Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

In the last term of the Howard government, I was at a function in the Great Hall. Paul's health had been fading somewhat, but all the time he was a delight to be around. I remember, whilst the Prime Minister of Australia was speaking, Paul had a little bit of a turn. His head was on the table, flat out. The doctor from Western Australia, from the Liberal Party, Mal Washer, came across, and we all went to Paul's table. He said, 'He'll be right, but perhaps you can quietly take him back to his room.' And it wasn't inebriation; he'd had a slight turn. As I took him out of the Great Hall, his strides fell down! His own response was, 'Listen, man, pull up my strides!' So I reached down with one hand and pulled them up by the belt. I was looking at him and I said, 'Paul, this is not the time to be mooning John Howard!' Everything with Paul was a delight.

Not long after that, some of his staff approached me and said: 'Could you have the hard conversation with Paul. I think it's time—for himself, for Margaret and for his family—that he spend his time at home. No-one wants to go out of here having their last days in this place.' I went around to see Paul and I said, 'Paul, I have to have a very difficult conversation with you.' He said: 'There are no difficulties between you and me, Barnaby. We are close friends, close mates. I'll just grab a bottle of red wine. Fire away.' I remember looking down and saying, 'Paul, I want you to retire,' and the conversation stopped. What I can say about Paul is that he was never vindictive, he was never nasty and he never had a bad word. He went quiet and, later on, came back and said, 'I accepted that. I think that was the appropriate thing to do and the appropriate conversation to have.'

Every day was a joy with Paul. There were so many jokes! But some of them were off-colour. You just can't repeat them. Paul could say them but no-one else could. He had one about a Yorkshire man and a border collie, and you'd wait and think, 'Oh my God, the punchline is going to come and then the room is going to disappear under the table!' He told of a Yorkshire man to whom a person was saying, 'You've got a lovely dog,' to which the Yorkshire man replied, 'I have a lovely dog. It's a border collie, you know.' The man asked, 'What's its name?' to which the Yorkshire man replied, 'His name is Francis Bacon.' The man said 'Francis Bacon?', to which the Yorkshire man replied, 'No, Fancies Bacon.' The man asked, 'Why would you call your dog Fancies Bacon?' The Yorkshire man replied, 'Oh, he has a distinct love of pigs!' And everyone said, 'Well, there you go!'

An honourable member: He told it a lot better!

He told it a lot better—and probably with a definite lexicon in certain areas! One of the great tragedies is that Paul was never a minister. He certainly deserved to be one. He was a shadow parl sec for a very brief period of time. I say that because his knowledge in certain areas was absolutely exemplary—especially in the communications field, which was his personal love. He wanted to make sure regional areas were well-heard and did not have to deal with syndicated coverage from the major capitals; he thought that was a complete usurping of the fundamental right of having your own story heard by local people. And he drove media ownership within the coalition—he definitely did. He had to be respected. You had to get a tick-off from Paul before you made a major change. He might not have been a minister but if he decided to confront you in the party on some of the issues, you'd lose because his knowledge was exemplary.

He was a very sophisticated and well-polished person. Once I was at mass with him and my parents at St Stephen's Cathedral in Brisbane. My mother, who is vastly more polished than me, was talking to Paul, to whom I'd introduced her. She said, 'That final hymn was marvellous. Was that Brahms?', and Paul said, 'The 2nd one? No, that was Mozart's 3rd.' I just looked at him and thought, 'You're no fool. You're a very intelligent person.' And he came with a strong sense of the aesthetic. His love of the arts was something that showed another side to his character.

Paul was a brilliant marginal seat campaigner. Both sides of politics have them. I'll call one out. Chris Hayes is a brilliant one for the Labor Party. They are given a hard job and they go out and do it. In state politics, there is Thomas George. Give them a hard job and they'll go out and do it—and Paul did it. I'll try to refer colleagues to his style. His style was not to be adversarial but to be absolutely diligent about the needs and requirements of people. He saw being the local member as doing public service on the small issues. If you do that public service well on the small issues, helping people with their pensions and helping people with other requirements, where you are the final hope for that person—you're their final hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi!—people will follow you as a person and respect your work ethic. Driving around with Paul was incredible. He'd say, 'See that street there? There's Mrs Smith, who lives at No. 5. I'm pretty sure she voted for me at the last election but I think I might have lost her, because I've been speaking to her lately.' That is the micromanagement that he had for the people. And he'd say why, he'd say the issue. That's how he worked.

Another story concerns a very, very tough town for the coalition, Mount Morgan. It's absolutely strongly Labor—always has been. The street names are from miners and they are named after parts of Ireland and Cornwall. You could say that things haven't changed much since the mine was opened. Paul could never win the seat but he decided he'd make an all-out effort in Mount Morgan. I think he had got 364 votes in the last election. So he built a bridge. He raised money and got a bridge built that was named after Private Jones, who was the first serviceman killed in action while fighting under the auspices of Australia—before that it was New South Wales, Queensland, the colonies. He built this bridge, and everyone went up, and at the next election he got 365 votes! So he said, 'That bridge, which cost so much, got me a vote!' But it was the attention to detail.

I really want to convey to Margaret and the Neville family how fondly Paul was thought of. You must realise that he was the centre of the conversation at any time the party had drinks, a meal or something that was not part of the official process. He was an absolute dilettante. When he was taking notes at party room meetings, he had a very fine script, and he was an absolute dilettante about everything that was happening in that meeting, who was saying what and what their position was. You would not get him on details. You could not re-ascribe what you might have said, because he had noted it. He would sit at the table and note everything absolutely.

He was very close to Warren Truss. They were the best of mates and of a similar ilk. He continued on in his role with an absolute passion, and he never had a fit of pique; he might have wished to have a higher office, but—very similar to Senator 'Wacka' Williams—he was absolutely certain that he could do his job from whatever position the parliament had given him.

The start of my knowledge of Paul came from him at state conference. He loved the National Party's state conference and he would occupy the microphone on virtually every second issue—he apparently had a position on them. He loved the sense of being a representative of the rank and file members of the party, and they respected him immensely for the fact that he took the rank and file section of the party and treated it with absolute respect. He would be their champion and fight their issues. So vale Paul Christopher Neville. May you rest in peace. I'm absolutely certain that a person who has lived the tenor of your life has nothing to expect in what comes after except the very, very best, in a reflection of a very, very well-lived life.

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