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

I am going to miss all three of my retiring colleagues, though I suspect I will miss them in different ways. We should note with the retirement of Senator McGauran that he is the second-last senator to have commenced his career in the Old Parliament House. We lose with him the second-last link between this chamber and that building. I will miss Julian for his Irish charm and for his boyish looks, which impressively he has retained well into his fifties. I rang Julian the morning after the 2010 election, when it did look as if he was going to lose his seat to the DLP, and with impressive gallows humour he could not fail to miss the irony of that fact.

Fergie, when I came into the Senate 11 years ago there was a generation of older senators who set the tone certainly on the coalition side. I always thought of them as the wise men. They included Paul Calvert, Brian Gibson, John Herron and Fergie himself. These men nurtured a culture of collegiality among the government senators and were always a source of generous and wise advice. I think with the retirement of Alan Ferguson we lose perhaps the last of that cohort of older senators I thought of as the wise men. Alan Ferguson gave me some very wise advice when I was first a senator. He said to me, 'George, enjoy your years on the back bench because you will never be so free and they will never come again.' That is some of the best advice that I ever had. I stayed on the back bench perhaps a little longer than I had expected to, but I enjoyed those years enormously and will always look back on them as one of the happiest times of my life. In part, at least, I owe that to the advice of Alan Ferguson. Alan, you have been a friend to all. You have always been free with your counsel. You have always been generous with your time. It must give you tremendous satisfaction to know that you are one of only 23 Australians to have served in the high office of President of the Senate.

Let me turn to Nick Minchin, a man of whom I cannot speak too highly. It would have surprised practically everyone, including me, if I had been told when I first became a senator 11 years ago that, of all the coalition senators, the one I would grow to admire most was Nick Minchin. We had little in common in policy terms, though Nick had very sound views about the desirability or otherwise of Australia becoming a republic. That is something I always knew we shared. Nevertheless, we did come from different parts of the Liberal Party jungle. As I have observed Nick Minchin over the years, I have seen in him an exemplar of all the qualities I most admire—loyalty, integrity, courage, com­mitment to principles and decency. Those are all qualities we aspire to and, as fallible human beings, on occasions we all fall short. But all of those qualities were exhibited by Senator Minchin in an exemplary manner.

Can I conclude with this observation. Senator Minchin and I might have different views on a lot of things but we have an identical view about the Liberal Party, which is summed up in a remark once made by British Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, that 'Labour is an aeroplane which can only fly if both of its wings are intact'. That is the view that Nick and I have of the Liberal Party. It is the view by which we have lived and, on occasions, it has meant we have had some strange bedfellows. But I think the view has been vindicated by the success of the Howard government and the successful prosecution of the opposition's position since my side has been in opposition. And so, Nick, I will miss you as a mentor, a friend, an occasional supporter and an exemplar of all that is good about the Liberal Party.