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

by leave—I move:

That the Senate records its deep regret at the death, on 24 December 2015, of the Honourable James (Jim) Joseph Carlton AO, former minister and member for Mackellar, places on record its appreciation of his long and highly distinguished service to the nation and tenders its profound sympathy to his family in their bereavement.

Jim Carlton was born in Sydney on 13 May 1935 and educated at state schools and then at Marist Brothers Kogarah—the same school where he befriended his younger pal former senator Graham Richardson—and at the University of Sydney, where he studied science and engineering and led both the student representative council and the University Liberal Club. After graduation he worked as a manager in a manufacturing company in Britain for several years before joining the global management consulting firm McKinsey. In 1971 back in Australia he succeeded Sir John Carrick as the general secretary of the New South Wales division of the Liberal Party when Sir John entered this chamber. In 1977 Jim Carlton succeeded WC Wentworth as then only the second member for Mackellar, serving in the House of Representatives until 1994 when he was succeeded by a member of this chamber—the Hon. Bronwyn Bishop.

Jim Carlton served as Minister for Health and Minister Assisting the Minister for National Development and Energy in the last year of the Fraser government in 1982-83. Subsequently he held a variety of shadow ministerial posts, including health, Treasury, education and defence, and key positions in opposition policy formulation and coordination until his retirement from the House of Representatives in 1994 to become the secretary-general of the Australian Red Cross. It was thus Jim Carlton's misfortune that his most fertile years in the Australian parliament were years which coincided with the Liberal Party's period in opposition during the period of the Hawke and Keating governments. Nevertheless, his career also demonstrates the weight and impact of a contribution of a sharp public policy mind from the opposition benches.

In his valedictory speech to the House of Representatives Jim Carlton said that he would often ask himself the question: what have I done for Australia?

The answer, although Jim Carlton would have been far too modest to have given it, is that he did an immense amount for Australia and, in a variety of ways, for the wider world. His place in the history of this country is far greater than a mere recitation of the positions he held, impressive though that list might be, for he was one of the most influential thinkers and activists in one of the most important intellectual and political movements of recent generations—those who, in the 1970s and 1980s, led the public policy agenda in the direction of freer markets; more limited, yet more efficient and effective government; and facing up to the need for Australia to compete in an intensifying global economic competition. Without this intellectual and political development, the liberalisation of the Australian economy under the prime ministerships of Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard would not have happened. That liberalisation contributed to Australia, remarkably, being spared a recession for a quarter of a century now, and to countless Australians having better jobs and higher living standards than would otherwise have been the case.

Jim Carlton worked in the tradition of Bert Kelly, and along with some other dry colleagues such as John Hyde and Peter Shack, through the Crossroads Group and the Society of Modest Members. That band, initially backbenchers, stood up to Prime Minister Fraser and, later in their careers, supported the liberalisation by the Hawke and Keating governments of Australian economic policy. Through painstaking policy preparation, through long years of opposition, they were important contributors to the economic policy developments of those years, which were carried largely in a bipartisan manner—a notable feature of those times—and which would not have been achieved had it not been for the wise bipartisanship that the Liberal opposition in those days, under the influence of men like Jim Carlton, offered.

Jim Carlton's work and its profoundly positive impact show, above all, the power of ideas, especially when those ideas are combined with the hard slog of careful organisation and tireless advocacy. Among his political generation, Jim Carlton was seen as very much of the front rank of our political leaders on the non-Labor side of politics. Indeed, his status in the Liberal Party of that generation was such that on one occasion he was a candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party.

At the state memorial celebration of Jim Carlton's life, held recently at the University of Melbourne, and attended notably by both John Howard and Paul Keating, Professor Ross Garnaut spoke of Jim Carlton's assistance to him when he, Garnaut, had been Bob Hawke's economic adviser—a great example to us all of the benefits of cross-party cooperation and support for good public policy in the nation's interest, leaving aside mere partisan considerations. Of that, Jim Carlton was a very fine exemplar.

