Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

It's with a lot of sadness but also a great deal of affection and pride that I want to make a contribution on the motion that was moved by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition's address to it about the passing of Nick Bolkus. Nick was a huge figure in this parliament for a quarter of a century, but he was an even bigger figure in the South Australian community, in the western suburbs that I have the privilege of representing, and particularly in the Labor Party and the left of the Labor Party, which I want to talk about a little bit. He was an enormously important figure to me and to many of my colleagues, like Penny Wong, Jay Weatherill and so many others, and I'll talk about that a little bit.

Nick was born in 1950. He tragically passed away on Christmas Day, at the age of 75, and he lived an enormously rich life—albeit one that, in the last six or seven years, was very seriously hampered by illness, and I'll talk a bit about that. His family didn't follow the path that is typical of Greek Australians who came to Australia mainly in the postwar period and, to a degree, a little bit during the Depression in the 1930s, when we opened up our immigration channels to continental Europe. His family was from the very, very small island of Kastellorizo, which is a very short distance—a Kazi, as the Minister for Multicultural Affairs says. This is a small island, very close to the coast of Turkiye. In the early part of World War I, it was very seriously impacted by the Ottoman Empire and some thousands of Kazis fled their homes and crossed the ocean and built a new life either in Canada or in the US—happily, for many of them. I think there were only 8,000 or so at the time in Australia. Nick's grandfather was one of those who left his island home in about 1915. So his family had been well established in Adelaide for a long period of time, before Nick was born in the city, in the West End of Adelaide. He went to Sturt Street Primary School. After it closed, he was a leading figure in lobbying the then Wran government to reopen the Sturt Street Primary School that is still again going strong.

Nick, from a very early age, was drawn to the Labor Party. In his teens, he campaigned for Don Dunstan in the seat of Norwood in the 1960s. He was an unsuccessful candidate for state parliament in the mid-1970s in his 20s. He'd worked as a staffer in the Whitlam government before the age of 25, and he was an unsuccessful candidate on what we generally call an unwinnable position on the Senate ticket at the '77 election. But he was allocated a winnable spot by the party in 1980. He was only 30. He was a Greek Australian at a time when it was unusual to obtain pre-selection support, and, most suspiciously in the eyes of the powerbrokers of the South Australian branch of the Labor Party at the time, he had a university degree—a law degree, for that matter—that made him an egghead, and many other names that are not able to be repeated in this chamber because of standing orders and the decorum of the parliament. But he won at the age of 30, and that was the beginning of an extraordinary parliamentary career, extending a quarter of a century.

I know the Minister for Multicultural Affairs and the Minister for Skills and Training, who had that portfolio before Dr Aly, will talk about Nick's extraordinary contribution to multicultural affairs, to the immigration portfolio, which he held, to changing, through some extraordinary stories, the lives of tens of thousands of people. It's well known the story that he had responsibility for implementing the promise that Bob Hawke, as Prime Minister, made to people from China in Australia, at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre, that they could stay here. Nick implemented that and changed the lives of so many besides that. At the state memorial service that I had the privilege of being at a little while ago, a Vietnamese Australian woman told the story of Nick and Gareth Evans helping her father, who had been in prison in Vietnam for years and years, be released and come and join the family: the mother and the children, who had then grown up and still live in Australia—just some of those little pearls, the stories that immigration ministers are able to reflect upon as their time in this place concludes.

So he made an extraordinary contribution. He had the privilege of serving as a minister in some extraordinary governments, led by two extraordinary prime ministers. He was the first Greek Australian to be appointed to cabinet, and that was something he was deeply proud of, because he was so proud of his culture and he was so widely respected in what is a large Greek Australian community in Adelaide, particularly in the western suburbs of Adelaide that Nick called home for many, many decades.

I first met Nick in my teens—in my late teens, when Nick was a junior minister, not yet appointed to cabinet—in the late 1980s at a famous, or to some degree infamous, restaurant in Adelaide's Rundle Street called Da Clemente. What struck me then about Nick was his willingness to listen to a young lad who was probably a complete pain in the backside, and that was what people talk about when they reflect on their time with Nick or observing Nick. He was the most active listener, I think, I've ever encountered. When people sat down with Nick, he wasn't one of those people whose eyes were darting all around the room to see who they could talk to next. People went away from a conversation with Nick feeling like they had been listened to—actively listened to—and that was really one of the enduring things that I think people take from Nick. It's something I see so deeply in his daughter Aria, particularly, who has worked with me for the last couple of years and is campaigning now for the state parliament as well.

