John Hogg (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with deep regret that I inform the Senate of the death on 19 November 2012, of the Hon. Joseph Martin (Joe) Riordan, AO, a former minister, and member of the House of Representatives for the division of Phillip, New South Wales, from 1972 to 1975.

I call the Leader of the Government in the Senate.

Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate records its deep regret at the death, on 19 November 2012, of the Honourable Joseph Martin (Joe) Riordan, AO, former federal minister and member for Phillip, places on record its appreciation of his long and meritorious public service and tenders its profound sympathy to his family in their bereavement.

Today we mark the passing of another Whitlam-era minister. There has been a succession of ministers from the Whitlam era who have passed away in recent years, a reflection of the age and stage. Today we remember Joe Riordan, who was a unionist minister and a great champion of social justice.

Joe was born in Sydney on 27 February 1930, just before the Great Depression. He grew up in the inner suburbs of Sydney and was educated in the Catholic system at the Patrician Brothers School and Marist Brothers' College. Like many of his generation, Joe did not attend university. However, he could proudly claim to have been part of the visionary Whitlam Labor government that made higher education accessible to all Australians.

Joe found his first calling in the union movement. At the age of 22 he commenced as assistant secretary of the New South Wales branch of the Federated Clerks Union. Two years later he was appointed secretary, a position he held for four years. In 1958, at the age of 28, he rose to the position of federal secretary of the union, a position he remained in until 1972.

He contested the marginal bellwether seat of Phillip in Sydney's eastern suburbs at the 1972 federal election. The seat was one of the smallest in the country, covering the suburbs of Bondi, Bronte, Coogee, Randwick and Waverley. Despite facing a strong Liberal opponent in the then Speaker of the House, Sir Bill Aston, Joe won, and joined the number of new Labor MPs swept into office in the 1972 'It's Time' election. Joe was re-elected at the 1974 election.

He brought to the parliament a deep sense of social justice that stemmed from his Catholic faith. He was part of a generation of Labor MPs who wanted to see a more open and dynamic Australia after so many years of conservative rule. In his three years in parliament he proved to be a very active parliamentarian. He chaired the Joint Committee on Pecuniary Interests of Members of Parliament. This was the committee that in late 1974 recommended the introduction of compulsory registration of members' and senators' interests as well as the creation of a register for public scrutiny. These are recommendations that were finally adopted and which underpin some of the accountability measures still in existence in the Senate and throughout Australian parliaments.

In 1975 Joe was appointed to the ministry as the Minister for Housing and Construction, and the Minister Assisting the Minister for Urban and Regional Development. Joe, obviously, only had a very short period on the front bench; when the government was dismissed by, I understand, a friend of his, Sir John Kerr, Joe failed in his bid to be re-elected as the member for Phillip, losing in the 1975 landslide against Labor. So ended his term in federal parliament.

But his commitment to public life continued long after his life in politics. He went on to a very successful career in a range of industrial relations and appeal tribunal roles. These included being head of the New South Wales Department of Industrial Relations; vice-chairman of the Electricity Commission; and as senior deputy president of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, on which he served with great distinction and was well known to many of the senators and members of parliament in the House of Representatives. He was presiding member of the New South Wales Schools Appeals Tribunal and chairman of Worksafe Australia. He was on the Sydney Airport Community Consultative Committee, and he was chairperson of the Ethical Clothing Trades Council of New South Wales. So he had a very active history in employment and community engagement following his exit from the parliament. His final position before his retirement was as chair of the WorkCover Authority of New South Wales, a position he occupied until 2004, and one that reflected his deep and abiding commitment to the working men and women of Australia.

It was fitting that in 1995 Joe became an Officer of the Order of Australia for his:

… service to industrial relations, to social justice and to the community.

He will be remembered as a man who committed himself to making the lives of working people better. I know he is fondly remembered by a number of senators, and I think that two or three of our senators from New South Wales who knew him personally want to make a contribution. I know that Senator Cameron has spoken to me about his respect for him. I know that he and others attended the funeral last Friday, which I understand that a couple of prime ministers attended. It sounds like it was a good Irish Catholic funeral, which are always some of the best events one can go to—they are always done in style!

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes!

Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will leave that to Senator Cameron and others to speak about.