His business experience in Britain and the United States, as well as in Australia, convinced him that Australia not only must but also could compete strongly in the increasingly globalised and competitive economy. He was much influenced by the ideas that underpinned Germany's postwar economic miracle. He saw economic policy as a means to better social outcomes, using market forces for social good. He denied the false antithesis between rational economic policy and compassionate social policy. Indeed, he believed, and in a sense this is the emblem of his career, that a good society depends upon a good economy, a compassionate society depends upon a prosperous economy, and a prosperous economy is underwritten by the economic reforms and liberalisation which were trademarks of his career.

He was, all his life, guided by strong, compassionate, humanitarian convictions; a career bookended by his active opposition, as a Liberal student leader in the 1950s, to the White Australia policy and, at the end, by his occupancy of the position as chairman of the Red Cross. But throughout all this his commitment to a freer market, precisely because it created more and better opportunities, was his hallmark. He contributed to Australia's international reputation in his post-parliamentary life, through his work with the Red Cross, for which he was awarded the highest international honour that that distinguished body can confer: the Henry Dunant Medal. Jim Carlton argued for the government to focus on opportunities for young people with youth orientation, as he put it, and for gender equality. So he was both an economic and social liberal, committed to the idea of freedom. He was the embodiment of the cool head and the warm heart.

Jim's interest in the wider world and Australia's place in it reflected in extensive work of foreign and defence policy and on foreign aid, including work to promote democracy internationally. In 1985 he helped to establish an Australian branch of the international committee for a Community of Democracies, and later served as an international vice president of that body. He was a Commonwealth observer at the 1991 elections in Zambia, which saw a return to multiparty democracy in that nation.

Jim Carlton was a politician with a hinterland; with broad cultural, intellectual and indeed culinary interests. He was, for example, a passionate devotee of opera—particularly German opera, from Beethoven to Wagner to Richard Strauss.

Alongside his humanitarian motivation, his focus on long-term strategy and his broad interests, Jim brought to all that he did the emphasis on the value of operational efficiency that he learnt as an industrial manager and as an adviser to the private sector. This reformist impulse was evident, for example, in his work as general secretary of the New South Wales division of the Liberal Party in the early 1970s in promoting national rather than state based federal election campaigns, in his promotion of efficiency, accountability and integrity in public administration, in his work with the Red Cross to combine eight separate blood banks into a national Red Cross Blood Service and in his advocacy of digitisation of archives when he chaired the advisory council of the National Archives of Australia.

In his retirement, as many warm tributes since his death reflect, Jim's expertise and active, probing mind were widely sought and deeply valued by government, business, the not-for-profit sector and academia. For example, with Ross Garnaut and Tricia Caswell, he was nominated by BHP to serve on the board of the Papua New Guinea sustainable development program to ensure the proceeds of the Ok Tedi mine best served the needs of Papua New Guinea. He was a senior adviser to the Boston Consulting Group. He served on boards such as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and the Cranlana Program. He was active in the Accountability Round Table, helped to found the Australia and New Zealand School of Government and held adjunct professorships with the National Institute for Governance at the University of Canberra and the Centre for Public Policy at the University of Melbourne.

He was a man of parts, a person of enormous intellectual substance and depth. But, as well as a sharp mind, Jim Carlton always had a ready smile, a twinkle in his eyes, an amusing story and an encouraging word. Many present and former members of this parliament, including the present Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, and my colleague Senator Fierravanti-Wells, regarded him as both a mentor and a friend. I remember him fondly. He was very kind to me and always had an encouraging word for me in my political career, including until the time I most recently saw him, at a function in this city last year. His friendliness to all and the work of his wife, Diana, in promoting friendship between the partners of members and senators across parties contributed greatly to the respect and warmth with which Jim and Di were regarded throughout the parliament. Which of his colleagues were the subjects of his greatest gift for mimicry we might never fully know!

Above all, of course, Jim Carlton was a loving husband to Di and a loving father to Alex, Freya, his late son Richard and Rob, and an adored grandfather to Ned, Angus, Rosie, Claudia, Tom, Leo and Jim. Our hearts go out to them in their loss as we share their pride in the remarkable life of Jim Carlton. Those of us who had the privilege to know him are the richer for his friendship and his encouragement, and our nation is truly the richer for the powerful impact which he had on this parliament and on Australian public policy, for his pioneering intellect and for his profound commitment to public service for the good of the people of Australia.