Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yesterday, there was a very moving state memorial at Old Parliament House for its former deputy chairman the Hon. Barry Cohen AM, 1935 to 2017. I've attended many state memorials, but the speeches, the warmth, the emotion—I've never been at a ceremony like it. I want to congratulate the organisers and say it was an honour to be part of it, along with the Prime Minister, former Prime Minister Hawke, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, Rabbi Shmueli Feldman who was the MC, and Stewart Cohen who spoke on behalf of the family. There was a very moving Welcome to Country that I want to pay tribute to in particular.

The memorial took place after Rabbi Feldman conducted a funeral—as is the Jewish custom—at the north Canberra cemetery a couple of days before Christmas, soon after Barry passed. The state memorial and the funeral were two distinct events. I want to repeat and elaborate on some of the things I said at the memorial yesterday. I particularly want to praise Rachel Baxendale, who, in the online version of The Australian, had a very good report of what the various major speakers said about the passing of such a notable former minister. The ABC ran a report too, but it's a shame that the Fairfax press in its self-indulgence didn't carry a word of it today or yesterday.

I said yesterday that all of us worked for Barry Cohen even when we were not employed by him. Even when I was elected to parliament it made no difference to Barry: he still thought I worked for him and just needed to implement his million bright ideas. Barry was, in the Australian vernacular meaning of the word, a character. He was a sports commentator for Sydney's TCN 9. That's probably because he was nearly a professional golfer. The wonderful booklet that accompanied his memorial shows a picture of him in the swing in the back. Apparently he accompanied Prime Minister Hawke many times on the golf course. He was the first small businessman I know of in North Sydney to join a union, the SDA. The legendary 'Johno' Johnson was really taken aback by Barry's interest in Labor when Barry was running his beloved fashion store at St Ives, Fashion Plate, where he insisted I attend to get my first suit when I came up to work for him as a staffer in the Hawke government.

Many years later he turned the marginal Central Coast seat of Robertson into a bastion for Labor, holding it from 1969 to 1990. I notice there are probably many good members of the opposition who've held it since. Some of the people working for prime ministers and leaders of the opposition have no understanding of what it takes to be a marginal member and what a difference individuals can make. Woe betide them for their political faith and their lack of knowledge of that.

Barry was the last opposition male to hold the position of spokesman on women's affairs, as in 1978 there were no women in the House of Reps. Barry was elected nine times between 1969 and 1990. Few will replicate that record. Phillip Ruddock, who is in the audience, is one who did. As Martin Luther King said, 'Longevity has its place.' Barry's passion for the arts, heritage and environment was fulfilled when he became minister in these portfolios. His passion for Kakadu, as I said yesterday, established it in the public imagination alongside Indigenous natural icons like Uluru and the Kimberley.

He was absolutely a visionary with road safety. In his early years in parliament he demanded that vehicles have airbags, in the 1970s. Now it's par for the course, but it was absolutely visionary then. I was sitting in the Labor Party caucus today and Senator Gallacher came up to me and said, 'Even a few years ago Barry was driving us mad about road safety.' I think it's encapsulated in a quote from one of his articles:

When I became obsessed with the subject, I was treated as an eccentric. I don't regret a minute of it, and in my twilight years I'm determined to do what I can to revive the road safety campaign. I'd like to live long enough to see the headline: No one killed on the roads this year.

That was a conversation just today with Alex Gallacher, one of the senators who remembers his campaign on this.

Barry was environment minister when they forbade mineral sands mining on Fraser Island. He was one of the Hawke government's spearheads in preserving the natural wonders of the Franklin in Tasmania. I know that other people in other political parties claim credit for that, but Barry was absolutely crucial in that. When we wander around the Franklin these days, I think about him and his role in preserving it. He had a successful life in business and, as I said, a great career in politics. He was the author of nine books between 1987 and 2011 and an immense collection of newspaper and magazine columns, which I've been re-reading in the last two weeks. Some of his columns were excoriating about topics as varied as the wit and wisdom of the New South Wales right, the perils of nouvelle cuisine and the superannuation industry, where he argued that governments should 'save seniors from racetrack touts posing as fund managers'. I think we've all had experiences with constituents who feel that. In his immense newspaper output, Cohen made unpopular forays, arguing that ministerial travel should be judged on its outcome, not on its cost—I could tell some of the people at Fairfax and the ABC about that—and that the backbenchers should resume their independence and resume their rights in question time. We could tell some of the whips, prime ministers and leaders of the opposition about that.