When I got to know Nick a little bit better in my early 20s and into my 20s, he had the privilege of having a faction named after him. The Bolkus Left was one of the insurgent factions at the time in South Australian Labor Party politics and ultimately won the tussle between warring subfactions of the Left, and the Bolkus Left just became the Left. Although that sounds sort of funny and tongue in cheek, it was actually a really important thing for the South Australian branch, because what came out of Nick using his networks, his experience and his wisdom to seek change in the Labor Party and re-establish what had been a long consensus culture in the branch of the Labor Party in Adelaide has set the party up—as Peter Malinauskas, the Premier, said at the state memorial service—for three decades of real success. This is the best branch in our party. I think it's the most stable. It's had four leaders in 35 years, and our current leader, Peter Malinauskas, is likely to be there for a long time to come. It's been electorally very successful and has made real change in a state and a jurisdiction that's not easy. It doesn't have a lot of the natural advantages that other states have, whether it's the resources you see in Western Australia and Queensland or the big population centres of the two big states. And so Nick's contribution—largely in partnership with now Senator Farrell and also with Pat Conlon, a dear friend of Nick's who worked for him for some time and then became a minister in the Rann government—has set up that branch—which had had a patchy history, I think it's fair to say, before the mid-nineties—for real success and a real contribution to the interests of South Australians. And I think we're all very grateful to him for that.

But, while being a busy cabinet minister and then a busy shadow cabinet minister who paid a really leading role after we lost government in 1996 in this place, he always had the time to mentor younger members of the party. I know what an influence he was on Penny Wong. I've witnessed it. I know what an enormous supporter he was of her potential and the need for us as a party to get her into parliament and to use that potential for, in part, our party's interests but, more importantly, the nation's benefit. And he used to have us round the barbecues. He used to talk to us respectfully—with much more respect than I think sometimes we deserved, as precocious pains in the backside, as I said. But it was something that characterised Nick right through his time as a minister, as a shadow minister and then after he left the parliament in the mid-2000s.

It reflected the way he'd come up. It really was something for Nick—as I said, a 30-year-old legally qualified Greek Australian—to come into the Australian Senate. It's not so unusual now, which is a terrific thing, but it was. It really was, 45 years ago. That reflected the vision and the support that he got. As I'm sure my friend the member for Makin remembers—he worked in the Whitlam government as a staffer with Nick—it was the support of two giants of the Labor movement, real giants of South Australia, Mick Young, the then member for Port Adelaide, and Clyde Cameron. Clyde was such an important part of the modernisation of our party but really the leader of our branch for three decades or more. He recognised what Nick could bring to the parliament and to our party and the need for us to start making real connections to communities like the Greek Australian community. Nick passed that on. He learned that from Clyde and from Mick and from Reg Bishop and others. He passed it on to Jim Toohey and he passed it on to the next generation, and I for one am so enormously grateful.

These things are sometimes tense. The master-apprentice relationship is not always easy and is sometimes a little tense. And John Rau frankly said that Nick might have wanted to spend more time in the parliament and would have made an enormous contribution. But, after leaving the parliament after 25 years, he made every day count. He continued to support the party. He continued to mentor young people. He built an extraordinary career in business. It's not always that people make that transition from being a successful minister to being a successful businessman. Nick undoubtedly did.

He had a lot more to contribute and a lot more to give when he was very cruelly struck with an illness 6½ years ago. I was due to have lunch with him and Mel Mansell, the editor-at-large of the Advertiser, and Nick, unusually, was late. After making a call, he had been taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital and never really recovered. He spent time at Hampstead and then some years at Westminster, a nursing home just near his house and around the corner from my house as well, and was cared for wonderfully, according to his family, by the staff who were there. He rang the bell a lot, agitated a lot for better conditions, as you'd expect. I think we all missed the contributions that Nick otherwise would have made over those last six or seven years.

Thank you for the indulgence to say a few words about someone who had such a big impact on my life. In conclusion, I want to say how much the South Australian community, the Greek Australian community in Adelaide and the Labor family have tried to wrap their arms around Nick's family: Nick's wife Mary; his older son Nick, who has built an extraordinary legal career himself—and I know how proud Nick was of the younger Nick—and his two younger daughters, who are now in their 20s, Mikayla and Aria.

I've talked about Aria. Mikayla, who I think is only 23, gave an extraordinary address to the memorial service. I know she found it difficult, but it was reflective, it was wise, it had an extraordinary amount of analysis, and it was just so loving of her father. Aria, who I know much better and is, as I said, the candidate for the state seat that I live in—I would love to see her be my local member—was typically strong and forthright and, as her dad would have insisted, used the opportunity to advocate for better policy in aged care and stroke care in particular. Mary said, with tongue in cheek, that the fact that all three are now lawyers showed a real failure of parenthood, and maybe to a degree she was right. They really are apples that didn't fall far from the tree. There's a lot of Nick in all three of them and a lot of their mum as well.

I know how proud Nick would have been about the way in which—it's very confronting, I imagine—the community has taken notice of Nick's passing. It's a high-profile passing, and it was a very big funeral at the church, a very big state memorial service. Talking about your dad, who was such a high-profile figure, can't be easy while you're grieving yourself, and they did it with such dignity, warmth and pride of what their father did for their family and did for their community. I couldn't have more respect for all of them than what I have for the way in which they've handled this period of real grief.

To Nick I say thank you for the advice and the mentoring that you gave to me. It's meant an enormous amount to me. Thank you for the hospitality you showed us over many years. It was not just instructive; it was fun. It was fun to spend time with you on so many occasions with your family and your friends down at Henley Beach. May you rest in peace.

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