Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me extraordinary pleasure to rise today to speak on this condolence motion for a giant of the Country Party, now National Party; a giant of regional Victoria; and an absolute champion for our nation. I associate the National Party senators with the comments from both the government and the opposition leader.

I want to set the scene with the words to follow:

Oh, we're from Tigerland.

A fighting fury,

We're from Tigerland.

In any weather you will see us with a grin,

Risking head and shin.

If we're behind then never mind.

We'll fight and fight and win.

For we're from Tigerland,

We never weaken til the final siren's gone.

Like the Tiger of old,

We're strong and we're bold.

For we're from Tiger,

Yellow and Black.

We're from Tigerland.

As a strong and sad Saints supporter, it was very tough for me to actually read that, but the man that we honour today in this chamber never gave up. He fought through thick and thin for the things he believed would make a difference for his communities, tiny towns in Gippsland—farming, fishing, forestry and, particularly when Peter was representing them, mining—and for our nation and particularly for the fighting force which is the National Party in the federal parliament.

To each of us in this place is granted an inch of time to use each day as representatives of the people to the best of our talents and abilities. Peter James Nixon's inch of time was longer than most—97 years. He was sharp as a tack till the end, giving advice frequently, fiercely and freely. From 1961 until 1983—21 years as the dedicated member for Gippsland—he served under six prime ministers: Menzies; Holt; McEwan, a National Party prime minister; Gorton; McMahon; and Fraser. His good fortune was that 19 of those years were in government, enabling him to be one of the most influential and consummate politicians of his generation—not just a tiger but a lion of our party.

Peter was born in Orbost on March 22 1928. A fourth-generation Gippslander, he grew up farming near Orbost and went to school in the district, apart from a couple of years of attending Wesley College down in Melbourne. On 27 July 1952, he married the love of his life, Sally, a member of the prominent Dahlsen family from East Gippsland. Sally was Peter's rock in a very successful partnership that lasted 60 years.

When the sitting member for Gippsland, George Bowden, retired in 1961, Peter was prompted by Sally to stand. She said: 'It'll be over in six weeks. It's a big field. You won't win, but I don't want you complaining that you didn't at least try, as your late father had done all his life. The family honour will be intact.' Peter vividly recalled the first night of preselection. There was a roaring fire on a winter's night in a cold hall in Noorinbee. Gippsland is a bit like Canberra when it comes to temperature—very cold. Peter had drawn last speaker in a field of 12 candidates. Sally's words of encouragement were, 'I told you you wouldn't win.' A fire inside the hall roared, candidates droned on and on—I'm not sure, but I bet there wasn't a woman there—and, according to Peter, nearly all the party members were asleep by the time he stepped up to the plate at midnight. Right at that moment, a huge clap of thunder above the shed woke everybody up, and, let's just say, a political legend was born.

Peter Nixon's first days as an MP were inauspicious. Sir Robert Menzies, of whom Peter was in awe, asked him how his maiden speech went. The Prime Minister was cross that Peter had only used 12 of his 20 allocated minutes. 'Dreadful,' came Nixon's reply, knowing how nervous he'd been. 'You should always be the same,' counselled Menzies, 'and if you're not, you're actually not doing justice to the big occasions.'

Peter quickly learned his tradecraft and went on to be a highly respected parliamentarian and minister. He was Minister for Primary Industry, Minister for the Interior, Postmaster-General, Minister for National Resources, Minister for Shipping and Transport, and he acted in other portfolios, including trade, industry and natural resources. He navigated droughts, commodity price collapses and shifting global trade patterns with a steady hand and a farmer's pragmatism.

As Minister for the Interior from 1967 to 1971, Peter drove change in Aboriginal affairs, for education, housing and inclusion, against the views of Labor adviser Nugget Coombs, who had argued the case for funding to maintain traditional ways of life, an intractable dilemma that's never actually been resolved. He had to deal with the busy Sydney airport problem and noisy flight paths. He helped shape the Australian national railways policy, port authorities and coastal shipping long before 'supply chain resilience' became a buzzword. He tried valiantly to establish an Australian ship manufacturing capacity but was up against militant unions and endless demarcation disputes that made it unviable. He was involved in the contentious proposal to build a nuclear power plant at Jervis Bay, of which Liberal prime minister John Gorton was an enthusiastic proponent. If only they had got the job done. Nixon built on McEwen's trailblazing work in export trade. He was responsible for the first nationwide rules for roads, for major electoral redistributions and for this very building in which we sit today, which was once called—would you believe it!—new Parliament House.

He was a key member of Fraser's famed 'razor gang'. In July 1970, there was a push by a US senator for higher import restrictions on Australian beef—note that aggressive US trade tactics were not the invention of Donald Trump; this is an old story. Nixon happened to be at the Katherine Show when the news came through, and he went to the centre of the arena, grabbed the microphone and announced that the US senator should be hung, drawn and quartered and roasted on the altar of high protection. Amen! Nixon's comments caused a stir, and he received a request from the US ambassador to see him about how much it had upset a very senior, respected US senator. 'Well, all I could say in response was that the Americans preached free trade but did not practise it, and therefore I could not apologise,' Nixon wrote in his memoirs many years later. Indeed, Peter was known as one of the hard men of politics.

