Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I didn't know Peter Morris well personally, but I was a journalist in the Canberra press gallery in the 1980s and I got to do something with him that only a small group of journalists got to do, and that was to seal a road in Western Australia that was the missing link in having a bitumen road right around the country. We did this on 7 September 1986, and there were things that Peter Morris said in the speech that he gave then that resonate very strongly with me now, many decades later, when I have a much deeper understanding of the importance of that infrastructure work that he did.

Let me take you back to that time. There was a small contingent of us. I was a radio journalist. We travelled there and we were staying overnight, in Halls Creek from memory. We got on a very small plane, a couple of TV journalists, a couple of radio journos and some print reporters. Not everyone coped well with the little flight. I like bumpy flights; not everyone did—and I won't mention Annette's name because she was mortified at the experience. We landed in Western Australia, having had a little bit of a look at the Bungle Bungles from the air—a place that none of us had ever been.

Peter Morris was super excited about this trip. It was a Sunday, so we were all doing this on our weekend, which is probably why my radio station allowed me to go. I have a copy of the media release from the time. It's a shame people can't see this. It was typed on a typewriter. It's a real blast from the past to see it. Peter Morris described the day as 'an historic day for all Australians'. He said the only event with which this can be compared 'is the circumnavigation of Australia by Bass and Flinders in their tiny boat early last century'—so he was talking about two centuries ago.

This was the last section of gravel road to be sealed. It was between Halls Creek and Fitzroy Crossing. That last section was a couple of hundred kilometres, but Peter Morris got to sit in the machine and do the last spray of seal over the road. He wasn't a minister who just stood back and watched; he got involved. It's a bit hard to capture that on radio, but the cameras had some really good shots of it.

These are some of the words he shared with us in the speech that he made to the small group who were there to witness this. He talked about what was being done as 'appearing to be something small' and 'yet one which will change the face of Australia'. He also acknowledged the First Nations people of this region—again, this is not something I appreciated as a 23-year-old—when he said:

When people first passed through this area, they followed ancient trails which had existed since Dreamtime.

Then came white man with their herds of cattle—and the Canning Stock Route was born.

He then went on to talk about how, in subsequent years, roads were built and how people could drive 'from place to place'. Previous speakers referred to his turn of phrase. He had a lovely way of describing things. He said:

People could drive from place to place—even if it did mean fighting swollen rivers, ploughing through mud bogs, and choking against the dust.

One of the things he mourned was that, with the sealing of this road, we actually lose some of that pioneer spirit that he saw was part and parcel of how Aussies had lived. And he did comment:

Two hundred years from now—

we're still a little way off that—

a new generation of Australians will have reason to remember this Sunday—the day their country was finally linked north, south, east and west.

Now what was really key for Peter—there are some infrastructure ministers who love the infrastructure. There are some defence ministers who love the gear that goes with it. What Peter Morris made really clear was that he loved it for what it achieved and what it did for people. This national highway was actually the largest single civil engineering project that had ever been undertaken by Australians and at the time was one of the biggest civil engineering projects in the world. But he talked about what those roads mean for people. He said:

Roads are the arteries—the life line along which travels food, medical supplies, building materials—everything.

And in human terms roads mean even more.

They bring people together.

Certainly, as the member for Macquarie with a large peri-urban electorate of about 4,300 square kilometres, I think roads are absolutely vital. This has been something in the last 15 years that I've appreciated very deeply. In the Hawkesbury local government area, we have 5,300 kilometres of roads—that's the length of our roads—and 285 kilometres of those roads are still unsealed council roads. I know the impact they have on my community. In good weather, it might be fine; when they've just been graded, it might be fine. But so often these roads cause pain for people. They might be inaccessible. They might damage tyres and vehicles. They're a real challenge for people. We have been working—as, clearly, Peter Morris had a conviction—to seal those roads.

In the Blue Mountains and Emu Plains, the roads are not so long, but some of them are really old. When you've got 194-year-old roads like the Victoria Pass, you absolutely know that governments have to invest to maintain and, in the case of the Victoria Pass up at Mount Victoria, to repair and make resilient for the next couple of hundred years. In fact, I feel like the way Peter Morris described it is exactly what we're facing. He said:

In effect what the Federal Government is doing with its road building program is to shrink distances helping to bring more cities and communities closer together.

Better roads mean easier, quicker, safer and cheaper travelling—and so more people travel.

He goes on—it was a lovely speech in the middle of a fairly remote area in Western Australia. He had a beautiful five-page speech. Now, he of course thanked the contractors who made this road possible, and the construction workers got his extra thanks because he said 'who despite the difficult conditions, built this road in a true display of professionalism'.

When I saw that Peter Morris had died, I thought about the interactions I had had with him as a young journalist. This was the one that really stood out. In Old Parliament House, there were many press conferences and many times when he told me things, a lot of which I probably didn't really care a lot about as a 23-year-old. But, as someone much older than that now representing the community that I do, I want to pay respect to the passion and the insight and the understanding he had for the role that he did in his various ministries that touched on infrastructure. I'm ever grateful to him for suggesting that a bunch of journos might want to jump on a plane with him and head to Halls Creek to watch a machine seal the road. It was a terrific experience. It taught me a lot and, in reflection, has taught me even more.

To his family: I concur with the comments that have been made. He gave a lot of his life to service. His family gave much of their lives to serving what was, for his dad, their new home. That's the sort of contribution we know migrants and their children and their grandchildren make. I think it's a beautiful opportunity for the parliament to say thank you for that. May he rest in peace.

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