Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have no great words of eloquence—having just seen that this debate was scheduled, I have had only a moment to scribble a few reflections—but I do want to do Barney and his family the honour of recording in the Hansard a few words of appreciation for his life and his service, knowing that these things get passed on. Having listened to the member for Scullin, I was struck by how many of the words he used are exactly the same as the notes that I scribbled; we knew the same man. It is with great sadness that those in the Labor family, and particularly those who knew Barney and worked with him in so many different phases of his life, heard of his passing. I worked casually for Barney for a short time, and I think it's fair to say that he benefited even less from my service than from yours back then, given the nature of what was going on.

As young, bright-eyed, overly active activists, we only had to meet Barney to see immediately his decency, his humanity and his extreme good manners. Barney was one of those people who would never talk over anyone. His generosity meant that he was never too busy. His door was always open. He was never too busy, no matter what he was dealing with, to have a word with young Labor people—who were trashing his office and unwashing the dishes and all the rest of it. His great compassion was overwhelmingly clear.

When I was a staffer from 1995 to 2000 in this place for Alan Griffin, Barney was always held up as the archetypal serious senator, if you like, someone who relished his role as a parliamentarian and took it very, very seriously. If you wanted a piece of policy work done and done thoroughly but understood the risk that you might not get the answer you were hoping for, because Barney would follow the evidence and apply his values to whatever came before him, then you knew to take it to Barney or one of his committees. As I think has been said by others who worked more closely with him, at times he could be frustrating, and furiously so, because of his adherence to process and his determination to follow his values and speak out, even against his own party, when he felt moved to do so.

My predecessor spoke in his valedictory of different types of people who are called to serve in this place: the parliamentarian and the politician. Some are both, and some are one or the other. I think Barney overwhelmingly was a parliamentarian, someone here for service, to legislate, to evaluate, to pass good laws and to advocate for and represent the people he felt he was here to represent.

I'll just put a personal note there that I was also very good mates with Justin Cooney, his son, at university. He is a few years older than me—although he seemed many years older than me, now I'm not so sure, as the years pass! I texted Justin when I heard of his father's passing, and he texted back not long after with a wry reflection. He knew exactly what was on my mind. He said, 'Yes, I'm just glad that he died without ever knowing what we all got up to at his beach house at Anglesea,' which he was so generous as to share with hordes of young Labor people. It was, 'Yeah, there'll only be three of three of us,' and 25 descended on the house. He was generous in that way.

As has been said, he brought to his role as a senator a lifetime already of service and commitment to social justice, to unions, to collectivism, to human rights and to the Labor Party. He was 50 years old when he was elected, so he was already mature in his career, and it certainly wasn't a pay rise for him. He did it out of a sense of service.

Barney also was a deeply religious man—deeply, deeply religious—and not always associated with the ratbag left wing of the Labor Party. I'm not a religious person, and at times I have worried about, if you like, the muscular religiosity in our public sphere. I don't mean people expressing their values but those taking that one step further by forcing them on others or expecting others to live by their particular set of values or beliefs. But Barney's convictions were deep and personal, probably more so than those of people who I think at times preach these things to others. His religious convictions certainly shaped his values and how he lived his life without ever preaching to others or expecting others to conform to his way of being in the world and certainly informed his Labor values.

I just want to read into the Hansard, in closing, from a beautiful press release—a statement, really—put out by Senator Kim Carr, his very dear friend of many years. I want to read two quotes. Firstly, on Barney's attitude to power, I'll just quote from Kim's release for the Hansard:

In his first speech, Barney turned Lord Acton's famous dictum "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" on its head: if power corrupts, he said, "lack of power corrodes absolutely". Those in Australia who lacked power "to give at least minimum expression to their needs" included indigenous people, the unemployed and non-English-speaking migrants, especially women. "The more they can be effectively equipped with power", Barney said, "the more likely it is that their social distress will be abated and the community as a whole benefit".

From that fundamental belief, he never wavered in his 17 years of service in the Senate, which he was called to, he felt, as 'the chamber best equipped to check abuses of power'.

I'm told that those of his colleagues, Labor, Liberal or otherwise, who came before his committees always knew that he had a set of values that were applied ruthlessly and consistently to legislation before him. But—to close—Barney was also held up on both sides of the chamber because of his courtesy, which he displayed when expressing his own views and responding to criticism. He wrote:

Courtesy and grace are forever needed in debate. A civil society cannot be at its best unless constituents treat each other civilly.

In remembering Barney for his love of life, his love of family, his love of Labor and, indeed, his love of humanity, I'll forever remember those twinkling eyes that he had when he sat down to listen to whatever mad scheme or idea you'd come up with, as he did so patiently and graciously. Vale Barney.

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