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

I rise tonight to pay tribute to my friend Jenny Dowell, who we lost this afternoon after a long battle with cancer. She was a great Australian, a great citizen of the Northern Rivers and a great Labor person. She offered decades of service to her community of Lismore and the Northern Rivers, and, in every role that she held, she consistently put the power of her principles into practice, and, in the process, she achieved the best thing that any of us could ever hope to achieve—she made Australia a better place.

She made an indelible mark on Lismore, the wider Northern Rivers community and our labour movement as a teacher, as a councillor, as a mayor and as an activist for her community, for women's rights and for the environment. Her legacy as mayor is a triumph of both quality and quantity. It includes fluoridation of the town water, better community infrastructure, the Lismore Regional Gallery, strengthening the relationship between Lismore and Southern Cross University and support for the LGBTIQ community through Tropical Fruits.

As the Chair of the Northern Rivers Regional Organisation of Councils, she wasn't just a strong and respected voice for Lismore but for the whole Northern Rivers community. Whether as a mayoral mentor to more than 18 mayors across New South Wales, supporting women in politics or as a volunteer for the Lismore Theatre Company, the Red Cross, the Northern Rivers Rail Trail or the Northern Rivers Flood Action Group, she gave so much time and so much energy.

For me personally, Jenny was always an ethnical anchor. She was a person whose opinion I sought out and whose public speech was always so ethical and so clear. Jenny never talked down to her community. At a time when there are so many rewards for people who peddle simple solutions and stoke anger and division, Jenny always chose the complex, serious approach. She never talked down to her community. She respected their intelligence, and, in turn, they respected her.

Jenny didn't just support her own community; she sought to lift it up. From the moment she put up her hand as someone ready to make a difference, Jenny was an exemplar of someone who did politics with purpose. Through the sheer power of her example, she showed people that they can do extraordinary things to change their community for the better.

As she faced the greatest of all challenges, she awed the entire Labor family and her whole community with her grace and her dignity and her courage, and so we hold her family—Ron and Georgina and Tim—in our hearts at what is a very, very difficult time for them, and we hold the wider Northern Rivers community in our hearts too, because they have lost a leader and, for many, a very dear friend. Vale, Jenny Dowell.