He was a devoted ally and advocate of Senator John Faulkner and his plans to clean up Labor. Barry's whiplash pen critiqued people on his own side as well as on the conservative side of politics. They included Peter Garrett, Graham Richardson and, most memorably, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. In the early 1980s, years before Rudd became a national figure, Cohen gave him a searing character evaluation. When you read it 20 years later, through all that happened with Rudd in opposition and Rudd as Prime Minister and Rudd as insurgent, it makes Barry Cohen sound like the oracle of Bungendore, 20 years before Rudd became a national character.

But big, brave Barry didn't simply snipe from the safety of newspaper columns. He was a fierce critic of the maladministration of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and when he attended his last gathering of that august organisation he was the subject of a two-hour harangue by Fidel Castro. With incredible courage, the next day he gave it back with both barrels to the Cuban dictator. I didn't include some of the things that he said in my memorial speech, but I'll just read a couple of them. Cohen said: 'President Castro’s harangue was one of the most nauseating, disgraceful exhibitions I have ever witnessed. What was so extraordinary was his complete omission of any of the crimes committed by his friends in the communist bloc, the Third World and the non-aligned countries. Where in his speech was there any mention of the Soviet Union's invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, of Vietnam's invasion of Kampuchea, of Syria's slaughter of Palestinians and Lebanese, and the hundreds of thousands of political prisoners and denial of human rights in dozens of countries here today?' He did that in Cuba, while he was in their maw.

Barry's gentler side was shown in his passion for the Indigenous people of this country. This began with his extreme involvement, as a non-Indigenous assistant, in the Aboriginal campaign for the successful 1967 referendum. Years later, you could see that passion and involvement, with a tribute to his mentor and Indigenous friend, Faith Bandler, on her death. It is one of the most memorable columns I've ever read, and I urge people to go back and read it. It's in The Australian and it's called 'Thanks to Faith, change won out'.

He also said incredible and valuable things about housing affordability, which I won't go into. He and I didn't always agree on the issue of 18C. Barry was in favour of the legislation, but he said, 'I've come to the conclusion that you cannot change people's minds by legislation.' Arguing people around on these important issues was something he considered to be very important. If all of that wasn't enough, Barry Cohen was the deputy chairman of Old Parliament House from 1990 to 2001. In 1999 he made an ill-advised foray back into state politics at the request of the then Labor Premier. I must admit, I took 20 Mexicans north of the border to help him with how-to-vote cards.

Throughout his parliamentary and newspaper life, Cohen shared with me an immense pride in his Jewish origins and was a subtle, well-informed advocate of Israel. He was a very strong supporter of the two-state solution. The weight of the Nazi genocide of millions, including large segments of his family, weighed very heavily on the shoulders of his memory. He and his wife, Rae, did great justice to his murdered relatives, visiting Poland and writing a searing account of the fate of the Koziwodas, that branch of the family that was utterly wiped out, in an article which was published in the now defunct Bulletinand which you can get from my office.

Lastly, let me deal with the difficult topic of Barry's last years. His courage in dealing with his dementia publicly was matched only by the devotion of his son, Adam, and his wife, Rae, to his increasing physical fragility. He even turned his suffering into a good story. It would have been in one of his books if he had been writing books in the last years. This is from a newspaper:

… When word got out that I had joined the list of dementia sufferers one of the first calls I had was from an old "friend".

"A Mr Howard calling," was the message from the nurse. 'I don't know a Mr Howard, unless it's the former prime minister.'

"That's the one," said the nurse.

I'm very proud that a group of us—his Praetorian Guard and former ministerial staff, led by Dr Sergio Sergi, Peter Conway, his son Adam and I—travelled to Goulburn to farewell Barry at his nursing home. He was compos mentis. It was a tearful farewell. He recognised all of us. He cried. We all cried. It was a great thing to do, just a few months before he passed. Barry Cohen, a big character and a big Australian. His memory is a blessing.

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