In the days when there were no mobile phones and no television, and communications were only a landline, Peter would fly to and from his farm in Gippsland and Canberra. Peter's family always knew when their father was arriving home, because the phone would start ringing about 10 minutes before he arrived. Peter had a personal, unbreakable rule: he would always return a call made to him. But, if he didn't catch you, if you didn't pick up—and he wouldn't stop returning calls until late in the evening—if you missed that call, he didn't ring you back. That's on you!

Menzies gave Peter another piece of sage advice, which he took on board. Sir Robert said:

When this ride is all finished, the only thing you will have left is your family. So, make sure you look after them.

It's a great privilege that Peter's daughter, Jo; his son Chris; grandchildren; and family members are in the chamber today and have been able to hear the condolences and the respect from across the parliament, in both chambers, for this great man. In 1967, with Nixon's first ministerial appointment, his family was packed up from Orbost and went to live in Campbell in Canberra, where Peter was able to keep his family closer, heeding Menzies's advice, and he was able to attend some netball and footy games and speech nights.

Peter Nixon was described by one journalist as 'the man who gets things done, a completely tough political animal who's earned his place in the ruling triumvirate of the National Country Party through hard work, professionalism and an astute political common sense'. The 'Country Party's lethal troika' was how journalist Paul Kelly described them, referring to Doug Anthony, Ian Sinclair and Peter Nixon, the lieutenants of Sir John 'Black Jack' McEwen—arguably our party's greatest leader. The Sydney Morning Herald referred to the trio as the 'Mulga Mafia', claiming in 1984 that they were regarded by many as 'one of the shrewdest political alliances Australia has ever seen'. If you could encapsulate the three, Anthony, anointed to follow McEwen, would be the affable one; Sinclair, the silver tongued, urbane one; and Nixon, the arm wrestler—unrelenting, implacable, unafraid to get in a fight. These were characteristics that earned him deep respect across the political divide. Later, when Australia's most famous union official, Bob Hawke, was mulling over whether he would come to Canberra, he sought advice from Peter Nixon on how to go about it. Others, too, sought his counsel over the years: Paul Keating, Kim Beazley and Simon Crean.

In a profession where true friendship is rare, Nixon was Malcolm Fraser's best friend, and his eulogy at the passing of former prime minister Fraser was touching to say the least. When Fraser had to sack his deputy and treasurer, Phillip Lynch, who was seriously ill in hospital at the time, Fraser actually sent Peter Nixon to do the job. Imagine that phone call from the Prime Minister—'I need you to go sack my treasurer, Nicko.'

Upon learning of his passing, former prime minister John Howard, who was at the memorial service, described Peter Nixon as possessing one of the finest political minds he had encountered in his years of public life. Former prime minister John Howard never forgot Peter's sage advice to him on the need to have a balance in the relationship between departments and private office staff.

Historian Geoffrey Blainey said that, in an era before opinion polls, no politician had a better feel for what the majority of Australian people were silently thinking than Peter Nixon, which was all the more unusual, he said, because Nixon held a safe rural electorate, far from capital cities.

Peter Nixon learned his political trade at the feet of two giants, Menzies and McEwen. He was a senior member of the National Party, supporting McEwen when he intervened to block Billy McMahon from being elevated to the leadership of the Liberal Party and, as a result, the prime ministership following the tragic disappearance and death of Harold Holt. Sally received a call while Pete was out fishing off Cape Conran, saying, 'Get to Canberra; Holt's disappeared.' McEwen called his lieutenants, and they swiftly went to work while McMahon was still sipping champagne at King's Cross. It was Anthony who went knocking on the door of a pyjamaed Senator Gorton at the time, and it was Peter Nixon that was sent by McEwen to go drinking Scotch with the Liberal Party members to hear the gossip and report back to McEwen so that the National Party could work out their next move in what was one of the great plays in political history—which he did. He was a quiet young lad. He just sat at the back of the room and listened well. Anyway, all's well that ends well!

Nixon recalled in his memoir that, in 1973, after the arrival of the new Whitlam government—the first Labor government since 1949, remember—both Liberal Party and Country Party organisations thought it was best to temporarily go their separate ways. Nixon recalled that there were to be no joint meetings, no combined strategies for question time or for legislation and so on.

During the Whitlam interregnum, Nixon recalled his approach to his opponent, Labor transport minister Charlie Jones. Jones's leg would shake in question time in anticipation of questions informed by Nixon's considerable contacts across the road, transport, aviation and shipping industries. They would be calling in with what the minister should be asked. Nixon said: 'I used to go into the House and verbally belt him around the head just to soften him up. Then I'd ring him after with the amendments that I actually needed.' Gough Whitlam asked Nixon to come down to his office and gently requested that he lay off his minister, to which Nixon politely declined—politics was politics.

