Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak of the great loss to Australia of the former member for Flinders, the Hon Peter Reith. Peter was a beloved grandfather, father, husband, brother, and, as we've heard, friend and respected colleague to those who had the good fortune to serve with him in this place.

As the current member for Flinders, I have the unique privilege of acknowledging his legacy as my predecessor and remembering his passionate service to the people of our wonderful electorate. I also personally have a lot to thank him for. As a young industrial relations lawyer practising at Corrs Chambers Westgarth in my twenties, I was sent to Canberra as a secondee to work on the Howard government's workplace relations legislation, more jobs, better pay bill in 1999. Peter was then my minister and later my Liberal Party friend and colleague. He has always been someone I have held in the highest esteem.

The more jobs, better pay bill built on the reforms of the landmark Workplace Relations Act 1996. In his second reading speech for that 1999 bill, as minister for workplace relations, Peter said:

This next phase of workplace relations reforms build on the objects of the 1996 system that we now know has worked well. They propose important amendments that are necessary in light of experience to improve the operation of the system, entrench its gains and extend its benefits more widely throughout the work force.

They were reforms I was proud to contribute to. It is perhaps fitting that we speak to Peter's legacy in workplace relations in this place, in this week. Were he here today, he would decry the great leap back into the industrial era of the 1970s, to which those opposite would condemn Australian businesses.

Peter was a fine lawyer, a graduate of economics and law at Monash University, and he fine-tuned his skills as a solicitor in Melbourne before opening his own practice in Cowes, a then quiet village on Phillip Island, which was, at the time, still part of the great electorate of Flinders.

One of my constituents, William Vickers, was a law student with Peter at Monash University and remembered him fondly as the warrior he was then from the very beginning. Recently, Bill wrote to me:

Peter and I were fellow students at Monash Law School during the tumultuous years of the Vietnam War.

He was a lone voice in Tax lectures supporting the High Court under Chief Justice Barwick in its interpretation and application of s260 on tax avoidance schemes.

Naive, ideologically-driven students like me argued constantly with him about tax avoidance, Vietnam, conscription, and student protests at attempts to introduce parking fees on campus among many other issues.

What I respected even then—

about Peter—

before I matured and became a tax paying Liberal Party supporter—was his endless capacity to engage in debate with respect, logic and a willingness to listen: capacities not seen today in so much of the public "debate" and social media sewer.

Bill goes on:

Years later, we would meet at different forums in my professional capacity and share a few laughs about our student days.

He signed his book for me with a typically pithy and good-humoured comment on those early interactions—

at Monash.

He was a rare combination of intellect, old fashioned personal values and belief in public service that stands in stark contrast to many inhabitants of our current political class, whether Federal or State.

Peter's political career began in the Young Liberal Movement. He launched into elected office shortly after his move to Phillip Island. Elected to the island's shire council, he became shire president in 1981. On Phillip Island, Peter helped establish the local school of Newhaven College and a penguin research facility. This helped save the local penguin population and gave the community a thriving tourism attraction which so many of us know and love. Who didn't find solace during lockdown in the live feed of the penguin run from Phillip Island? We have Peter to thank for that.

Peter won the Flinders by-election in December 1982, following the retirement of Sir Phillip Lynch, whose roles as Minister for Army, Leader of the House and Deputy Liberal Leader, Peter would later go on to emulate. Peter held the seat, against the odds, but lost it shortly thereafter in Bob Hawke's early 1983 election. He hadn't even been sworn in yet. But Peter returned to the seat of Flinders in 1984. When he finally got to make his maiden speech before the House, he described Flinders as one of the great places in Australia to live and enjoy. I may well be biased, but of course, I could not agree more. He took his role in Flinders more seriously than many of the other roles that he held in this place. In fact, I just had the fortune to run into Ross Hampton in the corridor, and he told me that, no matter who he was with, unless it was the Prime Minister, Peter would take every call from a constituent in Flinders, whatever else he was doing. More importantly, he promised to represent the people of Flinders, at that time, to the best of his ability—a promise he kept firmly for the next 17 years in parliament.

Peter left an immense political legacy. His astute mind for policy was reflected in the offices he held, as shadow minister, from IR to education, foreign affairs and defence, education and sport, and more. Peter was an effective and dynamic Manager of Opposition Business. Nevertheless his most memorable achievements occurred under the Howard government, where he held ministerial responsibilities for industrial relations, small business and defence. He was a consultative cabinet minister and a trusted confidant of Prime Minister John Howard.

