Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Deputy Chairman , Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to join in the remarks of all members who have spoken on this condolence motion for David Jull. He was someone who served in this parliament with distinction for such a long period of time. He was someone, as we have heard, Mr Deputy Speaker Adams—and you know this yourself—who had friends on both sides of the chamber. He was a quintessential character in the parliament. He enriched the Liberal Party and the parliament over what was an incredibly distinguished career. I count myself as fortunate to have gotten to know him not just as a member of parliament from the time of my election in 2001 but prior to that when I was a staff member for the Howard government and even prior to that when we were in opposition between 1990-96.

David Jull was so many things. As we know from those who have spoken, he was a good bloke. He was a dedicated parliamentarian. He was a dedicated Liberal. All of the previous speakers have made the point about David Jull's essential decency. His parliamentary career of 11 terms, spanning 32 years less 18 months, tells the story of incredible individual achievement. When people look at his parliamentary career, they see what he did for the parliament as well as the Liberal Party in the years to come. I know that David Jull's memory will go on in this place.

As the member for Ryan said just a few minutes before the suspension, David Jull started as a journalist. When you look at his career—and I took the time to dig out his maiden speech from 1976—he achieved a lot at a young age. He was a cadet radio journalist at the age of 19 and became the state political reporter. He describes this very well in his final speech to parliament back in 2007. That career was critical in so many ways because it introduced him at an early age to political reporting and to covering great political events as they were in the state of Queensland. In his final speech to parliament, he tells the story of how he gradually became more and more drawn to the Liberal Party and that the critical element was the election of the Whitlam government and then the experience of that. He became a candidate in 1974. Like so many of that generation, he was swept into parliament in the landslide election of 1975, and he stayed until the tide went out in 1983. He was out for only 18 months. His dedication to the Liberal cause and his commitment to our party and to this parliament is illustrated so much by his determination to come back just 18 months later. It would have been very easy for an ex-journalist to have served seven or eight years and put that down as a wonderful experience and then move on to another phase of their life. The reason he came back was his commitment to the cause. He said in a profile in the mid-1980s that, once politics got into his blood, it was like malaria: it stayed there and re-emerged. Look at David Jull's maiden speech and his final speech. It is touching to look at his ambition for the country and his Liberal philosophy. In 1976, he very much laid down the markers that he thought were important. His concluding comments in that speech on 2 March 1976 were:

… one should have a passionate devotion to a cause but I am aware that unless the passion is guided by a sense of responsibility it can be wasteful and indeed harmful to society.

He said:

I know that I am young and idealistic—

and he was young; he was only 31—

but I hope that my stay in this House does not breed that cynicism which has become so prevalent of late.

He finished by quoting the words of Winston Churchill condemning socialism. I think, when you look through all those years, three and a bit decades, he did not become cynical, but he had his ups and downs in politics. The Leader of the Opposition, speaking in the House, made the point that David had been a minister—and, we would make the point, for too short a time—and how his passion was to be a tourism minister. The Leader of the Opposition is right. He would have dearly loved to have been a tourism minister. But I think the strength of his character is marked out by the fact that, from 1997 until his retirement in 2007, he became a quintessential parliamentarian, an expert in foreign affairs and intelligence, and he played a critical role in the parliament on those issues.

We have heard from some on the other side about how Jully—and I can call him that—had friends on both sides, and he did. We heard from the member for Bendigo, who said that they were great mates; in fact, David mentioned the member for Bendigo, and the work they did together, in his final speech.

I got to know David better as a colleague after I had entered this place in 2001. As a staff member I had known him, and his friendliness and decency were always there. He had a welcoming smile and a welcoming hand and he was there to be a mentor to anyone on our side who so desired. He was, from all evidence, a very loyal person. One of his closest friends, the member for Sturt, is sitting next to me, and I know that he was a source of great encouragement, strength and advice to the member for Sturt. They lived together here in Canberra.

See this speech in context