Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I simply want to echo the sentiments that have been raised very eloquently by my leader Senator McKenzie. As she said, Peter Nixon was a giant of the National Party. I only had limited interactions with Peter, but I am forever thankful for his responding to me early in my career as, indeed, only a senator-elect, when I was putting together a new edition of John McEwen's autobiography. I got in touch with Peter to ask for a quote about John, and Peter was very polite and very prompt in coming back to me, saying that John McEwen had been a great mentor of his.

There's no doubt in my mind that Peter was taught well and deservedly sits in the pantheon of National Party giants alongside his mentor John McEwen. He's a great loss, therefore, for our party and for our nation, and I pass on my condolences to his family. Thank you for coming here to pay tribute to your dad, to your grandad, who we will all miss.

I did want to just briefly put into Hansard some great stories. It's good to put these down on the record. I'm indebted to another giant of our party, Mr Paul Davey, the father of former senator Perin Davey, for these stories from his great history of the National Party. Bear with me; I won't be too long.

Peter Nixon, like many who start in this place, made friends with other young, newly elected parliamentarians, one of whom was Doug Anthony. He found himself, during a late-night session at Old Parliament House, with not much to do—as often happens—so they decided to start kicking a football around in King's Hall. You probably know where this is going. Somebody—I don't know if Paul found out who—kicked the football into an old painting. It fell to the floor, and the glass shattered, making a huge noise that echoed through Old Parliament House. As Doug Anthony later recounted:

We swept up the broken glass and picked all the bits out of the frame and straightened the painting. It stayed like that for years before anyone noticed there was no glass in the frame!

They weren't too good at kicking actual goals, but Peter Nixon was very good at kicking political goals. He played an integral part in the 1980 federal election when, 17 days from the poll, he found himself in a live television debate with then Western Australian senator Peter Walsh, his shadow ministerial counterpart. During that interview, then senator Walsh said, 'The Labor Party believes that Australia ought to have some form of capital taxation.' Peter Nixon immediately interjected and accused him of 'wiggling too much', saying, 'What do you mean by that?' Walsh responded by saying: 'I'm not wiggling. Whether it will be a capital gains tax, a wealth tax or a reintroduction of inheritance taxes, that is yet to be determined.'

Peter immediately recognised the gravity of that situation. He sent a media release out straightaway. That wasn't picked up, so he sent another one out a couple of days later. That wasn't picked up by the media either; they weren't interested. Eventually he contacted the Liberal Party's famous federal director, Tony Eggleton, and convinced him to record a TV advertisement on the issue, which eventually ran in the penultimate week of the campaign. It is now commonly recognised—and I knew this part of the story, but not of Peter's involvement—that that ad played a very big role in the Liberal-National coalition being returned comfortably at the 1980 election.

There was probably a good reason why the media didn't pick up Peter Nixon's press releases; he wasn't always that popular with the press gallery. He had actually developed a career of especially getting stuck into the ABC about its left-wing bias—which, of course, he ended and no longer exists! During this part of his career, he thought he needed to look like he was across all types of media regulation, so he got his office to get a bunch of thick volumes on the history of broadcasting in Britain. He also got a number of annual reports of the ABC, and he formed a phalanx of these books in his bookcase behind his shoulder for when he was doing TV interviews in his office so that, when he was getting stuck into the ABC, behind him it looked like, 'Well, this guy knows what he's talking about.' He later confided that he never once opened the books or reports, but it did the trick.

Finally, on a more serious note: Senator McKenzie did, through the chair, outline how tough Nixon was with other Country Party ministers. There is another famous story that Minister McMahon once brought forward a proposal to revalue the Australian dollar. It was going to be very injurious to farming interests, and the cabinet ended up meeting over three days to discuss this one issue. Doug Anthony, Ian Sinclair and Peter Nixon walked out from the cabinet meeting on three separate occasions, and they demanded a revaluation of no greater than 5.2 per cent. Eventually, 6.3 per cent was decided upon, and McMahon did admit that that actually led to an overall depreciation, relative to our trading partners. As Mr Davey recounts in his history of the National Party, it was a victory for the Country Party.

While we have lost Peter Nixon, we have not lost his example, his principles, his strength and his determination to stand up for many in this country that don't have access to this parliament or a voice to influence matters. We will always, as a team, seek to work in tune with the actions of the likes of Peter Nixon. Again, I pass my condolences to his family. Vale, Peter Nixon.