Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, disappointed Ron in my first close dealings with him. As a New South Welshman, I had run into Ron a few times, but not too often—until I went up to work on the 2012 Keppel election with Bruce Young in Queensland. Senator Boswell came up and organised a visit to a mango farm, where he became concerned that I'd never tried a mango in my life at the age of 40-something. After I had it and thought it was a bit meh, he proceeded to give me a review of my parentage, tastes and abilities in life that was not complimentary.

I thought that was it for me and Ron for the rest of our relationship, but, in 2016, I was able to run the campaign for Barnaby Joyce in New England, and Ron reached out because he wanted to help. He wanted to give advice, as he always did, and he wanted to be part of something that he thought was important—that Barnaby beat Tony Windsor in that election. He was very kind to me, and I think he may have forgotten the mango incident. He certainly gave advice and good counsel, and he was phoning twice a week to help out and give me his views on things and how he was seeing it. Many of those things I took on board, and I probably forgot to give him credit. He also gave me an interesting bit of advice, when we were doing a campaign, that was poignant. He said, 'You always regret the things in life that you don't do, not the things you do do.'

I regret, from hearing some of the stories here and from Nationals colleagues—I'll get some of the staff stories later—that I didn't know him better. I think you can be judged on how you act here in the views of those around you and those that work for you. So many of his staff I have spoken to over time have such fond memories and such bad stories, which I can't tell most of—but some I will. It comes up that Ron's politics were built from life, like Senator Canavan said. It's the life experience and the lived experience. They shaped everything he did here.

The last chance I had to speak with him was in 2024 after we had the supermarket inquiry. It was the first time I crossed the floor. We voted with the Greens and some others about market power and divestiture powers. He phoned me after that and said that I did the right thing—that there'll be pressures, but always support the little guy, which is something that came through. He gave some of his experiences, especially what he did on pharmacies. It was really interesting for me to know that here was Ron Boswell watching this thing from afar, like an omnipotent political player that comes out and just says those sorts of things. I was concerned. It was the first time I walked across the floor, but it was an issue that he knew was going on. That was very important to me, and I thank him for helping me out with that.

When I go to some of his staff and talk to them, they say that it wasn't just the way he worked on policy; he was a mentor to many of them. He was kind to them. I don't want to say 'false idol', but they saw him as someone they really aspired to be. They went further than just the work. They were talking about his generosity of time, his advice—very, very direct advice. Some of them said that he's the only man that could spend five minutes telling you how wrong you were and then you'd be thankful at the end of it. Under chaos, he became calmer. He was normally calm, but, when the pressure really came on, he was calm. He was a rock and he was solid. He was staunch and he was loyal. Being loyal—don't we miss that in today's politics?

One of them mentioned that there was the other side of Ron—Ron the matchmaker, which I'd never heard much of. He was always keen to connect young Nats or young people with each other, and there is more than one happy marriage to this day that was sorted out by Ron. He not only connected business and fixed problems but also connected people. I'll also drop that Cate, who told me this story, said that she was always a task too hard for Ron, even, and that she didn't manage to get there. They always thought he had a tendency to be a romantic at heart, and they thought that there.

But what came through in a number of stories is that he seriously fought for people and how serious he was about his pastries. He was very serious about his pastries. He was not casually interested but seriously, seriously interested in assessing small towns by the quality of their bakery. For him, the standout was, I'm told, the Blackbutt Bakery in Queensland. It was the gold standard he would use to judge. In 2009, when he stepped in to oversee the electorate of Hinkler while Paul Neville was representing Australia in the United Nations, Paul knew Ron had been there, not because of a memo and not because of a handover document—none of that. It was all the pastry flakes on his seat in his office that gave it away. That was Ron—always fully committed, always fully engaged and always very committed to a quality pastry.

The staff tell me—and I again acknowledge the staff members—that one of his proudest achievements was actually working with Labor across the aisle and working with Senator Chris Schacht to amend the Trade Practices Act to stop the mergers that would substantially increase the cost dimension. To this day, that was one of the proudest things that his staff were telling me that he quite loved to do, because it was always about that. It was always about getting the outcome. It didn't matter if it got press. It didn't matter if it got news. It was about helping someone. Just that fact of helping someone removed barriers to do that. We're hitting an era when politics has firmly moved towards optics. He was always about impact. He was always about the outcome, not the story, and that's such a great thing.

So I regret I did not have more time with a person that is viewed so positively by so many that have been close to him. I regret that I wasn't always the recipient of more advice, as I was in 2016, from Ron. I thank him for his comfort in 2024 when I was doing something that was scary for a first-timer in doing it like that—but he thought it was right. Queensland is better for his service. The Nationals have been better for his service. Thank you to his family for sharing him with us for so long, and may he rest in peace.