Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Birmingham for his fine contribution to this condolence motion. I would also like to thank Senator Wong for allowing me to make this contribution on behalf of the Labor Party, because Chris Hurford was my friend, my mentor and a very important colleague. Chris was the Labor member for Adelaide from 1969 until 1987, and he passed away, as the minister has just indicated, on 15 November last year.

My abiding memory of Chris is of his big, generous smile. It would always cheer you up. And his good humour is and will continue to be sadly missed. Today's condolence motion—and I thank the President for this—has been timed to allow many of his family to be here with us today to honour the man. I guess it's appropriate, given Chris's mother's Irish heritage, that it's taking place on St Patrick's Day. Chris's daughter Alex; sons, David and Richard; daughters-in-law, Margaret and Emma; and grandchildren Georgia, Tom, Clare and Matt are all here with us in the gallery today. Chris's daughters Philippa and Kate and their families were unfortunately not able to travel to Canberra today, but I believe they will be watching from their home in Adelaide. To all of Chris's family I offer my deep personal condolences.

Chris's funeral was held on one of those very hot Adelaide summer days—the sorts that are so vividly described by Peter Goldsworthy in his novel Three Dog Night. The funeral was held under strict COVID conditions, unfortunately, so I was honoured to be one of the 50 people invited by the family to attend the funeral. Fittingly, his granddaughter, who is present here today, sang a touchingly poetic version of 'Summertime' from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, which I am told was one of Chris's favourite songs. Chris's early years, as I will explain shortly, were not what you'd necessarily think of as a typical Labor upbringing, so I've wondered since the funeral whether an interest in the issues of racial inequality, which are addressed in Porgy and Bess, were perhaps one motivating factor in Chris's joining the progressive side of politics.

Christopher John Hurford was born in India on 30 July 1931 to his English father, Monty, and his Australian mother, Kathleen. In 1940, shortly after the start of the Second World War, Chris's mother took him and his younger brother, Dave, from India to her home state of Western Australia by sea. The thinking was that the war would be short and that the boys could see it out in the care of their grandparents on a wheat farm in the state's South West. But the war, of course, was longer than expected, and for five years the brothers boarded at the Jesuit school of St Louis in Perth and for five years spent the school holidays on their grandfather's farm and on the coast.

In 1944, Chris's mother Kath returned to Australia to collect her sons, braving Japanese submarines in the Indian Ocean. They returned to India for three months before travelling to England, where Chris completed his schooling. In 1949, the whole family migrated to Western Australia, and they qualified as so-called ten-pound Poms because, of course, Chris's father was English.

Chris began training as a chartered accountant in Perth before moving to take up an accountancy job in Broken Hill, a town, of course, with a very strong trade union presence. From Broken Hill, where he was a very proud beneficiary of the lead bonus, Chris was able to return to England to study at the London School of Economics—established, of course, by the Fabians—on weekends. He supported himself by working as an accountant for Marks & Spencer. It was during this time that Chris met the great love of his life and his future wife, Lorna, and by 1960 they were married and back living in Adelaide.

Lorna was a wonderful person and, like so many parliamentary spouses, she selflessly supported Chris and their children during his many trips to Canberra. She continued to do good works, especially with St Vincent de Paul, where she would often rope in my wife, until her untimely death in 2005. Chris of course was heartbroken, and I know the whole family still miss Lorna deeply.

At his funeral, Chris's family spoke about how growing up exposed to the ruling British Raj in India and the caste system there, along with British boarding school and the class system, might have played a role in him becoming such a fine Labor man. Chris told his family about his time in Broken Hill, where he was in management but also in the union—although I suspect it was probably compulsory to join; he may not have had any choice, knowing Broken Hill as I do. And he drank and socialised in the union pubs, and that also played a big role in his future.

Chris transferred his ALP membership from Sydney when he moved to Adelaide and was tasked with reviving the North Adelaide sub-branch of the ALP—no mean feat in the Playford gerrymandered South Australian electoral system of the time. As the minister said, he stood unsuccessfully for the safe Liberal seat of Torrens in 1962 and 1965. And, while he obviously lost, he gained respectable swings to Labor. He obviously impressed the machine that ran the South Australian branch of the Labor Party at that time: Geoff Virgo, Clyde Cameron and Jim Toohey. As a result, his efforts were rewarded in 1969 when he was elected as the federal member for Adelaide and entered the federal parliament.

