Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to convey my condolences to Lady Benise Killen. Unfortunately I had an international flight to catch after the funeral and I was not able to extend my condolences personally at the time, but I do so now and to Sir James’s children as well.

‘Killen, you’re magnificent’ are almost immortal words alleged to have been said by Menzies on Killen’s retention of his electorate of Moreton on communist preferences and are an appropriate description of Jim Killen to all who knew him. Those words—and there is some conjecture about whether Menzies ever did say them, but certainly they were on the front page of the Courier-Mail the day after the election was declared—are some of the very significant political words spoken in Australian history. It was quite ironic that Killen was elected on communist preferences, because Jim Killen had been a well-known and aggressive opponent of communism right throughout his life.

As has been said, Jim Killen was the inaugural Young Liberal president in Queensland and, as such, I owe him a lot. I started my political career in the Young Liberals as a vice-president, and I note that there are two subsequent presidents of the Young Liberal Movement in Queensland also here to speak about Sir James. He established the Young Liberals well in those very early days and always maintained very active and enthusiastic involvement in and support for the Young Liberal Movement in Queensland.

He was a great Liberal. Some would say he was conservative; he was certainly a royalist. I like to think that he was more liberal than conservative in the Liberal Party. He hated humbug and hypocrisy and liked things to be talked about as they really were. The number of current and past Liberals who were at his funeral service is an indication of how highly he was regarded in the Liberal Party right throughout Australia. It was interesting that almost every living member of the cabinet in which Jim Killen last served would have been at the funeral. Every person who has in any way been involved with the Liberal Party in Queensland in the time that I have been involved seemed to be sitting in St John’s at the funeral service.

It was interesting to me that Gough Whitlam was invited to give the eulogy on behalf of the family. I have never been a great fan of Gough Whitlam, I have to say, but I very much warmed to him on hearing his eulogy. I thought Whitlam’s speech was quite magnificent and caring and showed a relationship between Whitlam and Killen that I was unaware of, although quite obviously many others were not. Whitlam indicated that every Sunday, usually after Killen had returned from church, they would speak to each other on the phone, and this association continued up until just a few weeks before Jim Killen’s death. I thought Whitlam’s eulogy was very apt and appropriate. The Prime Minister also spoke at the funeral and, as usual, delivered an address that was appropriate, correct and in keeping with the high regard in which Jim Killen was held.

I think it was Whitlam who described Killen as a statesman and a larrikin and indicated that if you could be both a statesman or a gentleman and a larrikin then that was all any Australian should ever aspire to. But that was certainly Jim Killen. He always had an eye for the ladies in an appropriate way. If he said it to my wife once, he said it a dozen times; when Jim Killen approached me and my wife he would always say to me, ‘Isn’t it lovely that you have brought your daughter along to this function.’ Every time he said it my wife knew he was going to say it, but nevertheless she was flattered and charmed every time, as were most of the women with whom Sir James came in contact.

Sir Jim Killen campaigned quite a lot in North Queensland. Even after his retirement he helped us out in a couple of elections where few others wanted to make the effort to save a hopeless cause, but Jim Killen was always there. The last I remember him campaigning was standing on the back of a truck, in the old style of campaigning, in the main street of Ayr during one state election campaign when he came along to lend a hand.

What I liked about Jim Killen was that he was bushie, a jackaroo, a self-made man—a man who I think epitomised what the early Liberal Party was all about. He got in there, did the hard work and, through his own initiative, enthusiasm and enterprise, achieved the highest office in the land in a political sense. Indeed, I think we can all say, and certainly I and my wife will always say, ‘Killen, you were magnificent.’