretary for local government before he was the shadow parliamentary secretary for roads and transport. Prior to that, Don held the positions of shadow cabinet secretary and shadow parliamentary secretary assisting the Leader of the Opposition, as well as the shadow parliamentary secretary for energy and resources. So he was across a number of portfolios.

I associate myself with all the comments of my colleagues today in acknowledging the passing of a good man. On his corflute was written 'You talk and I will listen'. When I saw that, I thought, 'I might use that; that's a good idea, 'you talk and I will listen'. He took Canning from being a marginal seat to a very safe seat.

Speaking at the funeral, his children, Tess and Elliott, gave an account of a dad who was a great dad, a dad who will be sorely missed. It was an emotional day.

It is my intention to take a copy from Hansardof each of the speeches that have been given here today by members on both sides of the House. It is my intention to have them bound. It is my intention to have each of the members who have made a contribution here today personally sign their speeches. Then, with the approval of the House, I will send that to the family as a gift from this place, as a reminder of every word that has been said in this place by every member, so that it will be kept and held as a memento for the family.

I thank you for the opportunity to speak. Don Randall, my mate, rest in peace. I hope my handicap gets better and, if it does, it will be as a result of your tuition.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for La Trobe for his patience. I just wish to make two remarks about our good friend Don Randall. Don Randall was the first MP I met when I walked into this place in 2007. We came down to the party room meeting and he was the first MP I bumped into, not knowing anyone. The first thing Don did was to welcome me into his office, break some bread, and he had been a great colleague ever since.

We heard the member for Dickson, Minister Dutton, speak about a group every Tuesday morning that would go out for lunch, after party room and before the House began with question time. It is something we should consider bringing back again, having the House start a bit later on that Tuesday. Those less informed—on the Left he was referring to my good friend the member for Moncrieff—called us the 'book burners club'. It was sound and suitable members of the Right—I was one of them—who for a number of years always went out, mostly to Timmy's, and broke bread together. He was a tremendous man. He was a man of humanity, he never left people out—he was an inclusive sort of guy—and he was taken from us far too early. He was a man known for controversy and not a man known for political correctness, but he was an extraordinary colleague, he was a good friend and we will certainly miss him.

Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also would like to pass on my condolences and lament with Julie, the wife of Don, and Tess and Elliott. It is quite bizarre that I was actually sitting down with Don and Tess last sitting at the Italian ambassador's residence; I was sitting beside Don. Don was always so very entertaining and, like many colleagues on this side—I would also like to thank those for their comments very much on the other side—I could not believe it when I actually looked on the online media to see the passing of Don Randall. In actual fact I was very upset, like all members would be.

I got to know Don in particular when we sat beside each other in the opposition as shadow parliamentary secretaries. The role I took up was always to advise Don: 'Don't do that. I wouldn't do that; I wouldn't say that.' He used to always run in interjection, 'I'm thinking about saying this,' and I would say, 'Don, I don't think you should do that.' Even with the cardboard cut-out of Kevin Rudd, he said, 'I'm going to do this,' and I said, 'Don, I don't know about that.' He said, 'Oh, I'm just going to do it; would you just bear with us—I am going to do it.' And he would do it. Don would never be the person who would let anything go by without putting his hand up and putting himself first.

One thing in this place—there are not many people like Don, and what he would try to do is engage everyone. Don would always invite you out for dinner and always crack it when you would not come out to dinner with him. To the member for Bonner, my friend Ross Vasta—congratulations, Ross, for putting your hand up for Speaker today—Don would be looking down in this place on you and thinking 'job well done'.

I love that motto, 'You talk and I'll listen,' because, as Prime Minister said, in the party room it was 'everyone listen to Don'. Don would always say what he believed and what he felt. I always used to say he would be a great detective, and he used to say, 'Why is that?' I would say, 'Don, because you've got your heart in the right place, you never give up and you look after other people.' That is why he was a fantastic local member for Canning and did such an amazing job.

He would always be talking about Sri Lanka and Cuba, and I remember recently—it was actually earlier this year—walking past a committee room and Don grabbed me and said, 'Come and meet the Cuban ambassador.' I said, 'Oh, I am in a bit of a hurry.' He goes, 'Haven't you got a heap of Cubans in your electorate?' I said, 'I don't think I've got any.' He said, 'Oh, okay. Well, we're giving out free alcohol.' I said, 'Don, I'm not drinking at the moment.' And Don goes, 'Woody, just come in here!' So we came in and met the Cuban ambassador. But that is the type of bloke he was—he would basically grab you when you were in a hurry and bring a bit of peace and stability, and have a chat and get you to meet people you normally would not meet. When I heard today he played the violin and tended the roses, I could not believe that. That, I suppose, is a sad thing about this place; quite often we do not hear about the talents and skills of our colleagues until it is in a situation like this.