As I said, Joe Riordan has a very honoured place in Labor history, both for his role in the Whitlam government, in industrial matters and in his service to the community. On behalf of the government, I offer condolences to his wife, Pat, their six children and extended family.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The name 'Riordan' is synonymous with workplace relations; first with Joe, whose passing we mourn, and whose service we acknowledge and salute, and now with his son Bernie, who is on the bench of Fair Work Australia.

The Hon. Joe Riordan dedicated his life to public service and the parliament through the trade union movement, at the New South Wales Department of Industrial Relations and at the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. Before entering parliament he was secretary of the Federated Clerks Union, where he valiantly championed a proud union fighting against communism. Mr Riordan was a passionate Labor man who genuinely stood up for workers around the country and not just for the sectional interests of the union bosses. He was seen by many in the community as a genuinely honest broker.

His relatively short time in the parliament was one that has had a lasting impact. He was the chair of the Joint Committee on Pecuniary Interests of Members of Parliament, which recommended the establishment of a register to which the public could have access—something that all senators would know lives on to this day and is seen as a transparency measure.

After leaving the parliament, he went on to continue his career of public service in the Public Service itself before being appointed to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission—footsteps that his son Bernie has gone on to follow as a Fair Work Australia commissioner. After his retirement from the commission, he continued to assist the wider community by undertaking a number of inquiries and investigations for groups, including the Law Society of New South Wales and the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union. He investigated, indeed, whether union bosses should have as much influence in the parliamentary Labor Party as they allegedly do, which I understand is still a hot topic all these years on. The coalition acknowledges his life of distinguished service and expresses its condolences to the family at this time of loss.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to associate myself with those remarks. It is a great honour to have the opportunity to recognise and acknowledge the remarkable life of the Hon. Joe Riordan, AO. Joe received the award of Officer of the Order of Australia for his services to industrial relations, social justice and the community. But Joe's major focus was his family. He married his wife, Patricia, in 1955. His wife had been ill for some years prior to Joe's death, and Joe looked after and nursed his wife and did a remarkable job during that period. My condolences and, I am sure, the condolences of everyone here go to Patricia, to Bernie, to the siblings and to what he described as the love of his life, his grandchildren. Bernie indicated that when the grandchildren were born Joe told his kids: 'That's it for you lot. I've looked after you. I'm doing no more for you. The grandkids are what I'm going to look after.' He always looked after everybody, but he had a great soft touch for his grandchildren.

This was a man who was one of the most respected industrial relations practitioners in the country. If you walked into the room where he was, you knew that you were in the presence of someone of significant capabilities. He was a fantastic guy. He was absolutely brilliant at what he did. I had a long relationship with Joe Riordan. I first met Joe in 1978 in the Electricity Commission of New South Wales, when I was a delegate in the Electricity Commission and Joe Riordan was the deputy chair. Joe came to the Electricity Commission as the chair. He was a former right-wing Labor Party operative from the Federated Clerks Union, and I was a left-wing rank and file delegate for the Socialist Left in New South Wales. You would think, 'What would be the relationship between these two people?' I will tell you what it was: Joe Riordan was the first senior executive of the Electricity Commission who ever treated me with any respect. The industrial relations before he came to the Electricity Commission were an absolute war. There was just battling day in, day out, and it was the worst kind of industrial relations on both sides. Joe Riordan was appointed to try to assist to bring the Electricity Commission into the modern times of industrial relations, and he did a great job in doing that.

There were two well-known industrial practitioners at the funeral, apart from two prime ministers and many former state and federal ministers. Bob Hawke was there. Bob spoke extremely fondly of Joe. Paul Keating was there. So it really was a great show of respect for Joe Riordan. What was said about Joe was that he was just a great guy.

Joe had two nicknames in the Electricity Commission. His first nickname was 'Call Me Joe'. He was known as 'Call Me Joe' because in those days many of the bosses in the Electricity Commission still wanted to be called 'Mr So-and-so'—and a lot of them were Mr So-and-sos, I can tell you—but he was 'Call Me Joe'. His other nickname was 'Helicopter Joe', because every time there was a massive brawl on at the power station, the helicopter took off in Sydney and up came Joe, and we would sit down to try to work out the issues. He was the first person ever to do that.

