Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Employment) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate records its deep regret at the death on 5 January 2014, of the Honourable Arthur Thomas Gietzelt, AO, former Senator for New South Wales, places on record its appreciation of his long and meritorious public service and tenders its profound sympathy to his family in their bereavement.

Arthur Thomas Gietzelt had a long life, spanning 93 years. He was born in San Francisco, California, in 1920 and grew up in Newton, Enfield and Sans Souci in Sydney. He attended Hurstville high school but left school at 15 to help support the family during the Depression. In 1941, he enlisted in the army and, in 1943 and 1944, went to New Guinea with his brother Ray as part of the 9th Field Company Royal Australian Engineers. Their job was to build a road over the Owen Stanley Range to support the front line in the north of New Guinea. After his discharge from the Army in 1946, he served three years on the state executive of the Returned Soldiers League.

Arthur Gietzelt became Councillor Arthur Gietzelt when he was first elected to the Sutherland Shire Council in 1956. He served nine terms as shire president—from 1961 to 1963 and again from 1966 to 1971. He was instrumental in setting up a scheme whereby the council acquired land, developed it and then auctioned the finished product. The proceeds paid for public infrastructure in the shire. In 1967, he was elected to the executive of the New South Wales Local Government Association, a role he remained in until 1971.

Councillor Gietzelt then became Senator Gietzelt on his election to the Senate in 1970. In 1971, he and his family were the victims of what one assumes was an attempted assassination when their house was bombed with 17 sticks of gelignite. The blast occurred at 2.20 am outside the main bedroom which adjoined the front veranda about five feet from where Senator Gietzelt and his wife were sleeping. A double layer of bricks was the only thing that saved their lives. According to Senate Gietzelt, the community response was magnificent. A former independent shire councillor and retired builder arrived with a small workforce to remedy the immediate damage. I also note that Don Dobie, the then local federal Liberal member for Cook, and Jim Cover attended on behalf of the Liberal Party, as did others.

In 1975, Senator Gietzelt led the backbench revolt opposing the Labor cabinet's decision to issue export permits for sandmining on Fraser Island. In 1976, Senator Gietzelt became shadow minister for agriculture and later shadow minister for consumer and administrative affairs. From 1983 to 1987, the former engineer sergeant was Minister for Veterans' Affairs in the Hawke government. He instigated the Agent Orange royal commission, recognised the role of the Indigenous Australians who patrolled the northern coastline of Australia in World War II, was a strong supporter of the Vietnam Veterans Association, introduced homecare services for veterans and simplified disparate veterans' welfare entitlements under the new Veterans' Entitlement Act 1986.

Senator Gietzelt also brought his own political views to the Veterans' Affairs portfolio. In 1985, he declared that the War Memorial should play a greater role in educating people about the causes and consequences of war—including 'the intermittent war that Australians had waged on the Aboriginal people'—and teaching them that occasionally wars are fought for narrow sectarian, ideological, economic or xenophobic reasons that have brought little credit to us as a nation. He also said:

Australia needed to learn more about the consequences that powerful military alliances could lead to for small and nominally independent nations, consequences that ranged from threats of economic warfare to the imposition of brutal military dictatorships should those nations seek to assert a measure of independence within such alliances.

Senator Gietzelt was joint Father of the Senate from 1987 until his departure from parliament in 1989 at the age of 68, after 18 years in federal politics. In deference to my colleague Senator Faulkner, it is said that Senator Gietzelt's exit, causing a casual vacancy, was deliberately timed to ensure that his Senate spot would be taken by Senator John Faulkner—one of the few left-wingers from New South Wales Labor Party headquarters—who would allegedly otherwise not have secured a winnable spot on a Senate ticket. I thank Senator Faulkner for his assistance with this part of my speech.

In an interview at the time, Senator Gietzelt listed his and the Left's achievements as the restructuring of all industry awards, the Hawke government's Prices and Income Accord, the capital gains tax and the defeat of Paul Keating's proposed consumption tax which, he said, would have had disastrous effects on the economy.

No comment on or indeed tribute to Arthur Gietzelt's life would be thorough if it failed to address the persistent accusations that Gietzelt, despite his denials, was also a member of the Communist Party. A recent article by Troy Bramston in The Australian notes that Gietzelt was widely believed to have been either a member or secret member of the Communist Party of Australia and that he had acted as an agent of influence on its behalf inside Labor, unions and community-based organisations. As former New South Wales Labor senator Graham Richardson said:

He was a very powerful opponent. How powerful? He became a minister even though everyone knew he was a communist.

Gietzelt was also a member of the national executive of the ALP from 1971, rising to junior vice president in 1983 and senior vice president in 1986.

Much of Gietzelt's career and public commentary involved what might be described as a preoccupation with ASIO. It appears the preoccupation was reciprocated. In 1973 Gietzelt told the Senate that he had been told that 'some members of parliament are part-time operatives for ASIO'—a proposition that he found credible. More recently it has been alleged that there was in fact an ASIO informant within the Right faction of his own party who passed on information to ASIO. Such were the Cold War years. There is no doubt that in the seventies and eighties Gietzelt wanted to build a bridge between the communists and Labor. An article he wrote for the Nation Review in 1978 was billed as follows:

Senator Arthur Gietzelt, a key figure on the Left of the Labor Party for a generation, comes as close to calling for a Labor-communist dialogue as the Australian political atmosphere will allow.

Gietzelt's sweeping polemic acknowledged Stalinist authoritarianism that praised modern Euro-communism. He called on 'the Right wing in the Labor movement to stop putting more favourable labels on themselves' and describing others as part of the 'totalitarian Left,' and instead make 'an intelligent contribution to an alternative society to capitalism, one that is an extension of democracy and one that is thoroughly socialist.' In the same article he saw the defeat of the Whitlam government through the prism of class struggle:

We did not see that any change in the allocation of resources, wealth and privilege—the desire to give more opportunity to disadvantaged people to create a more egalitarian society, meant ipso facto, taking from some to give to others.

And that meant change. That meant struggle. To take from the privileged and to give to others meant we were involved in a class struggle.

To Gietzelt the Whitlam government's faults were naivety about what he saw as vested interests and a failure to prepare the ground. I quote again:

But did we prepare the electorate, or did we rely too much on government legislation, administrative fiats, the cooperation of the conservative bureaucracy and the ‘understanding’ of the media, least of all the acceptance of those ‘born to rule’ to accept the people’s verdict?

On bowing out of the Senate in 1989, Arthur Gietzelt told a journalist that he would write his memoirs in between taking his wife to dinner and going to the theatre. He must have been to a lot of plays and he and his wife must have enjoyed a lot of dinners, because we have had to wait till now, 25 years later, to get those memoirs. Arthur Gietzelt's long-awaited memoir, Sticks and Stones, was launched at his wake last Thursday. I note that a website set up to celebrate Gietzelt's life says that his denial of ASIO communist claims will be released after his family has had the opportunity to grieve their loss.

Arthur Gietzelt was awarded the Order of Australia for services to local government and parliament in 1992 and a Centenary Medal in 2001 for service to the community through the ALP and the trade union movement. He was made a life member of the ALP in 1994. It is a pity that former senator Bob Carr, a long time Gietzelt antagonist, is no longer here, as it would have been good to have had his reflections on the life of Senator Gietzelt as well as those of Senator Faulkner, from whom we expect to hear very shortly.

On behalf of the coalition, I extend our sincere sympathies to Arthur Gietzelt's wife, Dawn; his children Lee, Dale and Adam and their spouses; his grandchildren Tom, Jarrah and Skye; and his sister Fay. We extend our sympathies to them all.