Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Professor Jim Hyde died in August. He was stirrer and an activist and incredibly intelligent. He was a man of strong principles and commitment, forthright and brave, a community leader. His lifelong commitment to preventative health care came from his deep love of people and respect for humanity. He was a political adviser in the 1980s, a Senate candidate for Labor in the 1990 election and a longstanding member of the LGBTI policy committee of the ALP.

Jim was a Labor man, but this did not prevent him from developing the relationships he needed with Marie Tehan and the Kennett government as general manager of the Victorian AIDS Council at the height of the HIV epidemic in the early 1990s. That experience of health policy during the AIDS crisis and the need for evidence to prevail over ideology informed his life's work. As a policy analyst and advocate for health promotion prevention policy in New South Wales and Victoria, he is remembered for asking, 'What's the evidence?' He served as a senior public servant as well in New South Wales and Victoria, and in 2016 he was honoured by being made a fellow of the Victorian chapter of the Institute of Public Administration Australia. He understood the intersection between the political and the personal, what it is like to feel like your body and your identity and the way you're born is up for debate, and what it's like to try to fight it through political activism. He leaves behind his daughters Sophie and Alice and their families, his partner, Glenn, and an Australia that is fairer, more loving and more compassionate.