In 1982 the state Liberal Party called for his sacking because he was undermining management structures in the Electricity Commission. This was probably one of the best things Joe ever did—to undermine the management structures in the Electricity Commission of New South Wales. He did a great job in bringing some democratic processes to industrial relations. He did a great job in treating people with respect, and I will always acknowledge and think fondly of Joe Riordan and what he did.

I mentioned to two well-known industrial practitioners who were at the funeral—Bert Evans, the former Chief Executive of the AIG and the old MTIA, and Roger Boland, his No. 2 at the AIG—that Joe Riordan helped humanise me. They thought that was rubbish. They did not think that was the case, and they could not understand that anybody could have done that in my early days of industrial operations in the Electricity Commission. But Joe was a great guy.

Not only was he the deputy chair of the Electricity Commission but he had a whole range of other roles. He was the chairman of the safety commission. He was the chairman of the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission. He was the chairman of WorkCover. Then he went on to be an industrial relations consultant. I know that as an industrial relations consultant Joe Riordan did more consultation for no money than any other consultant I knew.

Joe was always prepared to help the union movement and to help anyone who was in trouble—on both sides of fence—to try to work things through. I will be ever-grateful to Joe Riordan because, when I was the National Secretary of the AMWU, we had some well-known problems in Victoria with a group called Workers First. We had problems there that my union had never experienced before, and we would take all sorts of steps to try to deal with those issues that had arisen in Victoria.

We asked Joe Riordan and another highly respected industrial arbiter, Tom McDonald, the former National Secretary of the CFMEU, to go down to Victoria, have a look at the issues and prepare a report for the national council of the AMWU. That report was extremely professional, it was done in some really tough circumstances, and Joe Riordan and Tom McDonald played a huge role in ensuring that my union worked its way through the issues that were emerging in Victoria.

I want to indicate that Joe Riordan will always be in my memory. He has been around ever since I have been involved in industrial relations. He will be and is sadly missed by not only his family but the industrial relations community around this world. He was a man of great standing, a man of great stature, a man of high intelligence, a man who helped make Australia a better place not only for workers but for many employers and a man who can stand there with the giants of the Labor movement. Vale, Joe Riordan.

John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too want to associate myself with this condolence motion. Joe Riordan was very much a man of his era. He was born in the middle of the Great Depression in 1930. He was a man of strong working-class allegiances and a man with an unwavering sense of social justice. Although his period in the federal parliament was very short, only from 1972 to 1975, his was a life of service: to his community, to his union and the union movement, and to his party.

Joe Riordan's first speech to the parliament on 1 March 1972, I really do think, reflected his sense of humanity. It was a plea for the government to remember that its first responsibility was to human beings, not to machines, to technology or to the financial bottom line. He said:

This is a society where machines have more importance and are given greater significance than the men and women who operate them, where material possessions are the very criteria of success, where job satisfaction and purpose in life have come to be regarded as almost irrelevant.

At the first sign of an economic cold breeze, labour is the most easily disposed of part of a company's productive process.

No doubt informed by his background in the trade union movement, Joe described many corporations as:

Faceless, impersonal—a callous and cynical machine … with no concern for those who work for them, for those who produce the wealth of the organisation, and certainly no concern for the families of these people … [For] when there are 100,000 out of work, about 300,000 people are in need.

Joe Riordan believed that the government that preceded the Whitlam government had created and encouraged this depersonalised society for whom the unemployed were simply units on a piece of paper. But perhaps one of the areas most important, I think, in terms of his brief period in the federal parliament, carried out by Joe Riordan was his chairmanship of the Joint Committee on Pecuniary Interests of Members of Parliament. It was an issue that then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam really did feel very strongly about and, for Joe Riordan, a total cleanskin about whom there was never—never—any hint of corruption, it was a matter that he was fanatical about.

The committee was set up in August 1974 and it was at that time groundbreaking. There was no register of members' interests, no declaration of the often conflicting interests of ministers in their holding of shares or their directorships of companies, and no restrictions on officials who resigned from public service, going straight into companies in fields associated with that service. There was no code of conduct for members of parliament or for ministers. The possibility of improper influence on the decision making process was clear, and the problems that raised were both serious ones and controversial ones.

In his opening remarks for that first public hearing of the committee, Joe Riordan said:

It is not the function of the committee to be concerned about the degree or level of wealth of any person irrespective of that person's position. The committee is concerned with interests held by the individual which may conflict with the execution of his or her public responsibility. We … seek recommendations which will protect and uphold the dignity and honour of parliamentarians and public officials.

