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

I only met David Francis Jull on the one occasion, and that was in the last few months when David knew he was dying. The mark of the man was he sat there, shook my hand—and his grasp was firm—looked me in the eye and wished me well. My association with David Jull goes back an awfully long time. When my family first moved to Brisbane in 1974, Jully was the sports reporter on Channel 0 news. The beauty of those days in TV was that you did not have to be good-looking, which was very handy for Jully. You could quite often see, in the corner of the TV, the smoke drifting up from the ashtray. David Jull used to read the news with Brian Cahill, who was a teacher at Gregory Terrace—his daughter, in fact, works for the member for Ryan here in parliament. The camera was supposed to come back to Jully to do the sport but it came back to Brian Cahill, who was sucking on a black and white in full screen.

I became an auctioneer in 1990, Mr Deputy Speaker, and in the early days of my time at Isles Love in Brisbane we did the DASFLEET sales for the government vehicle auctions, when the government ran its own fleets. I think the measure of the man was that when he took over in 1996 as the Minister for Administrative Services he recognised—in the true tradition of Liberals—that small government was about what private enterprise could do better than government and set in train a path whereby his department would no longer exist. That was a truly brave move by someone who had been sitting in opposition from 1984 all the way through to 1996. He finally got the ministerial leather and then had the courage of his convictions to say, 'My department could be better run by private enterprise,' and actively go out and get rid of it.

David Jull was held in extremely high regard by all who knew him. The stories that you hear about him are all true; they do not need to grow with time. Everyone loved him so much, and I think it should be everyone's goal to be held in such regard by people after you are gone. It should be your goal as a person no matter whether you come from this House or whether you are a mechanic—whatever role you have. Vale David Francis Jull. You will be missed. You were a truly great man and a truly great Liberal.

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