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

Judith Adams began her parliamentary career unusually late in life. She was already in her 60s at the time she was preselected by the Western Australia division of the Liberal Party for the No. 3 spot on the 2004 Senate ticket, replacing our former colleague Senator Sue Knowles. She was elected and became a member of this place on 1 July 2005, so she was among us for only six years and nine months until her death on 31 March at what is these days the relatively early age of 68. But she made a very strong impression on everyone. One only has to hear the tributes paid across the chamber today to appreciate what a strong impression Judith Adams made.

I remember one of her first coalition party room meetings, which Senator Joyce has already adverted to. There was a lot of tension at the time between the Liberal Party and the National Party on the issue of wheat marketing and Senator Adams, representing the views of Western Australian wheat producers, was a fierce opponent of the single-desk selling system, which the National Party strongly supported. The then Prime Minister, John Howard, struggled manfully to reach a compromise position with the National Party on this very acute and difficult issue. Judith Adams arrived in the party room and she was not satisfied with the approach the Liberal Party was proposing to take. Unusually for a new backbencher, she rose and let John Howard know exactly what she thought, and it was very clear to all of us who were at that meeting that he had a very formidable person on his hands. In fact, I think he might even have been a little bit scared of her. They were not very far apart in age at the time and she certainly had his measure. The usual baubles that are hung before junior backbenchers were of absolut­ely no use in trying to propitiate the very strong views held by Senator Judith Adams, and she shifted the debate in a material way towards the outcome that she wanted. That is the first impression I had of Judith Adams—that she was a very determined and fearless person. But of course she was, at the same time, a perfect lady. She was a gentle person, quietly spoken, but very, very strong in her beliefs.

She was a wonderful advocate for regional Australia, particularly for regional Western Australia. She was obviously one of the great pillars of her local community. We have all seen, when we travel in the regional parts of our different states, how in small country towns or centres there is one formidable person, usually a formidable lady, who is the chair of almost every community organisa­tion and really makes that community run. Well, in Kojonup, in the wheat belt of Western Australia, that was Judith Adams—and I gather it had been for many years.

She brought great life experience to this place, too—a function of the fact that she already had a long life behind her when she arrived. She had seen service in Vietnam as a military nurse and then she had a long and successful career in the pastoral industry. She had so many very fine human qualities. I have mentioned her strength and determina­tion, as have other senators. She had great integrity. You could always trust Judith Adams. And she was, as has already been observed, very, very reliable—if you asked her to do something, it would always be done. She was very diligent in her committee work.

Obviously, Judith Adams had aspired to a parliamentary career for a very long time. When she was elected to the Senate it was not her first attempt to get into parliament. But I do think that the Senate was the right place for her. I think a forceful but quietly spoken person has a better chance of being heard in the Senate, and in particular in working through the committee system, than in the House of Representatives. And it was her work in the committee system, particularly on regional and rural affairs, that distinguished her.

She was the soul of courtesy. She was, as Senator Abetz has mentioned, the senior Deputy Opposition Whip for some years—and it was an office she discharged impecca­bly. Yet, throughout the six years and nine months that we had her among us, she struggled with adversity. She was, as others have mentioned, already a cancer survivor at the time she was elected to the Senate, and her illness came back and ultimately, sadly, claimed her. So she had to deal with that. She also had to deal with the death of her husband, Gordon. And yet there was never a moment when I ever saw Judith Adams seeming to feel sorry for herself. Her attitude was to get through life's adversities, get on and get the job done.

That same attitude of courage in the face of adversity was evident right up to her very last days. She did not come to the Senate after the end of last year, because she was being treated in the terminal stages of her illness. Like most of my colleagues, I gather, I rang her up from time to time at the Royal Perth Hospital, and she was always cheerful, always determined to get back. As Senator Evans has mentioned, she was a compulsive viewer of question time—and an expert assessor and critic of the quality of some of the performances in question time, though never in a malicious way, because she was a generous person.

I will miss her. It is, I think, one of the great features of this institution, which, from our own different philosophical perspectives we all value and treasure, that a person like Judith Adams, in a relatively brief political career—one that spanned, for all practical purposes, little more than six years—can have made such an impact through her work here, although she was not on the front bench, through the assiduousness, conscien­tiousness and sheer industry of her committee work. She engendered respect among her colleagues of all political persuasions.

So might I join with my leader, Senator Abetz, and other senators, in expressing my condolences to her family—to her sons Stuart and Robbie, to her grandchildren and to the other members of her family—and my gratitude to have known such a good and gracious person.