Since the 1940s, Adelaide had largely been a Labor-supporting seat, but it fell to Liberal, Andrew Jones, one of the youngest-ever members of the House of Representatives in the coalition's 'All the way with LBJ' landslide of 1966. But the people of Adelaide quickly realised their mistake. Jones proved unpopular and Chris regained the seat for the Labor Party with a resounding 14.3 per cent swing at the Don's Party election of 1969. That's right, Don's Party, that's when it was. It turned Adelaide into a safe Labor seat in one stroke, and Chris won enough votes on the first count to take the seat without the need for preferences. He held Adelaide until the end of 1987 when he resigned to become Australia's consul-general in New York. As the minister said, his resignation triggered the 1988 Adelaide by-election, the so called 'timed telephone call by-election'. That by-election became my first, very unsuccessful, run for parliament and I know he was very disappointed when we were unable to hold his seat on his departure—but the less said about that campaign the better!

I'd like to say a little bit about Chris's time in parliament. Being an accountant by trade it's perhaps unsurprising that one of Chris's first roles in the parliament was on the Joint Statutory Committee of Public Accounts. He served on that committee from 1969 until 1973, including six months as chair of that committee. Chris's other committee service included chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Prices from May 1973 to November 1975; as a member of the House Standing Committee on the Standing Orders from 1975, and again from 1980 to 1983; and as a member of the expenditure committee in 1976.

After the Hawke Labor government was resoundingly elected in 1983, Chris was appointed Minister for Housing and Construction in the first Hawke ministry, from March 1983 until December 1984. He was promoted to cabinet in the second Hawke ministry as Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs until February 1987. At that time, he replaced Don Grimes as Minister for Community Services, following Grimes's announcement that he would not seek re-election. Chris also served, importantly, as Minister assisting the Treasurer, where he helped out a very young and ambitious Paul Keating from May 1983 to July 1987. Chris made a significant contribution to the Hawke-Keating era that led to the opening up of the Australian economy, which itself led to almost 30 years of uninterrupted economic prosperity for this country. After the 1987 election, Chris withdrew from the third Hawke ministry. After retiring from parliament at the end of that year, he became Australia's consul-general in New York, a role that he performed with distinction for four years. Although still only in his early 60s, Chris never returned to public life as such after his return from New York, and I think that was probably a loss to South Australia.

In recent years, Michael Atkinson—who's in the chamber today—the former Speaker of the South Australian House of Assembly and I would join Chris for lunch at his North Adelaide apartment, where we would spend the afternoon reminiscing about the good old days. I'd like to say a few words at a personal level about my friendship with Chris. I first met Chris when I joined the Labor Party in 1976. It seems like a very long time ago now. I lived then where I do now, in Little Sturt Street in Adelaide CBD, and Chris was my local federal member of parliament. For some reason Chris befriended me, a young lawyer for the shop assistants union, which wasn't an easy thing to do, with the memory of the Labor split of the 1950s still fresh in the minds of many in the ALP. The groundbreaking Dunstan decade was soon to come to an end. The ALP was split between the Centre Left, who backed Bill Hayden in South Australia, and the rampaging Left under Peter Duncan and Nick Bolkus. The Right, based on the shop assistants union, which Advertiser journalist Randall Ashbourne said could conveniently meet in a telephone booth, was just beginning to grow.

In 1984 Chris broke with the ruling Centre Left group around John Bannon and established Labor Unity at a meeting held at Chris's house in Finniss Street, North Adelaide, where all of his children grew up. In attendance were Bob Hawke supporters Graham Richardson and Simon Crean as well as locals Michael O'Brien, Paul Holloway, John Boag and me. It was a meeting that ultimately led to the modern South Australian Labor machine, which, with the Left's Patrick Conlon, led to an unbroken 16 years of Labor government in South Australia, the most successful government in the modern era. Our branch owes a sincere debt of gratitude to Chris Hurford.

Later Michael Atkinson joined us, a young Advertiser journalist who became Attorney-General and Speaker of the South Australian parliament. On one occasion, as Labor Unity were beginning to grow, we were suddenly entitled to two national conference positions for an up-and-coming national conference meeting. Michael and I presumptuously decided that we would fill those two positions and go down to Tasmania and represent the group down there. However, Chris quickly disavowed us of that idea and made it clear that he would be a delegate, along with my boss, John Boag. Michael also reminded me this morning of a trip Chris took to Canberra, when he was surprised to see Ron Owens, the very burly secretary of the Builders Labourers Federation, sitting up at the pointy end of the plane. He expressed some surprise that Ron would be up there, and Ron, quick as a flash, said nothing was too good for the workers or their representatives.

Chris's brand of sensible, progressive policies has of course set the branch up for a return to government, led by Peter Malinauskas, at the next state election. On behalf of the federal Labor Party, I wish to thank Chris for his contribution to our success and to the betterment of our nation. All of us can honour his memory by following the example that he set of working to reduce inequality and to make Australia a fairer place where people from all walks of life can share in the nation's prosperity. Chris Hurford was a fine, fine man and he will be sadly missed. May he rest in peace.

Question agreed to, honourable senators standing in their places.