To his family, I cannot imagine what you are going through, but Don's legacy will live on and on and on, because he was that sort of bloke. You just cannot forget everything he has done, and nor should we. So, like many members here today, I truly feel the great loss of Don Randall. Don, if you are looking down now, you are a great mate. You looked after everyone, you will be sadly missed, you have left too early and we will look after your family. Thanks so much.

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Tuesday, 21 July I attended the funeral for Alby Schultz—as everyone knows, a great stalwart of the Liberal Party and a man of conviction and commitment. It was on my way home that afternoon that a friend rang me to tell me of Don's death.

I did not know Don for as long as many in this House, being a member of the class of 2013, and I did not know him as well as many in the House. But I did know Don in two ways: first, as a member of the Timmys Tuesday lunch group, which others have spoken to and which Don invited me to join based, I guess, on his friendship with my predecessor, Alby Schultz; and second, but perhaps more importantly, sitting next to someone in the House inevitably creates a special relationship, particularly, I suspect, in your first term in the parliament. It has been an extraordinary pleasure to sit next to Don for the last two years.

I thought it might be interesting to share some insights that I gleaned in my two wonderful years sitting next to Don here in the parliament. The first is one that we have heard much about. There is no doubt that Don was a man of extraordinary conviction. He never left anyone in doubt about his views. Like my predecessor, he was not shy and retiring in the chamber. I heard from him often—and often I had to put a hand over my left ear because of the noise created by Don when he felt that there was bad behaviour coming from the other side of the chamber. He was, of course, a strong and consistent conservative. I could often identify with Don's view of the world. When I look back at his first speech, there were some real gems. He wanted to see the end of the welfare state mentality, with a greater emphasis on hand-up instead of hand-out. He talked about Australia as a 'land of opportunity, where we can make our own luck'. Hear, hear to that!

As a man of conviction, I identified with him very quickly and very positively. But perhaps what is lesser known about him and what I found him to be was an extraordinary mentor. His observations about people on both sides of the House were always worth listening to. He was a great student of politics and, as we have heard from others, a man of great curiosity. Every time I wrote an opinion piece in one of our national papers, as I am wont to do, I could always be assured that Don would have read it, have questions about it and show great interest in it. That was the mark of the man, because he was primarily, as I said earlier, a man focused on his convictions and on his electorate, but he was always curious about other things.

Perhaps most of all I found him to be a man of the people and of his electorate. When I first got into parliament, he said to me, 'How have you enjoyed your time as a candidate?' I said, 'You know, Don, I enjoy it, but I've really surprised myself, because the thing I enjoy most is not standing on a street corner waiting for people to come up and speak to me but going out and knocking on doors.' He said, 'That's a good start, Angus. If you want to know what people really think, don't stand on the street corner; go knock on doors.' Several months ago, Don heard that I had been to dinner with a member of the press gallery. Next day, here in the chamber during question time, he started quizzing me about it. He was a bit disappointed that I would see fit to go and have dinner with a member of the press gallery. He said: 'I've seen lots of people start well in this place, but fewer people finish well. Don't get caught up in that press gallery world. It's a million miles from your electorate.' I certainly hope I can live up to your advice, Don, because you were right.

To Don: every time I look at that seat next to me, I will be reminded of your sharp, dry sense of humour. I will be reminded of a man who made me laugh almost every day, no matter how bad things were. I will be reminded of your extraordinary mix of conservatism and compassion. And I will be reminded most of all of why I am here—to represent the good people of my electorate. Don, in this place, you started well and finished well. I will miss you.

John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my sad pleasure to stand and speak of my friend and colleague Don Randall. I often reflected in my first years in this place that one of the great collateral benefits of this choice of career was that all of a sudden you were surrounded by a whole group of new friends from both sides. One of the first people who, as so many of my colleagues have said, extended that hand of friendship was Don. I remember being invited into his office, and on walking into his office I saw the most beautiful set of golf clubs, which were immaculately cleaned. We started talking, as golfers do, about theories on how to play. The one thing in common that he and I had with Tiger Woods was that we all have our very bad days on the golf course. He took great pleasure in telling me about this method that he had to get onto the course at Royal Canberra Golf Club. We went and played at Royal Canberra, and we played a very similar game of golf. As that game does to you: you have your good days, your bad days, your good holes and your bad holes. The one thing we had in common was that, unlike some golfers who get very upset when they play badly, it did not impact on our conversation, our enjoyment of the game or of each other's company. Nor did it impact on our ability to address our thirst, which had been created by this beautiful game of golf that we had enjoyed, and I believe we had a glass of red wine—maybe we had two.