By colleagues and opponents alike, he has been remembered as a rare politician who combined conviction, courage and charm, a stalwart of the Liberal Party, a magnificent and untiring soldier and a minister of true quality.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to join all others in paying my respects and giving my thanks to Peter Reith. I think the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and everyone who has followed have spoken eloquently and to the point about what made Peter such a great person. The current member for Flinders has just supported all those speeches with a magnificent address herself.

I want to talk a little bit about Peter Reith—the man that I knew. When I first became a candidate seeking election to the parliament, I went and saw Peter to get his advice and to seek his support. I've got to say that I was incredibly nervous going to see Peter because he was someone that I looked up to and admired. That's because growing up in rural Victoria in the seventies and the eighties, industrial relations had been at the heart of the battle that farmers had fought against a militant union movement that had held Australia back year after year after year and had diminished productivity in our nation. In particular, they had done that by crippling our wharfs. You've got to remember, when it comes to Australia, that we send more than 60 per cent of what we produce in agriculture to markets overseas, so it goes through those ports. If you're crippling productivity in those ports, you're actually crippling the heart and soul of regional and rural Australia.

Peter Reith took on that battle and took it on in a way that showed immense courage. But he knew that ultimately it would lead to productivity gains at the ports that would enhance Australia as a nation. He never lost sight of that. It wasn't ideology for ideology's sake. It was knowing that his convictions would actually lead to improving the lives of others that drove him. He set about that task and he achieved it. He got great support from his Prime Minister but not always from his colleagues. It's a good lesson for all of us on our side. When the going gets tough, always unite around the person who is doing the tough things. It's very easy to pull back and say: 'They might be making a bit of a mess of this. I could do it better.' But, when someone is striving to improve this nation, collectively we should always back and support them.

Peter Reith, fortunately, had the impeccable, strong support of his leader, and he did not take a backward step—and our nation is all the better for it. I know that Peter would look at what has happened in the last two weeks, with the industrial relations changes that have been made by this government, and would shake his head, because they are not going to improve productivity in this nation. In particular—and this is something that we need to keep a close watch on—they are going to do real harm to productivity at our ports, and that is going to hurt our nation and potentially set back the great work that Peter did.

I lost my track a little bit there, but that was the man that I looked up to and knew and admired and followed. When I went and saw him, I came across someone who was humble, respectful and just keen to help. I can't thank Peter enough for the support and advice that he gave me. He ended up, with his family, with Kerrie, buying a weekend retreat in my electorate, in the Stony Rises, near Camperdown. To give you a sense of the man: whenever there was a Camperdown branch meeting and he was in the Stony Rises, he'd come along. At the Camperdown branch meetings, we'd have 15 or 20 people there and we'd have a meal. He would come along and he would just add his support, his advice, his wisdom. He never wanted to dominate the discussion. He never wanted to say: 'I've been there and done that. I know what's best.' He came along and just wanted to participate and contribute like every other ordinary branch member. That, to me, shows the calibre of the man. He had achieved the greatest heights and yet, after having done all that, he was still willing to just come along and help at the grassroots level—no airs, no graces. He didn't want to be revered. He didn't want to be giving the guest lecture or guest speech. He just wanted to come along and support and help the cause.

I had the great pleasure also of getting to know, through Peter, Peter's sister Janet and her husband, David. They became great supporters of mine. I want to say to Janet and to David: I've really been feeling for you the last few years, because it has been incredibly tough for you and all the family. But you, I have no doubt, got your strength and your ability to deal with those tough times through the sheer admiration that you had for Peter and the sheer love you had for him.

Janet, I will never forget at state council this year being able to have a chat with you about how tough things had been. We exchanged views on how sad it is to see a loved one just disappear before your eyes, and that conversation will always stay with me. The courage you showed in that conversation said to me that Peter was in great hands when he passed away because he had love and support of his family around him. For anyone who has been through watching someone they love die before them, I think the greatest thing when that happens is the love and support of family around you. It must have given great comfort to Peter to have that love and support of Kerrie, his sons and his broader family.

Peter was an extraordinary man. It was my immense pleasure and joy to have known him. He was someone I will continue to admire for the rest of my days. Australia has lost a giant. We are the poorer for it, but he gave every moment of his life to improve the lives of those around him and he should be absolutely commended for that.

Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is such an honour today to speak about Peter Reith and to follow the excellent contributions of my friends the member for Monash, the member for Flinders and the member for Wannon and to be the warm-up act for the member for Riverina in speaking about someone the member for Wannon quite rightly described as an extraordinary Australian.

Peter was a great hero of mine. I think he was the most complete parliamentarian ever to set foot in this building. I had the pleasure of knowing him both during and after his career. What marked Peter out as extraordinary was that he had the rare combination of both policy and political skills. Some of us are great policy wonks; some people love the fight. He loved both and was good at both. He was always prepared to argue and fight but he was one of the greatest original thinkers of his time and this continued even after he left parliament. His role in defeating the unnecessary 1988 referenda during his time as the then shadow Attorney-General was immensely important, and his campaign ensured that those referenda suffered the worst defeat of any referenda in Australia's history.

Throughout his entire political career he remained at the vanguard of policy formulation for the coalition. Although the 1993 election was unsuccessful for our side, his work as one of the principal authors of Fightback set up the coalition for success during the years of the Howard government. The policy gave them an agenda and a set of principles that saw more choice, greater freedom and greater use of markets.

However, what Peter was best known for was his work in industrial relations reform. Peter always sought three things from his industrial relations reforms: more jobs, better pay and more productivity for the economy. These things were better for employers, they were better for workers and they were better for Australia overall. The Australian workplace agreements that he proposed were very important in achieving productivity during that period and his reforms set us up to provide the flexibility in our labour market to see Australia weather the storms of the Global Financial Crisis and COVID-19. His tireless campaign to achieve changes on the waterfront came at great personal cost to Peter and his family but he was ultimately successful.

Peter Reith was lucky that at that same time he had as a partner the businessman Chris Corrigan, who was prepared to fight alongside him to achieve the much-needed reform. It is to be remembered there was a number of crane lifts on the waterfront. The numbers were something of the order of fewer than 10 and then, as a result of Peter's reforms, they went to more than 20. The MUA would go on strike for all sorts of strange things—the felt on the pool table had been ruined and off they would go on strike. These reforms took an extraordinary toll on both men. The threats to Peter Reith and Chris Corrigan by the Maritime Union became so severe that Chris Corrigan and his family were eventually forced to go into hiding overseas. Peter also needed to have close personal protection for the rest of his time in parliament. However, the work of these two men was essential to ensure the Australian economy continued to function. We are an island nation and we need a ports to work reliably and efficiently and, without these reforms, that never would have happened.

I want to acknowledge that personal cost I spoke about and particularly speak about the Corrigans for a minute. I had the privilege, in the years of the waterfront dispute, of serving on Woollahra council with Valerie Corrigan. She was easily my best mate on the council, and she is Chris's wife. The threats that I saw to her family and what they had to endure were extraordinary, and I just want to acknowledge their bravery and the bravery and steadfastness of the Corrigan and Reith families.

Outside the industrial relations sphere, Peter made a very valuable contribution to policy development throughout his time in both government and opposition. Even at the height of the industrial relations dispute, he made significant achievements as the Minister for Small Business, inventing the 'new deal, fair deal' workplace agreements package. He implemented the unconscionable conduct provisions in the Trade Practices Act and a legally enforceable franchising code. He was staunchly opposed to power monopolies and sought to oppose them at industrial and commercial levels. He established the Employee Entitlements Support Scheme from January 2000. This provided a safety net for employees who lost their jobs as a result of their employers' insolvency.

While each of these achievements by themselves is extraordinary and should be highly commended, as a politician with a deep interest in constitutional law, his 2000 policy paper Breaking the gridlock is of particular interest. This paper became the foundation of the industrial relations framework we still have today. It was a revolutionary idea to use the corporations' power to create a national industrial relations system, and it famously withstood a High Court challenge after its implementation in 2005.

Peter Reith was a true champion of policy reform. If you go to the Parliamentary Library, there are 30 volumes of policy idea papers that Peter Reith himself wrote that are available to look at. That is an extraordinary record and something that I think no one in this building is likely to emulate, but it just shows the extraordinary nature of the man.

