Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this condolence motion and pay tribute to the life of Queen Elizabeth II, a true servant leader who never made it about herself. In her 70 years on the throne, the Queen was a constant presence in the lives of most Australians and certainly in my life. Her Majesty was a head of state with enormous power, at least in theory, but she recognised the importance of only exercising that power in the most extreme circumstances and avoiding any commentary on issues of contested politics. Having a head of state who chooses not to exercise power is something we should cherish, because there will always be a long list of interests wanting the exercise of power. Queen Elizabeth lived and breathed her duty and was rarely tempted to go out on a limb and engage in anything political. She also brought stability to a changing nation and a changing world, and for that the world is a better place.

Despite her role and position, however, she was incredibly down to earth in practice, as we've been hearing from so many here today. That's what my grandparents told me. They hosted her during a three-day tour of the original Snowy scheme in 1963. My grandfather William Hudson was the chief engineer of the project, and he and my grandmother had the great honour of showing Her Majesty and Prince Philip around the project. What stood out most for them was the way she engaged with the workers. She asked questions and was genuinely interested in the hard and dangerous work they were doing and what this project meant to Australia and to them. The workers were a remarkable group who had migrated to Australia following the Second World War. They were tough people who had witnessed atrocities but were given an extraordinary opportunity to meet with someone of such privilege, yet she treated them as if they were no different to a prime minister or a president.

During that tour, the Queen and Prince Philip joined my grandparents for dinner at their home in Cooma North. My grandmother was from a dour, stoic South Island New Zealand farming family with deep Scottish ancestry. Like the Queen, she was heavily influenced by the ravages of the Depression and the two world wars and revered the simplest things in life: family, faith, service and simple food. She served the Queen lamb chops, followed by tinned peaches and ice cream for dessert. By all accounts, that simple home-cooked meal—an Australian dinner in a very traditional Australian home on a hill in Cooma, a meal many of us in rural Australia were brought up on—was gratefully received by both the Queen and Prince Philip. My grandmother's reverence for the Queen was bolstered by what she saw of her on that visit. Each Christmas, she would demand we all watch the Queen's Christmas broadcast and stand in the living room to sing 'God Save the Queen'.

It strikes me that the loss of the Queen is part of the loss of that remarkable generation, who saw duty as more important than rights; service as more important than being served; and truth as coming from the simplest and most traditional things in life, not the shiny temptations. Perhaps what we are seeing now is some rediscovery of the virtue and values of that remarkable generation, a generation who saw unprecedented adversity and tumultuous change.

On her 21st birthday, the then Princess famously declared that her whole life, whether it be short or long, would be devoted to service. True to her word and stoic until the very end, her final act as monarch took place just two days before her death, when she formally appointed Liz Truss as her 15th UK Prime Minister—a fitting end to a lifetime of service, dedication and devotion to her people. May she rest in peace.

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