Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This evening I want to bear testimony to the life of Delcia Kite, a member of the Legislative Council of New South Wales from 1976 to 1995, and to convey my condolences to her husband, Fred, and children, Raylene, Maureen and Darryl. Delcia Kite was in many senses a trailblazer. She had an uncharacteristic career in the early 20th century. She was educated at the prestigious Sydney Girls High School and then at the Sydney Technical College, where she focused on engineering and drawing. She was in 1941 employed by the federal Department of the Interior as a draftswoman. Having married Fred, they conducted a wine bar in Granville in Western Sydney, which became the nub of the Granville Central Branch of the Labor Party. It was, amazingly, the longest wine bar licence in the state until recent decades. I remarked that only recently my close friends and party members, Momir and Zora Dodic, conducted a fundraiser at the restaurant there.

Delcia played a crucial role in the preselection struggles of Tom Uren to arrive in this House. Famously, her husband Fred was assaulted by the federal member Charlie Morgan. My father said to Rod Cavalier at the time that that assault was like manna from heaven because it spread throughout the Labor movement and Uren won the preselection ballot. She also played a crucial role in the selection of Pat Flaherty as a local state member for the area. Morgan is famous for the Brown-Fitzpatrick case and the allegations that he was involved in immigration rackets for the Dutch community which led to a royal commission.

Delcia's maiden speech in the Legislative Council in 1976 was very prescient. She made the remark that she was the granddaughter of a shearer who was now in a House where his opponents in the great shearer strikes of the 1890s had previously dominated. Her father himself was a shearer and a publican—perhaps that is why she and her husband went into a wine bar later. She made remarks in that speech which were very prescient given the fact it was in 1976. She strongly emphasised equity for women and talked about the lack of action that occurred on that front. She remarked that in 1958 another MLC had spoken about the need to eliminate discrimination against women and that in the interim all that had happened was the 1972 equal pay case and an inquiry by the federal government in that area. She denounced discrimination against women.

Very interestingly, she talked about the question of sustainable development, and whether the world will be forced by circumstance and the deteriorating environment to do things. Quite frankly, as we all know, that was very much ahead of its time. She said:

This poses the question; does this mean that the change in will be forced upon us by the external events by catastrophe instead of calculation?

As I say, she was hitting some big issues there. She was a close political colleague of my father and was a member with him in the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales. She played an axiomatic role in New South Wales politics at a time when to be on the left of the party or the right of the party actually meant something. She was in the central executive of the Labor women's committee from 1970 to 1978 when that organisation represented hundreds of people at the annual conference—before it was closed down for being a bit too unruly as far as the dominant forces in the party thought.

I spoke earlier about where her husband was assaulted by the federal member and the results of that. Ironically, in the same branch decades later we also had manna from heaven when a major attack on Tom Uren's control and representation of the area was somewhat stymied when Mr Samir Makhari was picked up with $1 million worth of heroin in his car and was the major initiator of branch stacking in the area. I not only raise the question of Delcia's life, her contribution to the Labor movement and her stresses on issues long before they became more popular in society but use this as a warning for the Labor Party when it associates with people such as the person I just specified.

Granville Central Branch has been a very historic branch of the party. Good Street Granville could in the future once again hit the headlines if the party is not careful to disassociate itself from elements that can only bring damage to the party. We saw the serious assault upon Peter Baldwin because of the same connections with these elements. I salute Delcia Kite for her role in the party. She was a woman before her time in her career. She was a woman who played a strong role not only in the western suburbs of Sydney but also in the eastern suburbs. Her husband and father also did something that was before their time: renovating houses and selling them off later. (Time expired)

House adjourned 20:00