Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate records its sadness at the death, on 13 May 2025, of Dr Alan Eggleston AM, former senator for Western Australia, places on record its gratitude for his service to the Parliament and the nation, and tenders its sympathy to his family in their bereavement.

I'll begin my remarks by saying that I did not know Dr Eggleston personally. We missed one another by just 12 months, actually, in terms of his departure from the Senate and my arrival. But there is no doubt in my mind that he was not only someone who made a significant contribution to this place, to public life nationally and in Western Australia in particular; he was also someone who had a deep and abiding commitment to public service. He obviously carried the respect not just of his Liberal and coalition colleagues but also of the people that he served as a medical professional in Port Hedland for nearly 22 years and as a mayor.

Alan Eggleston was born and grew up in Busselton until he became a boarder at Christ Church Grammar School for seven years from 1953 to 1959. As a young man he determined to study medicine, despite some of the prejudices held by people in the medical profession at the time who clearly should have known better. I understand that Dr Eggleston was not someone who would go out of his way to discuss his condition of dyschondroplasia. There's a line that I read in Samantha Maiden's excellent 2014 Herald Sun profile piece on Dr Eggleston which ran just before he gave his valedictory speech in this chamber. Regarding his condition, he said:

It's strangers that I find make comment, not people I know … Especially children, who are naturally curious. Sometimes people get excessively curious.

He goes on, in this same article, to explain that he tells them to get lost, although he uses more colourful language that we shouldn't repeat in this place! I think he somewhat underserved himself with that line.

I read the Western Australia Liberal Party's tribute to him after his passing in May of this year, and I was struck by what Dr Eggleston said to the selection panel when he was applying to study medicine at the University of Western Australia. The panel had some concerns about young Alan Eggleston. They asked him if his height would cause problems and whether he'd be able to do things like treat a patient on a high bed. This was his reply: 'Where other doctors need take no steps, I might have to take two. Where other doctors have to take one step, I might have to take three or four. If I find a terminally ill patient on a high bed, I will stand on a stool to care for that person. At Royal Perth Hospital, I will do the same.' Those words alone should have put paid to any doubts that the selection panel may have held. This was somebody who was undeniably suited to the medical profession.

He was clearly incredibly public spirited and a person of very good character. It is a great shame that some at Royal Perth Hospital at the time failed to treat Alan Eggleston with the respect that he deserved. But the hospital's loss of a young and promising medical graduate turned out to be the gain of the royal medical college in London and then the gain of the British public for four years and then of the Royal Flying Doctor Service and then of the communities in the Pilbara and Port Hedland. I understand he planned to stay in the Pilbara for six months but ended up staying there for the next 22 years. In doing so, he more than lived up to his reply that he had given to the selection committee at RPH.

As a general practitioner, he made a significant contribution to the health of his community and to the health of Indigenous people, in particular. This was, by any measure, an extensive contribution to the public good in and of itself. But Dr Eggleston was also interested in public life. After being elected to the Port Hedland town council in 1988, serving as mayor from 1993 to 1996, and being extensively involved in the Western Australian branch of the Liberal Party since 1974, it was perhaps unsurprising that a person who had already made such a public contribution would be elected as a senator for Western Australia in 1996. As he said in his own valedictory in 2014, the Senate is the house of review, and he made a notable contribution in this place through the committee process.

To say that he worked hard as the chair of the Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts: Legislation Committee; the Senate economics committee; and the Senate foreign affairs, defence and trade committee would be to understate it. He dealt with the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the cross-media ownership pact and many other pieces of legislation. As chair of the Senate economics committee, he delivered 98 reports in his first year. This amounted to almost two reports a week, and by any objective standard this was a very serious program of legislative review and policy work.

Senator Eggleston took that enthusiasm to the Institute of Public Affairs, which the government can at least acknowledge as an influential institution on the conservative side of politics. While we do come from different political traditions, I salute Senator Eggleston as someone who, in good faith and with love of country, made a significant contribution to public debate. It is the kind of weighty contribution that many on both sides of the chamber would be proud to make to their respective side of politics. I should acknowledge that Senator Eggleston remained an active Liberal after he retired. He was awarded life membership of the Liberal Party, proclaimed as a legend, I understand, by the Christ Church Grammar School Old Boys' Association, and in 2019 was awarded membership of the Order of Australia.

I would like to finish by drawing attention to a former member of this place Senator Mitch Fifield and his touching tribute to Dr Eggleston as a friend and colleague. He said:

Eggy was a great, thoughtful and generous colleague in the Senate. One thing I loved was after about 8pm in the Senate he would change into a dark turtle-neck under his jacket. When asked why, he replied 'I always live in hope of a jazz bar'.

Madam President, I echo Senator Fifield's sentiments. I don't think Senator Eggleston was alone in the hope of a jazz bar popping up somewhere in this place after 8 pm.

On behalf of the government, I recognise Senator Alan Eggleston's significant contribution to public health, public life, policy thinking and development. As the Minister for the NDIS, I particularly want to pay tribute to him as someone who refused to allow others to define him by his condition and who rose above petty prejudice to make a real and meaningful contribution to the lives of others. My heartfelt condolences and those of all of us on this side of the house go out to his family, his friends and former colleagues in this place and the wider Liberal Party who admired him very deeply.