George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I commence my remarks by joining others in congratulating you, Mr President, upon your election to the very high office which you have achieved today. I think there would not be a dissenting voice in the Senate to the proposition that you are eminently equipped for this task and have earned great respect and deep personal affection among all of us.

I wanted to make a few remarks on the passing of the late Peter Durack. Unlike other Liberal senators who have spoken on this condolence motion, I did not particularly know Peter Durack, although I had the pleasure of meeting him a couple of times, albeit briefly, when I was very young. Peter Durack will be remembered in particular for three things. First of all, he represented a very old-fashioned ethic of public service. He was a person who chose to devote the prime years of his life to service in parliament and to involvement in politics—three years, as we have heard, in the Western Australian state parliament; 22 years in the Senate and, in between those two terms of parliamentary service, as a party officer as the state president of the Western Australian Liberal Party. It is a theme I have elaborated upon several times, but I think it is very sad—particularly, if I may say so, for my side of politics—that that ethic of public service, of which the late Peter Durack was so obviously an exemplar, seems to be lacking from the professions today. Too few people turn away from professional life, whether as lawyers, doctors or whatever among the learned professions, to give their lives to public service as Peter Durack did. I think that the professions have been the poorer for it and I think that the parliament has been the poorer for it. The ethic of public service represented by Peter Durack is something that I hope we have not completely lost but it is certainly more a feature of an earlier age than it is of the current age. An aspect of that ethic of public service, as we have heard from all the Liberal senators who have spoken so far in this debate, was the role of Peter Durack as a mentor to younger senators. I remember my old friend former senator Chris Puplick telling me once about how Peter Durack had mentored him when he was a firebrand young Liberal senator in the 1980s.

The second thing for which Peter Durack should be remembered and celebrated, particularly on my side of politics, is that he was a Menzies Liberal. He was a representative, an exemplar and a champion of what I have always considered to be the mainstream position of the Liberal Party—the Menzian tradition. In fact, his first involvement in the Liberal Party came in 1944, the year in which Sir Robert Menzies—Mr Menzies as he then was—founded the Liberal Party. Peter Durack, then a student at the University of Western Australia, co-founded the University of Western Australia Liberal Club. The year in which he was first elected to parliament as the state member for Perth in 1965 coincided with the last year of Sir Robert Menzies’ second prime ministership. He was a Menzies Liberal in the sense that he represented the liberal values which have always been the pride of the Liberal Party. In an obituary of Peter Durack that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald last month, the observation was made:

He said on his retirement: “I accept the fact that I’m a fairly conservative lawyer, I guess.” Yet, at least with hindsight from beyond the Howard government years, much of his work was in the liberal, rather than conservative, tradition.

This was a view corroborated by Mr Howard himself, who, in another obituary, described Peter Durack as probably being ‘on the small ‘l’ liberal side of politics on social issues, but an economic rationalist’. So, from my point of view as a small ‘l’ liberal on social issues and as a rationalist on economic issues, the late Peter Durack represented the best of both of the traditions of the Liberal Party.

Thirdly, he will be remembered for his service with distinction as a minister in the Fraser government. As others have said, he was Minister for Repatriation for about a year and then, after the resignation of Bob Ellicott, was Attorney-General for more than six years. The historical reputation of the Fraser government has in recent years suffered something of a devaluation, but I think that, like all reputations, as we achieve greater historical perspective, many of the great achievements of the Fraser government will come to be reconsidered and re-evaluated and perhaps appreciated more both by historians and by people in my own party than they have been more recently.

Peter Durack was associated with many of those achievements. He was, in particular, one of Australia’s most illustrious and longest serving attorneys-general. Others have spoken of the many beneficial law reforms with which he was associated, most particularly as the pioneer of the Freedom of Information Act, although I might point out that he was an opponent of the notion that Australia should have a statutory bill of rights. So his liberalism was leavened by a wise and sceptical conservatism as well, which is a very attractive combination. He was in fact the last Liberal Attorney-General to serve in the Senate.

I conclude my tribute to and appreciation of Peter Durack by saying that the more that Australia’s parliaments, both state and federal, attract people of that calibre and with that ethic of public service and dedication to public life the better we will be. We remember today an exemplary figure in that tradition and we mourn his passing.

Question agreed to, honourable senators standing in their places.