Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to offer my condolences and to recognise the life and service of the Hon. James Joseph Webster, a senator for the state of Victoria from 1964 to 1980, a National and a fine example of leadership in public policy. Jim Webster joined the Young Country Party in 1940. Later, he was the junior vice-president and then the senior vice-president of the Victorian branch of the Country Party, and he was its president in 1963 and 1964. He served on the party's federal council from 1960 to 1964 and was an unsuccessful Country Party candidate for the Legislative Assembly seat of Broadmeadows at the Victorian state elections in 1955.

On 9 December 1964, at a joint sitting of the Victorian parliament, Jim Webster was chosen to fill a casual vacancy in the Senate, and he remained a senator until 1980. His elevation to the Senate, and even his membership and participation in the Country Party, was remarkable, given his background, which included serving as a delegate to the Australian Timber Workers Union while working as a clerk in charge of a log mill at Orbost, and, later, joining the Waterside Workers Union, where he took up a job on the wharves in Melbourne.

While his life prior to entering the Senate had the outward appearance of a contradictory existence, throughout his career he proved to be a champion for the cause of regional Australians. The Nationals' strong and consistent voice for productive agriculture is often misconstrued as being anti-environment. This ignores the fact that farmers are the stewards of the land, and they care for it and their surrounding environment. Jim Webster was the Minister for Science and later the Minister for Science and the Environment for the Fraser government—not a portfolio usually associated with the Nationals. His achievements include, most notably, his work for Australia's Antarctic research efforts, by establishing the National Marine Science Research Centre in Hobart. He twice visited Australian bases and Webster Bay in the Australian territorial section of the Antarctic, and this territorial section was named in his honour.

He also established the CSIRO's Australian Animal Health Laboratory at Geelong, which provided a world-class facility for the safe handling of exotic animal diseases. Now known as the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness, it remains a critical frontline defence, including against foot-and-mouth disease, which is an issue as we speak due to outbreaks in Indonesia. Kakadu was declared a national park during his tenure in the Science and Environment portfolio, and whaling was banned in Australian waters. Senator Webster assumed responsibility for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, whose principal function was to recommend areas within the Great Barrier Reef region for declaration as part of the marine park, an event that occurred when the Capricornia section was proclaimed in October 1979.

Of course, being Minister for Science means you must be across a myriad of issues, not all of them pressing concerns for humanity, like the question as to whether the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation's division of radiophysics had—and this is in 1979—the necessary equipment and qualified personnel to carry out a program in search of extraterrestrial intelligence. Senator Webster advised:

I have asked the CSIRO to examine the matter and I'm advised that the facility at Parkes would be capable of adding basically to research in this area. However, the priorities of the Organisation are such that this project is not seen as one which should direct its attention at an early stage.

During his time as Minister for Science, Senator Webster did have to pay attention to space. It was in 1979, and the abandoned US space station Skylab was ready to crash back to earth. Senator Webster told the Herald newspaper, 'Twenty-one tonnes of debris, consisting of thousands of pieces, may survive re-entry and impact the earth's surface.' But he calmly reassured readers that the Skylab communication centre would coordinate any action required if the spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere over Australia. As history records, Skylab did crash to earth over Australia, but away from populated areas and without any harm being caused to a single Australian, which was no doubt a great relief to Senator Webster.

Jim Webster's Senate biography describes him as:

… a hard-working backbencher and a meticulous minister, reputed to have been in the habit of carrying a ten centimetre pile of briefing papers into the Senate. He adopted a businessman's approach to the work of the Coalition Government, while remaining an astute Country Party politician, who spoke frequently for, and to, his electorate. As the Australian observed in 1979, Webster had survived 'a lengthy court battle aimed at taking him out of the Senate, slipped into the ministry almost by chance …

and resisted a number of attempts to replace him.

Jim Webster was a great contributor to his party, to the Senate and to the advancement of good public policy in Australia, particularly in relation to regional Australia, the environment and scientific endeavour. As one of the newest members of the Nationals in this place, I am honoured to speak today and to reflect on his great service, acknowledge some of his many achievements and offer my condolences to his family.