There was one telling event leading into the 1974 election which demonstrates Nixon's tough but straightforward approach. The Victorian division of the Liberal Party was divided, and there was debate about Liberals running against the Country Party and the Country Party running against Liberals. But both Peter Nixon and Phillip Lynch knew that this would be a disaster at the upcoming election, so they tried to sort their organisations out. They knew it would be harmful to their chances at the election that was only months away. They both agreed that Lynch should sort it out within the Victorian Liberal Party but needed time to talk the party elders around, saying, 'We can't deliver if this thing blows up any more.' Peter Nixon hit the phones to keep Country Party officials in Victoria, issuing instructions that no-one was to make big statements. He was actually reported as opening discussion with, 'The first bloke who opens his mouth is going to get punched.' The Liberals backed down, all kumbaya, and the coalition went on to the election. Ah, memories!

Many Australians are familiar with the 1975 dismissal of the Whitlam government. On 15 October 1975, in one of the most historic decisions in Australian political history, the coalition leadership group—the leadership group that has been going for a long time and that Senator Cash and I have sat on together for a long time—decided to block the budget and force Whitlam to the polls. Political commentator Paul Kelly later wrote, 'It took this decision only after the tough-minded Country Party shadow minister Peter Nixon asked what would happen if the budget was blocked and Whitlam stayed in office, as he had threatened.' It was Nixon who asked the pivotal and fatal question during question time in the House, according to Paul Kelly. 'Wouldn't that situation be left for Kerr to resolve?' The Prime Minister gave a different answer. Fraser felt Kerr's response would be dictated by his obligation as the Governor-General, not his past association with the Labor Party. Nixon was also in the room on the day of the Dismissal, on 11 November 1975, when Fraser received a phone call from Sir John Kerr, the Governor-General. He only heard one side of that historic phone call, the monosyllabic responses of Fraser to the Governor-General, but Kerr later denied that call ever happened.

Late in his career, Peter Nixon, faced with controversy, was named in the Woodward royal commission. For Peter, it was a matter of honour, telling a journalist later that 'in his heart he knew that he'd not breached his ministerial responsibilities and that the essential point was that, having been named in the royal commission report, I very sincerely believe that I had no option but to offer my resignation. I offered it without qualification so that the Prime Minister and his colleagues could make a judgement.' His offer of resignation to the Prime Minister was rejected.

Peter never lost sight of being the member for Gippsland, once turning down an invitation to dine with the Queen. Instead, he presented a flag at a sports meeting in Club Terrace, which has a population of fewer than 100 people. His guiding principle as a minister was always: is the decision I'm about to take good for our people and good for our country? They didn't have to be popular if they were right.

Recalling his love of politics, Nixon later recalled: 'I think it's the pace, the sudden pressures. Handling the sudden crises, the emergencies that crop up, is what I like about it. I enjoy the power of making a decision, seeing a decision flow through and backing my own judgement.' He described politics as akin to a 'damn drug'.

Peter was instrumental in shaping the modern National Party. The Nixon review following the 'Joh for PM' experience has served our party well. He was a bridge between the Country Party of old and the party we are today—modern, pragmatic, fiercely regional and proudly independent. He always saw the Country Party not as a faction within the coalition but as a party with our own soul, our own mission and our own voice. He mentored a generation of National Party leaders, and it is a significant honour to serve in his footsteps as the coalition spokesperson—albeit in opposition; hopefully one day as a minister—for shipping and transport. I will be forever personally grateful for his quiet counsel, his wicked sense of humour and his unflinching honesty.

He always displayed an enormous humility. Despite being a nonagenarian, he was a great optimist for our wonderful country. Following his retirement, he enjoyed a highly successful second career taking up board appointments at Southern Cross Broadcasting, Linfox, as a VFL commissioner and an inaugural AFL commissioner, and as a committee member of his beloved Richmond Tigers football club.

It was great to see former Labor finance minister Tanner and former prime minister John Howard there when Peter's memorial service was held at Punt Road. It was great to see the breadth and diversity of men and women whose lives had changed as a result of their relationship with him.

The list of organisations he was involved in is too many to mention, but ranged from a landmark report into the Tasmanian economy to the chair of the Victorian high-speed train committee. When asked if he loved his business career or politics the best, he said he loved both in equal measure. And in 1993, he was deservedly made an Officer of the Order of Australia.

To his beloved children Joanne, Mark and Chris; his grandchildren Katrina, Amanda, Anna, Texas, Toby, Meg and Hugh; and his great-grandchildren Freddie, Mimi, Percy and Archie: on behalf of our great party, I want to offer my deep condolences and thanks for the service of your father and grandfather. He was a great man, an extraordinary man who did extraordinary deeds for our country, and we are forever grateful. Vale, Peter; may he rest in peace.