George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

May I join with the remarks of my leader, Senator Abetz, and also take the opportunity to thank the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Evans, for the generosity of his remarks. This is, of course, a very bittersweet occasion for us opposition senators because we are celebrating and, with regret, anticipating the departure on 30 June of three senators who have been very good colleagues and very good friends. We will all miss each of them.

In particular, it is sad to lose two of those colleagues, Senator Guy Barnett and Senator Russell Trood, to electoral defeat. But that is, as Senator Trood pointed out, the way of democracy. Senator Judith Troeth did not suffer that fate and retires graciously.

The word 'gracious' is, I think, a word that springs readily to mind about Senator Judith Troeth because she is a gracious person in everything she does. One of the joys of my life in the Senate is to have befriended Judith Troeth, and that is a friendship I cherish very much. Early in my time in the Senate, shortly after Judith Troeth retired from the frontbench, we sat together in the middle seats at the end of the chamber. For more than two years we shared that bench and we had a very good time. I discovered that Senator Judith Troeth, among her many virtues, has a wicked sense of humour. Our friendship I think was deepened and strengthened in the many conversations we had. I regret to tell you, Madam Deputy President, that there was the occasional quiet reflection upon the shortcomings of others in the course of those many conversations.

Judith Troeth is to me a person who is very close to the heart of what the Liberal Party should be and is very close to the heart of what the Liberal Party was created to be. She is a Liberal in the tradition of Menzies. She knows what it means to be a Liberal. She knows that the purpose for which our party was created was to expand the horizons of individual freedom, opportunity and choice. Everything she has ever done in this chamber in the time in which it has been my privilege to be her colleague has been dedicated to those values.

As Senator Evans pointed out in his remarks, Senator Judith Troeth, although of course a very gracious person, is also a very strong person. She is one of the strongest people I know in politics. She adhered to her convictions and her principles at times when they were unpopular in the Liberal party room, especially during the Howard government. Her moral courage and strength were a beacon for all of us and in my judgment she has been an exemplar of what a courageous politician ought to be. Judith, thank you for being a friend, a great Liberal and a great parliamentarian.

I turn to Senator Guy Barnett. Guy and I have had a lot to do with each other, particularly in his role as chairman and deputy chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. Through the association on that committee and the coalition's backbench committee we have had to negotiate our way around a number of very difficult issues, issues where different members of the coalition parties had quite different perspectives across the spectrum of opinion, which we are proud to say exists within the Liberal Party. Senator Barnett has been one of the most articulate and influential exponents of a morally conservative view on a range of issues. There have been other members of that committee, including Senator Trood, to whom I will come in a moment of course, who have identified with a much more liberal approach to issues. On that committee the conflict or the difference of emphasis between the more socially and morally conservative people in my party and the more socially liberal people in my party came to the fore.

What I particularly appreciate about Senator Guy Barnett was he was always, especially in his role as chairman or deputy chairman, willing to see the other point of view and to accommodate the other point of view. Throughout a number of inquiries into thorny issues, including discrimination law, the bill of rights and family law, through Guy Barnett's decency, spirit of cooperation and willingness to simply be a good colleague all points of view were able to be accommodated so there was never a split in all those years between the most socially liberal and the most morally conservative coalition members on the committee. That was largely because of Senator Barnett's spirit of cooperation, decency and wisdom. It also reflects the fact that, as is so often the case in politics, many of these differences on closer scrutiny are more apparent than real. I want to thank Guy Barnett in particular for that.

As we heard in his valedictory speech, there is a very impressive litany of causes he has championed and has scored significant accomplishment in bringing to public policy outcomes. Whether it be in relation to health, veterans' affairs, school chaplaincy or the Parliamentary Budget Office, Guy Barnett in the nine or so years he has been here has actually achieved measurable, specific beneficial outcomes which but for him would not have been achieved. We all aspire to do that. All three senators to whom we pay tribute today have in their own way done that, but Guy Barnett I must say across an extraordinary range of interests in public policy has certainly achieved that. I do not think anyone on either side of the chamber would gainsay it. Guy, I have enjoyed our friendship and I have enjoyed our association both professional and personal. You leave the Senate at a very young age. I am confident in saying that this may be regarded not as the end of Guy Barnett's political career but as an interruption to that career. Whether that career resumes as a further term in the Senate in years to come, or whether it takes the shape of a career in Tasmanian politics—whatever beckons—we know that Guy Barnett is someone who has given his life to pursuing the causes which his Senate career has embodied and he will continue to do that for many, many years to come. So we do not say goodbye, Guy; we say au revoir.

Let me now turn to Russell Trood. This is a very difficult speech for me to give because Russell and I are very close friends and we go back a very long way. We first ran into each other in the Ryan branches of the Liberal Party in Brisbane in the mid-1990s and, on every occasion I can think of, Russell was a very strong supporter of mine. In securing majorities in the Ryan branches of the Liberal Party in the early 1990s, in my preselection as a Senator in 2000 and in my election as deputy leader of my party in the Senate last year I have always had the most steadfast of supporters in Russell Trood.