Of course, current events, even in New South Wales, demonstrate the truth of Joe Riordan's view. The committee reported in September 1975. It recommended that members, the staff of ministers and shadow ministers, and journalists in Parliament House should make declarations of their pecuniary interests in a publicly available register. Unfortunately, these recommendations were not able to be acted upon before the dismissal of the Whitlam government. In fact, we did not see a register of pecuniary interests for members of the House of Representatives until after the election of the Hawke government.

Joe Riordan was appointed to the ministry in June 1975, replacing Les Johnson as Minister for Housing and Construction. Of course, his tenure was to be very short. However, as minister he continued the Whitlam government program of welfare housing. Through this program, the Commonwealth made advances to the state housing authorities at low interest rates for the provision of housing for those persons and families most in need. It was a program he heartily endorsed. He believed that housing was the engine of the economy—the first to suffer in a downturn but capable of driving the economy out of recession.

It is also true that Joe Riordan, Jim McClelland and John Kerr had a shared history working in industrial relations and were long-time and genuine friends. At the time of the crisis in 1975, Governor-General Kerr maintained contact with those two Labor ministers—Joe Riordan and Jim McClelland—and they became informal intermediaries between the Governor-General and the then Prime Minister. They believed that the Governor-General deliberately deceived them as to his intention to dismiss the government. Their sense of betrayal by Kerr was, for them, particularly bitter.

Beyond politics, Joe Riordan, as we have heard, was a proud and committed trade unionist. He began in the union movement in 1952. He was federal secretary of the Federated Clerks Union from 1958 to 1973 and a member of the ACTU executive from 1963 to 1967. He has been described to me—and you have heard again from Cameron in this condolence debate—as a superb industrial advocate, noted for his preparation. He believed that trade unionism was vital for the protection of workers. He said in parliament in 1972:

I notice from what has been said in previous debates that honourable members opposite seem to have an antipathy towards trade unions. That is very unfortunate. I remind the honourable member that, since 1904, judges of Australian arbitration tribunals said that employees who enjoy the benefits of union awards should be members of unions.

This argument about the benefits derived from the work of unions was basic to Joe Riordan's philosophy. In a case before the Commonwealth Arbitration Commission in 1973 considering union claims for preferential treatment for union members, Joe Riordan noted that both unionists and non-unionists reap the advantages of conciliation and arbitration proceedings for new awards and agreements but unionists alone bear the costs of obtaining them. He had never known non-unionists who object to being compelled to receive award benefits. He was a man who believed in solidarity—in the best and oldest sense of the word. He was a genuine Laborist.

After Joe Riordan's defeat at the 1975 election he returned to industrial relations, the area of his great expertise. He was appointed as head of the New South Wales Department of Industrial Relations. He served as the Senior Deputy President of the Industrial Relations Commission from 1986 until 1995. Finally, in 1997 he was made chair of the WorkCover authority of New South Wales, serving until 2004.

I think Joe Riordan was a man to be respected. He ran a parliamentary committee in a non-partisan manner. Despite being in the Right faction of the Labor Party, he respected, and was respected by, members of the Left, particularly on these probity issues I have spoken about. Although he lost his seat of Phillip in the great sweep of 1975, he was very highly regarded throughout that electorate. In his ministerial office he was surrounded by people he knew and trusted, and they in return admired him enormously and were immensely loyal to him. Joe Riordan's life was a life of service and commitment to the ideals of fairness, equity and social justice. I join with other senators in offering my most sincere condolences to his family and friends.

Matt Thistlethwaite (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is an honour to make a contribution in this tribute to Joseph Martin Riordan, AO. Joe personified the Australian notion of a fair go. A committed Catholic, a champion of workers' rights, a thorough gentleman and a dedicated family man, it is an honour to have known him and to have had the privilege of working with him.

Joe was born in Sydney and educated in that great Patrician Brothers tradition at Waterloo. He later returned to his primary school as the member for Phillip to open one of the new facilities that the Whitlam government had funded at that school. He took great pride in having the opportunity to represent the government at the opening of those new facilities, because to Joe that action personified the great Labor value of education for all. He was a man who left school at the age of 15 and had become the local member for the area in which he grew up, opening an educational facility for young children. To him that was what the Labor Party was all about.

