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

I rise to speak on the condolence motion for my friend Jim Carlton, who passed away on Christmas Eve last year. The Prime Minister and the opposition leader both spoke eloquently and compassionately in relation to Jim, and I would like to associate myself with their comments. I was unfortunately unable to be at Jim's funeral due to being away at the time, but I understand that it was a great celebration of Jim's life. I regret not being able to be there.

I got to know Jim well over the last 20 years through the Liberal Party, the Red Cross and his employment with the Boston Consulting Group. I greatly admired what he achieved across all three of those areas but, more importantly, I admired his integrity and his intellect and valued his friendship and counsel.

Jim was one of the great contributors to the Liberal Party and to Australian parliamentary life. He was President of the Sydney University Liberal Club. He was general secretary of the New South Wales division of the Liberal Party. He was a member of parliament in the seat of Mackellar for 17 years. He was the shadow Treasurer for many years during the Hawke and Keating era. He was the health minister in the Fraser government. It was Liberal pedigree.

But in many ways the offices that he held were less important than the influence that he had through the ideas he espoused. Jim was an intellect. He had a very clear sense of how Australia and particularly our economic system had to change. He used this clarity to great effect as one of the leading 'dries' in pushing for more free market economics, rooted in the Austrian School's teachings.

Today, within the Liberal Party, we all accept that free, open markets are the best way of organising the economy and generating wealth and freedom. But it was not always like this. Back in the 1970s this was a matter of debate around the world and within the Liberal Party itself. Jim was on the right side of history, pushing for liberalisation. He maintained these views his whole life, including when he was shadow Treasurer during the Hawke and Keating era. In fact, I recall Jim reflecting to me that he used to have Liberal colleagues in the 1980s and 1990s berating him for supporting the Hawke economic reforms which, in many regards, took our template and liberalised the economy. As Jim related to me, colleagues would ask, 'Why are you supporting the Hawke and Keating agenda when we as Liberal party members could make great political mileage out of opposing these difficult reforms, such as floating of the dollar and reducing tariffs?' 'Because they are doing the right thing,' was his response to them. If only members of the Labor Party today would adopt such an approach.

He left parliament in 1994, having served only a short time as a minister, just a couple of years before our long term in government under John Howard's prime ministership. As he said at the time, 'I am disappointed in not having another opportunity to be a minister. I felt I could be more useful elsewhere.' Jim took up a position as the head of the Australian Red Cross, where he again had an enormous impact in his seven years there. He played a large role in the formation of the Australian Red Cross Blood Service, creating one national organisation where there had previously been eight separate blood banks. He received the Red Cross movement's highest honour—the Henry Dunant Medal—in 2007, the medal which recognises and rewards outstanding services and acts of great devotion, mainly of international significance, to the cause of the Red Cross. He was also incredibly influential in supporting the greater fundraising efforts on a national basis, and trying to have one greater national brand around the Australian Red Cross, rather than the state divisions at that time.

I got to know Jim particularly well at that time because I sought him out to go and do a secondment at the Red Cross when I was working at the Boston Consulting Group. While there, I would like to think I had a small contribution to make in helping with Jim's agenda in what he was doing at the Red Cross. Certainly, we not only discussed the activities of the Red Cross domestically and internationally, but that time is really when I started to get his mentorship across my broader career, and perhaps influencing some of my thinking in relation to politics and where I might go. He was certainly a great encourager for me in terms of thinking about politics and what I should be doing in relation to positioning myself; always providing me with the articles to read, to bring myself up to speed, particularly in relation to economics. He was certainly an encourager of me standing for parliament when I eventually did. I would say that his wife Di was maybe less encouraging of me going into politics! Perhaps that was from having supported Jim for so long in that role and realising that it can be pretty tough on family life being a member of parliament.

At the end of Jim's time at the Red Cross, he reverted to a corporate career. When he started his career, he, of course, had spent many years at McKinsey, a very influential firm, and he was one of the very first members of McKinsey in Australia and, subsequently, joined Boston Consulting Group, the arch-rival of McKinsey and my old firm. He helped support Boston Consulting Group with an enormous array of projects, particularly those concerning the public sector. Through that he helped the firm, but, more importantly, I think, he made another terrific contribution on the public administration of this country, both nationally and within state governments.

I had great admiration for Jim. I always enjoyed catching up with him, as I did on a very regular basis. In fact, I was due to catch up with him for coffee again in January. I will very much miss him as I know that many people in this House will do so. He was a humanitarian. He was a very decent man. He was an intellect, and a great encourager of younger people who wanted to follow in his footsteps.

I pass my condolences, of course, to his wife Di and his children. Maybe I will finish with a very nice comment from his son Rob which he apparently made at his funeral, where he said, after his passing: 'I don't know the meaning of life, but I can tell you my dad died happy, surrounded by family, and loved by all who knew him.'

May he rest in peace.

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