I really got to know Peter during the republic referendum campaign in 1999. Peter was a direct election republican. I know some people have accused him of being a closet monarchist and using this as a ruse, but I don't think it was true. We had lots of conversations about this. Peter, in his brief period in the wilderness, joined with Ted Mack and Cheryl Kernot to write a series of papers about direct democracy—things like citizens initiated referenda. His support of a directly elected President was completely consistent with that view, and, in typical Peter Reith fashion, he put out a detailed policy paper explaining how an elected President might work. Still, in an Australian policy context, I think it is the only really detailed work that has been done on that subject. I really enjoyed campaigning with Peter during the referendum period. I got to see him close up and see how he operated. He loved a campaign, he wasn't afraid of a fight and he made sure he had marshalled all the arguments and knew the response to his opponent's argument.

Later in 2013, we worked together as part of the citizens committee against the local government referendum, following a decision of the now Prime Minister and Attorney-General to distribute campaign funding completely unevenly for that referendum campaign, giving effectively $34 million to the 'yes' side and $500,000 to the 'no' side. I remember us having meetings—there was Peter Reith, Nick Minchin, Tim Wilson and me—with various people, trying to work out how we could stretch that half a million dollars, and we realised it was not going to go very far. It was a shocking incident of the government trying to buy the Constitution and something that should never, ever happen again.

Peter and I spoke together at various events over the years, and he was very encouraging of me in a personal and professional capacity and was particularly keen to encourage me to come here and work as a staffer to his little brother in politics, Tony Abbott. Tony followed him in the workplace relations policy area and took on some of Peter's excellent staff. He really had first-class staff over the years, and I was particularly privileged to work with Peter Anderson and Mary Jo Fisher, who were at the vanguard of reform. Tony also followed Peter into being Leader of the House, and while I was working with Tony one of my jobs was to prepare for question time. Tony Abbott's preparation for question time involved a range of people sitting around the table and firing questions at him so he would be ready for any eventuality. This was obviously not a practice that Peter engaged in, because once he opened the door to try and find Tony and saw this practice going on, and I remember him sitting in question time later with John Howard, as Tony got up to answer his question, and signalling to John that he had been in this room with all these people going around and the two of them having a good laugh about it all.

I was sad when Peter's career was cut short in 2001. I believe he could have easily led the party into the future. When Peter left the parliament, he then went on to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and we kept in touch. I went to visit him when he was in that role, and in typical Peter Reith fashion he was looking to reform that institution and had been stymied in the way that one gets in relation to international bureaucracies. He showed me his office where he had this set of stone tablets behind him in a bookcase and he said to me, 'You'll see our library needs a bit of updating!'

We had lunch together; we talked about the state of the party in opposition and what we could do to get ourselves into government. I strongly encouraged Peter to run for the party presidency. I thought anyone who could stare down the unions in the way he had done would be able to stare down the factional operatives in some of our state divisions and clean up our party. I know I certainly wasn't the only person to have encouraged him to pursue these roles and it's a great sadness to me that Peter never became party president. I think Peter would have done a very good job in steering the organisation.

When Peter eventually came home from his appointment I threw him a welcome home party in Sydney and, despite the fact New South Wales was not his home state and he was long out of politics, the event was attended by hundreds of people who admired the man who took the fight to Labor and wanted to hear from him. I remember at this same dinner, as some of the auctions and speeches went on, I said to Peter, 'I bet you don't miss any of this.' And he said to me, 'Julian, I miss all of it.' He really loved politics. He really loved being part of public life. He loved the public conversation. He loved people and he loved the Liberal Party.

Peter was twice a referee for me in preselection, and I remember, when I was thinking about standing for a particular seat and wasn't sure whether to do so or not, I rang him and Peter was encouraging, as he always was, and he said, 'Julian, there's never a time not to stand for a preselection.' I think he told me the story of Lindsay Thompson, the former Victorian Premier who'd stood for 13 preselections before he finally got there.

Peter was endlessly encouraging. He regularly had me on the Beattie and Reith program on Sky to talk about the issues of the day, and I am very grateful to him that, in my time working at Australian Catholic University—after having a discussion about what I was doing—he had been involved in the arrangement of my appointment as a director of the Mercy Health board. I know that will sound a very strange thing, considering neither Peter nor I were Catholic, but Peter's best friend and the groomsman at his wedding was a fellow called Julien O'Connell, who was the chairman of Mercy Health, and at Peter's recommendation Julien gave me the opportunity to help the board deal with some of the challenges they were facing, and I'm grateful for the opportunity and learned a lot about health care and aged care in the Catholic tradition.

And that was Peter. He was just looking for opportunities to encourage people to pursue good works in public life. I'm sad that, in the last few years, Peter's health's meant that he didn't have the retirement he deserved. I haven't seen or spoken to him since he first had his stroke but I heard lots from Julien about how he was going.