He went on to high school at Marcellin College at Randwick, the same school that produced former Deputy Prime Minister Lionel Bowen. He, after school, became a clerk in the Public Service, and that is where he began his long involvement with the Federated Clerks Union. He was involved in the many battles of the late 1940s and 50s with the communists and eventually was part of a team that wrestled control of that union from the communists. He became the acting secretary in 1952, the secretary in 1954, and went on to become the union's national secretary in 1958, a position that he held for well over a decade.

In 1969 he was unsuccessful in his first tilt for federal parliament in the seat of Phillip, but in 1972 he became the member for that seat in the It's Time election. He went on to become a minister in the Whitlam government, holding the portfolio of Housing and Construction and the position of Minister assisting the Minister for Urban and Regional Development. Unfortunately he was defeated at the 1975 election. That was a great loss for the people of Sydney's east and for this nation.

But his commitment to social justice did not end with his parliamentary career. He became, as Senator Cameron said, the deputy president of the electricity commission, the head of the New South Wales department of industrial relations, and the senior deputy president of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. During his time on the Industrial Relations Commission he was considered a diligent and hardworking member, well researched and someone who took pride in his decisions. He had four of his decisions appealed to the High Court of Australia. On each and every occasion the appeal was dismissed. That is something that Joe took great pride in. He saw arbitration as 'the industrial conscience of the Australian community'. It is no coincidence, I believe, that the Fair Work Act has that name today. The principles of fairness and equal opportunity employment were things that were instilled by the likes of Joe Riordan in his time in this parliament and in his time as the senior deputy president of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. He went on to chair WorkCover and a number of boards and inquiries.

One job that he did take on that many would not know about—and it is something that I had the pleasure of being involved in with him—was an inquiry that he undertook in 1997 into the riding fees that are paid to jockeys in this country. In 1997, jockeys were hopelessly underpaid and overworked. Their fees for losing rides in a race had not increased for over a decade. They were paid $65 per losing ride for a race throughout the country, and less for barrier trials. In some occasions they were not paid for barrier trials. Their conditions were unsafe. In the country, many of the conditions were appalling, with no facilities at all for female jockeys. I remember stories of female jockeys having to get dressed and changed in broom cupboards at racetracks in the bush because those facilities did not exist.

This led to a strike of jockeys in 1997. Many of them joined the Australian Workers Union, and I had the fortune of representing them in the deliberations that ensued. Because jockeys were not employees, the jurisdiction of the New South Wales Industrial Relations Commission was not enshrined. Therefore, the Carr government acted quickly to establish an inquiry into the issues that had been raised by the jockeys in New South Wales and throughout the country. The person that was appointed to conduct that inquiry was none other than Joe Riordan. He conducted a most thorough investigation. He travelled to racetracks throughout New South Wales, to Armidale, to Hawkesbury, to Bowraville, to Wagga, and to all of the city racetracks, talking to jockeys and administrators about their conditions. Some of the evidence was shocking.

In 1998 he handed down a decision that endures to this day. It saw the riding fee for jockeys increased to $85 for a losing ride and a barrier trial fee of 35 per cent of the losing ride fee instituted. Importantly, he enshrined the notion of an annual review of the fees paid to jockeys for losing rides and barrier trials. Because of Joe's foresight and that decision that he implemented, jockeys are now paid $170 per losing ride in this country, and the Riordan formula of 35 per cent for barrier trials endures to this day.

This morning I spoke to the national president of the Australian Jockeys' Association and asked him what his memories of Joe's work in that inquiry were. He asked me to convey to the Senate that every jockey in this country is eternally grateful for the role that Joe Riordan played in bringing fairness and equity to their conditions throughout this country. It was because of that inquiry and the jockeys working with the Australian Workers Union getting organised that change occurred for them in that industry. The National Jockeys Trust was established in the wake of that to provide support for terribly injured jockeys and their families, and a public liability and personal accident scheme was implemented. On every racetrack throughout this country the Riordan legacy lives on.

In 1995 he was awarded an Order of Australia for services to industrial relations, social justice and the community. What a perfect reflection of his professional and personal life. It was a privilege to know Joe Riordan, a person who I admire greatly, and I offer my condolences to his family.

Question agreed to, honourable senators standing in their places.