Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would very much like to pay tribute to David Francis Jull, or 'Jully' to all of us in the House who knew him. He had an extraordinary career. We have touched on various highlights of it. I do not know whether people realise that he faced 12 elections and he won 11 of them. Four of those were in the federal seat of Bowman and eight were in Fadden. As others have said, he missed out in Bowman in 1983 but returned in Fadden in 1984, so he was only out of the place for a couple of years—I do not think that it was even a full two years.

He served on a plethora of committees. He had lots of great loves. Foreign affairs, defence and trade and the importance of Australian security always played heavily on his mind. He made a superb contribution in those fields. He loved that sort of work. He served on several iterations of the standing committee on transport. I served with him on that committee from 1998 to 2001. I remember going on trips and things with him. He always added a great sense of fellowship and focus to any group.

I remember that at that time—and this is a problem with lots of committees—we were having problems with how to get the message out that we were holding inquiries into x, y and z without paying a fortune. If you put a big ad in the metropolitan dailies, that chews up all the money very quickly. Then you have the country newspapers writing in to say, 'You did not put any ads in the country papers, so you should not expect the public to know that there is an inquiry on, because you did not let us know.' We were debating this one day and we decided that for once we would do all this by radio. The next thing was that we were going to have to call in an advertising agency to prepare the ads and everything. At that point, Jully said: 'Stop!' He then said to the committee secretary, 'You just book the studio here in Parliament House and I'll do all the ads.' He had that beautiful, mellifluous voice because he had spent 20 or more years in radio. He went down and did all the ads for no charge. The ads went out and, as I remember it, we had a very good inquiry.

He had a great love of television and broadcasting. He was always on committees like the special television committee, when the House moved up here. He was on the broadcasting committee; he was on the special video materials committee. He was always at the forefront of those things because he had such a good grip on the media and particularly on radio and television. In fact, his early career started at 4IP in Ipswich. A group of people got together—Sir Frank Moore was one of them—and they decided to revolutionise radio in Brisbane. They started from the most humble of all the radio stations in the Brisbane basin, which was Ipswich 4IP. And they totally dominated the Brisbane radio scene. David was part of that group. They called it Colour Radio, which was an unusual name—we did not even have colour television in those days. Colour Radio was quite an interesting concept and it captured the imagination. All the announcers there were of that mould: vital, interesting and innovative. In 2005 the then owner, Graham McVean, invited all those announcers back to the Ipswich station; I think it was then known as River Radio. They went back and David read the news over a weekend, just to, if you like, have a reunion of all those quite early innovative announcers. They loved it. I remember Graham saying that it was as if they had not been away from the place. David got behind the microphone and read the news in much the same way as he recorded the ads for the transport and infrastructure committee at the time.

He went from radio to Channel 0. In those days the fourth channel was just coming in around Australia. In some states it was known as Channel 0 and in other states as Channel 10. David moved up through the Channel 0 system in Brisbane, which is also now Channel 10. I think he was the general manager; if not, he was the deputy general manager of Channel 0. It too was innovative and it appealed to the younger demographic. Pre my National Party days I was in the Young Country Party. I remember we did a commercial up at Channel 0, because that is where all the groovy young people went and that was where you could get a really good commercial done. I do not remember whether David produced that commercial, but it was a very good commercial. Some of the older members in the bureaucracy of this parliament would remember Bill Carew, who was John McEwen's press secretary. Bill was a journalist around here for many years. I remember that Bill set up that commercial.

As people have said today, David had a great love of aviation. No-one knew the types of aircraft around the world as well as he did. He knew every type of aircraft, how many seats were in the aircraft, what speed it did, what fuel it used and what iterations this country had of this particular plane and what another country might have. You would be sitting on a plane with him going somewhere and he would say: 'Now this particular Fokker Friendship was originally owned by MacRobertson Miller Airlines in Western Australia and it was sold to someone else. Then TAA took it over on such and such a date. We're travelling on that one today.' He was amazing. He said that there was a particular one on the Ansett fleet that we should never travel on, but I forget what that one was.

As others have said, David was not a bloke who carried grudges. He was one of nature's gentlemen. But he had an intense dislike for Ansett and he had some terrible blues with Sir Peter Abeles. One day I went with him from Brisbane to Canberra on an Ansett flight. He would not get on an Ansett flight for love nor money, but he had to go on this particular night to get back to Canberra; that was his last opportunity. He said to me, 'I think I'll choke on this bloody food.' He had a particular dislike of that. But he could always see the humorous side of things.

In addition to that, as others have said, he served as a shadow minister for tourism, aviation and sport and for tourism and aviation—just iterations of the same committee, roughly. It was appropriate that he should have been on those, because they were his great loves—aviation and tourism. In that interregnum—from when he lost Bowman to when he won Fadden—he came the deputy general manager of the QTTC, the Queensland Tourist and Travel Corporation, where over just those two short years he made a huge contribution. He and Sir Frank Moore, his old mentor, worked very well together, and he added a certain resonance to the QTTC that perhaps had not been there before. He was also a tooth man, not in the sense of excessive food; he knew all the good restaurants. One of his favourites was the Thai Orchid in Springwood in Brisbane. Whenever you were in Brisbane on a parliamentary delegation and you were anywhere on the south side, the inquiry secretary was told in no uncertain terms, 'You must allow enough time to go to the Thai Orchid.' We always ate there at lunchtime when we were on a delegation with David.

As others have described, he was one of nature's gentlemen. Other than that small flaw in his character to do with Ansett there was no malice in the man whatsoever. He was a great Minister for Administrative Services. He was really innovative and he really wanted to do different things. Although I am a great admirer of John Howard, I thought David's forced resignation was unfair. He had a lot more to offer and I do not believe he slipped up on the particular matter that caused his resignation. I think others who should have taken the blame did not. I think the parliament lost a lot of gravitas in the field of administrative services and in regard to members entitlements and all those sorts of things he wanted to straighten out. But that is water under the bridge and, as others have said, he never carried that as a grudge.

He was a man of extraordinary tastes. He loved his school. He loved his sport. He loved radio, television and tourism. He had a colourful and full life. He was one of those men for all seasons. I was talking to David Greenwood, who was one of the team at 4IP and has gone back in recent years to manage the Ipswich radio station, and he described him as one of the most balanced and liked guys in the industry. I say so too. Vale, David Jull.

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