Don loved a yarn. He loved the camaraderie of his many friends here. But he had a serious side. He was a very genuine Australian, a man who befriended us with his ability to be irreverent, which is a great Australian characteristic, but there was a serious side. He had a great love affair for Sri Lanka, and we shared that through my family. My partner's father had been the high commissioner of Sri Lanka, and he had said late in life that the happiest days of his life had been lived in Sri Lanka. While I intended to go to Sri Lanka with Don, that was never the case; but when I eventually get there, I will be traveling with you, Don.

It is a hard day for us all to acknowledge the passing of this great man, this great friend, and we have all lamented his passing, but with the presence today of his beautiful family, his lovely children Tess and Elliott and his lovely wife, Julie. Our loss is meagre compared to theirs. So our thoughts and our prayers go with you into the future. You will always have through extension, through that great man, Don, friends here.

Eric Hutchinson (Lyons, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I first got elected, I remember a colleague that I had worked with for many years, by the name of Gilbert Davidson, saying to me, 'Just remember: the constituents in your electorate will be less concerned about what you know; rather, they will want to know that you care.' I think that is something that Don Randall understood very well, because he cared for the people within his electorate. Of course, he cared for his family.

I did not know Don terribly well. He had office RG84; I have RG81. Many was the time that, during a division, we would walk down the corridor together. My father, David, also died at the age of 62. It is too young, and life, unfortunately, has a habit of taking good people from us before their time—and that was the case with Don Randall.

When I first came to this place—and I have heard the story from a number of people here—I was not quite sure what to make of Don Randall, but, as the wonderful contributions that we have heard on both sides of this place today in recognition of Don's work and his friendship and his companionship and his frankness in this place show, they come in all different shapes and sizes, and that is how it should be. In Don, we had a special needs teacher—I did not know that—and we had a horse trainer. He certainly, like us all, was a reflection of the very diverse community that makes our country so great, of the aspirations of its people, of the causes that they feel strongly about. Don was one of those optimists among us—an extraordinary advocate for his state of Western Australia and the people of this electorate of Canning.

When I first heard the news of Don's passing, like so many here, I was somewhat shocked, contemplating how it would be. When I think of Don Randall, I will think of a man who said his piece and was very clear about where he stood without fear or favour. He did make, as was mentioned by somebody today, interjections during question time—he sat just behind me here—in his deep voice with a genuine wit. He could often be heard making interjections that did not get, perhaps, the recognition they deserved.

He was indeed a fighter for the little guy—those people that have suffered, whether it be at the hands of local government or state government or federal government—on the issues that are never reported in the newspapers. But those things, which perhaps brought the greatest satisfaction to him as a member of parliament, as they do to many of us, had an important impact on the lives of the people within his electorate.

I commented to him one time, passing his office, that he always had a different staff member coming over to Canberra with him, and I asked him why that was. Again, as has been mentioned by many today, he took great pride in his staff—and, clearly, his staff took great pride in working for Don Randall. He saw the opportunity for them to come to Canberra as a way not only of giving them an opportunity to see that part of the work that he did but also to further their careers and give them opportunities, as was mentioned by Minister Hunt today in his contribution—to give good staff the opportunity to be the best that they could.

I did not know him well—not well enough. But his frank and genuine honesty was indeed a most attractive characteristic—not by design but by coincidence. Life has an uncanny way of delivering strange things in terms of timing and other matters. As it happened, I had a meeting today with Gerard Neesham and the people from the Clontarf Foundation that I had arranged nearly two months ago. I met with them today in my office, and we spent some time contemplating, remembering the contribution and the work that Don Randall had done with that very excellent organisation. On behalf of myself, my family and the people of the electorate of Lyons in the state of Tasmania, I offer my sincere condolences to Julie, to Tess and to Elliott.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We were in shock when we heard about the passing of Don Randall; it was with great disbelief. At first, I thought it must have been one of Don's stunts or some type of practical joke, because this man was larger than life and how could we allow someone like Don to leave us? We needed him, and we miss him terribly.

He was a great mentor. He often would say to me, 'You belong to a special club.' My good friend the member for La Trobe is a member of that club. It is the club where you lose and then you come back, and Don would remind me of that constantly. He would say, 'We're pretty special, because not many people do come back, and we did come back.'

Yes, he was a great grassroots campaigner, and you could learn a lot from Don. But I learnt more from Don because Don used to talk to me while we were catching the flights. He was going to Perth and we were going to Brisbane, and often his beautiful daughter, Tess, would be there as well. Don loved all things Italian, and I think that is why he sort of had a particular fondness for me. He loved to practise his Italian, and he actually spoke it very, very well.

Don, you were a great friend. We miss you terribly. May you rest in peace. Our thoughts and our prayers are with your beautiful wife, Julie, and with your children, Tess and Elliott. May you rest in peace.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I understand that it is the wish of all honourable members of this House to signify, at this stage, their respect and sympathy by rising in their places.

Honourable members having stood in their places—

Debate adjourned.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Assistant Minister for Employment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House do now adjourn.

Question agreed to.

House adjourned at 19:24