Tony Abbott is fond of saying that politics is a test of character—and it is for all of us. I cannot immediately think of anyone I know who has shown such character as Russell Trood over the years. People speak of Russell's scholarship and learning and intelligence—that is all true—but the thing I most appreciate about my friend Russell Trood is his character. Let me share three anecdotes with you. When former senator Warwick Parer resigned from the Senate in February 2000, Russell and I were both interested in being the Liberal Party's candidate for that vacancy and, as friends should when there is a possibility of conflict, we had a long, long talk about it. In the end, Russell agreed to stand aside and support me—for various reasons—for which I am eternally grateful.

I think Russell would have been entitled to feel a little disappointed that the vacancy among our mutual friends in the party was likely to be won by me, but he supported my preselection campaign not in a token or formal way, or in anyway begrudgingly, but with real enthusiasm and commitment. And I thought that that attested to tremendous character. It exemplified Edmund Burke's remark that 'in politics magnanimity is not seldom the truest wisdom'. I was determined to ensure that Russell Trood's dream of becoming a senator, of which he spoke today, would be fulfilled, and I would do everything I could to bring that to pass. So when former senator John Herron resigned from the Senate in 2002 there was another preselection, in which I very strongly supported Russell and which, sadly, he lost. It is a great shame that he lost that preselec­tion to former senator Santo Santoro; Russell was not preselected on that occasion as well.

In 2004, however, Russell was the No. 3 person on the Liberal Senate ticket, and I must say that the 2004 election campaign in Queensland for the Senate was a glorious affair. It was a ticket led by Senator Mason, with me in the middle and Russell at No. 3. We travelled countless thousands of kilometres around Queensland, with the help and support of Senator Ian Macdonald, who was not a candidate at that particular election. We spent endless days in each other's company, against the background of Senator Mason's rather idiosyncratic choice of music—and the less said about that the better—and very, very arcane conversations about the minutiae of Senate preference strategies. We spent a very enjoyable period in one another's company. Brett and I were determined that every last vote that could be found to get Russell Trood over the line was found. We did not really expect—and, Senator Joyce, I say this without any disrespect to you—that we would get four senators over the line. We thought it was probably going to be a race between Russell Trood and Barnaby Joyce for the third spot. But our efforts were rewarded with such success that both Senator Trood and Senator Joyce were elected. It was the 10th and, I am sad to say, last occasion on which the Queensland Liberal Party ran a separate Senate ticket. It was the best primary vote we ever achieved by a mile—38.3 per cent—and Russell got over the line.

The second episode I want to share with the Senate which reflects on Russell's tremendous strength of character came about during the very difficult time when the parties amalgamated in Queensland and there were issues about the Senate ticket. The people who made these decisions, the people who negotiated this amalgamation, decided to observe the seniority convention and Russell was given the fourth spot. That was a very difficult spot to win; in fact, there was never a realistic prospect of winning the fourth spot in the political circumstances of the time. Arithmetically, it was effectively impossible to win four seats from a single ticket. Yet Russell dealt with that peril to his political future with extraordinary dignity and grace. It was Ernest Hemingway who said that the definition of courage is grace under pressure. You cannot put a politician under more pressure than giving him an unwinnable seat. Russell dealt with that occasion with the most extraordinary grace that it is possible to imagine and was an exemplar of Hemingway's remark. And then more recently in the difficult times of the Liberal Party at the end of 2009, when nobody's interests would have been better served by Russell Trood than for there to be a double dissolution election, which would have revived his chances of being re-elected—he probably would have been re-elected because he would have been in a winnable position on the ticket—Russell conducted himself by adopting a position based on his true beliefs, directly at variance from his own self-interest. There are very few clearer ways to test integrity in politics than to find a politician who acts directly at variance from his own self-interest in order to do something merely because he thinks it is the right thing to do. But that is the way Russell Trood conducted himself on that occasion and nobody was surprised, because that is the character of the man he is.

We lose, with the departure of Russell Trood, one of the most considerable minds ever to have served in this place. Not only has he borne himself, as Senator Evans pointed out, with the dignity and bearing that everybody would imagine in a senator but also he has brought a specialist knowledge in his own chosen field of international relations rarely seen in this parliament. So we are all the poorer for his departure. It is, on an occasion like this, so sad to realise that that will be lost from us. But the friendships will continue. I just want to say, Russell, for all of those years in which you have been an exemplary colleague and a great personal friend and supporter how grateful I am to you and how much I have appreciated your friendship.

All three of the senators who will retire on 30 June—Judith Troeth, Guy Barnett and Russell Trood—can say to themselves, 'What we set out to do when we first entered this chamber we have accomplished.' In the case of Guy Barnett and Russell Trood, there is more that they would wish to have done had they been re-elected. But what they have done in the time available to them, just as what Judith Troeth did in the three full terms during which she served, has left this chamber and our country a much, much better place by dint of their efforts.