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

I want to be associated with this condolence motion because I am probably the only member of the House of Representatives who served with Kim Beazley Sr. It was a great privilege to do so and I intend to outline something of the circumstances of that service. I might say, before the member for Canberra departs, that I am sure Kim Beazley Sr would have supported a welcome to country, and her request that that have an ongoing place in our new parliaments I am sure would have met with his approval.

Firstly, I extend my condolences to his wife, Betty, his son, Kim Jr, his daughter, Marilyn, and each of their children. It is not generally known that I was in fact born in Canberra. I claim to have a museum site as a birthplace. My father was here in Canberra and knew Kim Beazley Sr. I noted, in reading his first speech, that it was a speech about postwar reconstruction. My late father was firstly a chief investigations officer in prices and then a deputy commissioner in prices and was very much involved in the administration of the policies that I noted Kim Beazley Sr adverted to in his maiden speech.

It was a speech about the importance of economics. It was a speech about the postwar reconstruction period. I noted that he commended the budget for a number of reasons. In the first place, it recognised a number of fundamental problems in the immediate postwar period, namely that there was an excess of purchasing power and capacity to invest. My father later became a Liberal member of parliament in New South Wales and a minister but, notwithstanding the fact that he administered price control, he was very much against those sorts of intrusions of the state. But, in the context of what he was doing at that time, he had a clear role that brought him in touch with many, and one of those was Kim Beazley Sr.

In my own period in the parliament, he was father of the House. I now have that honour. His service was for 32 years, from 1945 until 1977. Being elected in 1973, I saw him as a fine Minister for Education. I did not always agree with all of the policies he implemented, but he was someone who people recognised was a ‘conviction politician’. Of course, he was in opposition in 1975. By that time I had become, as the member for Canberra noted, actively involved in Indigenous affairs and I was chairing the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs. Our first brief was to examine the alcohol problems that Aboriginal people were experiencing and it brought me into conflict with Kim—and, I might say, with Ralph Hunt, who was the Minister for Health at the time. They conspired, I think, to broaden the terms of reference of the House of Representatives committee to look at health generally rather than just at what they saw as being a limited problem. He was a person who was fundamentally interested in the plight of our Indigenous people. He was, I think, very close to the late Professor Fred Hollows, who talked to him about these health issues, and, as befits somebody who was senior in service in the parliament, he continued to play a constructive role.

I noted when I was reading the material prepared helpfully by our Parliamentary Library—they always prepare helpful material—that it noted his very fine education. He was born in 1917. He succeeded John Curtin as the Labor member for Fremantle. He was the youngest member of the House of Representatives when he was elected, he was known as ‘the student prince’ and he held the seat until he retired. But what follows is something that is far more interesting. He was, it says ‘a committed Christian and member of Moral Rearmament’, and it was in that context that I have a great deal of personal admiration for what he was able to do and achieve.

He was not the only member of this parliament engaged with Moral Rearmament. Members perhaps do not know that Moral Rearmament has had a change of name, but they are still active in the environs of this parliament. If you ever have the opportunity to go to Caux in Switzerland and participate in one of their forums, it is a great and unique experience—even better than Hayman Island. The fact is that Kim Beazley and the late Dr Malcolm Mackay, a Liberal member of parliament, played a significant role and engaged me very much in Moral Rearmament. But, reading the material, it is far more interesting than that, because he came with conviction. It says:

... Beazley was prominent on the right-wing of the Labor Party during the ideological battles of the 1950s and 1960s. During the leadership of Arthur Calwell (from 1960 to 1967) he was considered a possible future leader of the party, but his right-wing views, particularly his support for the U.S. Alliance, cost him support ...

And Whitlam emerged as leader. Kim Beazley Sr was a person who had the courage of his views and conviction—even more so after the defeat of the Whitlam government, when he was elected to the Labor frontbench but resigned when it was revealed that the then ALP National Secretary David Combe had been seeking money from Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi Baath Party to pay off what were then party debts. As one who has, on a matter of principle, set myself aside from my colleagues, I have to say that it is not easy to do. In Kim Beazley Sr we saw a man who was not prepared to serve on the Labor frontbench because of the strong principles that he held. He was quirkish, he was adversarial, but he was a person I greatly admired. He had an impact on me in the parliament and I very much wanted to be associated with this condolence motion.

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