Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I start by acknowledging the contribution that was just made by the member for Berowra, who, in a really fine contribution, honoured a great Australian in a way which certainly illuminated aspects of his life for me and for the country. It was a really fine contribution in this place, so thank you. For those of us in the class of 2007 and those of us in the class of 2004, Major General Michael Jeffery was the first Governor-General that we were introduced to as fresh-faced members of parliament. When we were in that queue lining up to shake his hand, the man we met was quiet—'austere' was the word that the member for Berowra used, and I think that's fair—but also a man of enormous authority and enormous dignity. Major General Michael Jeffery was the first career soldier to be Australia's Governor-General, and what a decorated career as a soldier that was. He was deployed in Malaya on secondment to the British Army. He was deployed in Borneo. He was deployed in Papua New Guinea, a country for which he formed a particular affection, like me, and a country which became a very special place for Michael Jeffery because it's also the place where he met and married his wife, Marlena. He was deployed in Vietnam where, as the commander of an infantry company in Operation Hammersley, he was awarded the Military Cross for his bravery and for his valour.

Major General Jeffery was the Commander of the Special Air Service Regiment in Perth and then, as Major General, the commander of the 1st Division of the Australian Army. In every sense he was a soldier's soldier, but his career, both in the Army and beyond, was so much more than that. I can remember talking to the current Chief of the Defence Force, when he was the Chief of Army, about why it was that people made a decision to join the army. If you want to go to sea, you join the navy. If you want to fly, you join the air force. But what was it that made people join the army particularly? He said that the basic platform of the navy is ships, the basic platform of the air force is planes but the platform of the army is people—the army is the people's service—and that was an idea which sat very well with Michael Jeffery. He was a people person and his life was about the service of people.

As a senior officer in the Army, he saw that married quarters for married personnel were in an appalling state and quite bravely, in a way which he was recommended not to do because it might affect his career, he went out and advocated for change in respect of those facilities. The result of his efforts led to the Defence Housing Authority. Later, as the Governor of Western Australia, he became aware that there was a sewage leak next to the Wiluna primary school, in the town of his birth. He got on the phone straightaway and had that leak fixed. He was a person who was always caring about others.

Major General Michael Jeffery served for 12 years in vice-regal office and he did so with distinction and honour. There is a delicate line to be walked, for those who serve in vice-regal office, with respect to the management of their own personal opinions, and it was a line that he walked with the utmost discretion, always on the appropriate side. However, one should not confuse that with an idea that Major General Michael Jeffery was anything other than a deeply thoughtful human being, and the contribution that we've just heard from the member for Berowra absolutely bears that out. He argued, for example, for the inclusion of Aboriginal history education in the curriculum of the schools in Western Australia. On leaving vice-regal office, he knew that one of the great challenges that would face humanity was how we were going to feed the human population into the middle of the century, how we were going to manage our water resources. So he established Soils for Life, knowing that in the most practical way soil quality was fundamental to the kind of agricultural production which would be required in order to meet that challenge.

Michael Jeffery was a man who was very humble. It's a repeated message that's come through in all of the eulogies about him. According to one of his staff, during his time as our 24th Governor-General he regarded himself as the nation's 'thankyouer-in-chief'. It says something about him that he was always interested in the contribution and in what others were doing, rather than in himself. His granddaughter said:

Despite his capacity to walk with kings, the humbleness of the boy from Wiluna never really left him.

It says a lot about Michael Jeffery. It says a lot about where his thought life was. It wasn't about his ego and it wasn't about his self; it was about others. The others who mattered most in his life, of course, were his family, and it is to them that our thoughts are most keenly directed at this moment: to Marlena, his wife, to his children and to his grandchildren. They will be feeling an enormous sense of loss and pain right now, but they can gain comfort from the idea that from their family came a remarkable Australian. Vale Major General Michael Jeffery.

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