Peter Reith was one of those rare Liberals whose popularity across the party was legend. At one of his birthday parties he could have every Liberal leader from Malcolm Fraser on—and there are not too many Liberals who could've done that. He was, of course, particularly close to John Howard, and everyone admired him because he was a man of principle who was prepared to fight.

I am grateful to have known Peter as a mentor, as a wonderful Liberal, as a great warrior and as person of such decency and encouragement. To Kerrie and his family: may his memory be a blessing. He is a man much missed on our side of the House and much missed by everybody who has been keenly touched by him. I feel his loss very much indeed. May his memory be a blessing.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One in five Australian jobs is reliant on trade. In regional Australia that number is one is four, and for those people in the regions who rely on trade, Peter Reith was one of their heroes because, during the 1997-98 waterfront disputes, the work that he did, the contribution he made and the efforts he went to ensured that trade was enabled, trade was enhanced and many of the barriers to trade were lifted. They needed to be.

I know that Griffith is a vibrant city in—I'll say the Riverina area. It's actually in the electorate of Farrer now; it has been since 2016—more's the pity. It was in Riverina from Federation through to the redistribution. Almost 98 per cent of product from Griffith goes through Melbourne ports. It's a staggering statistic for a New South Wales town, but Griffith is reliant on throughput at a port. So many jobs in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area and, in more recent years, the Coleambally Irrigation Area are reliant on that port functioning smoothly. But in the late 1990s it was not, and unions ruled the roost, and Peter Reith was assigned the job of making sure that the ports were back to functioning normally for those people reliant on trade.

Andrew Clark, the senior writer at the Australian Financial Review, wrote a very good article on 9 November, the day after Peter Reith, sadly, passed. It was headed 'Peter Reith "wrote the playbook" on the brutal game of politics'. Indeed he did. In the article, journalist Clark mentions an anecdote:

During the 1993 federal election campaign, an onlooker in Broken Hill, Australia's toughest union town, was astonished to see Peter Reith alone on a street corner extolling the virtues of Fightback …

We all know that Fightback wasn't quite as successful as some might have liked. It, of course, was the Liberal Party's free market policy agenda, amongst other things. The article continues:

"Initially, he was ignored but eventually, he was encircled by an increasingly angry crowd of burly miners and furious women denouncing his message," the onlooker recalled.

"An imposingly big and snarling sort of man, Reith was undeterred and returned the crowd's hostility in kind, which eventually saw them disperse in disgust."

At the time, Reith was the Liberal Party's deputy leader …

Over more than 17 years of involvement in federal politics—in six terms, I might add—he was one of the Liberal Party's warriors. I don't belong to the Liberal Party; I belong to the National Party. But I know the value that Peter Reith brought not just outside of politics but, moreover, to the Australian nation. The unions were too militant—they just were—and his work enabled the wharves to operate far more functionally.

He was well educated, at Brighton Grammar School and Monash University. He was well qualified in economics and law. He had practised as a solicitor. He had been in local government, elected to that first level of government. Indeed, he was shire president in his last year on the Shire of Phillip Island, in 1981. It is very sad that a man of such distinction, such worth and such merit should pass from Alzheimer's disease, because it is a crippling, insidious disease, and it must have been so sad for his wife, Kerrie, and his sons, Paul, Simon, David and Robert, to see this man of such great capacity diminish before their very eyes.

But we are grateful for Peter Reith's involvement in the national discourse, the national debate. We are blessed to have had him to do the work that he did. Not only was he a fearless minister but he was also a good local member. He represented the electorate of Flinders. All he ever wanted to do was represent that electorate to the best of his ability, and he did that. That was his credo in his maiden speech, but he achieved that, in spades. He was called upon to do the tough work on the wharves, and tough work it was, and we remember him for that. We honour him for his service in the industrial relations space, education, foreign affairs, defence, education, sport and more than that besides. We heard the member for Berowra talk about the 30 volumes of policy documents and ideas that Mr Reith had. He packed a lot into his six terms as a parliamentarian. We honour his memory, and we're thankful for his service to this great nation.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I understand it is the wish of honourable members to signify at this stage their respect and sympathy by rising in their places, and I ask all present to do so.

Honou rable members having stood in their places—

I thank the Federation Chamber.

Alison Byrnes (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That further proceedings be conducted in the House.

Question agreed to.