E&OE...................
It was my very special privilege to serve as a parliamentary colleague
and ministerial colleague with Kevin Newman and to have the rare privilege
of serving with husband and wife in public life of Australia. I count
it a very great honour to say some words.
First of all, of comfort and love and assurance to you, Jocelyn, to
Kate and Campbell, to their children, your grandchildren and the other
members of Kevin's family.
I first met Kevin Newman on the streets of Launceston, when I campaigned
for him as a fairly raw and new member of the House of Representatives.
Australian politics since World War II has produced many by-elections
but few of those by-elections have presaged coming events and have
been seen in subsequent times as watersheds in Australian political
history. None more accurately fits that description than the famous
by-election in Bass in 1975 that saw Kevin enter Federal Parliament
as the member for Bass.
Within a few months he became a Minister in the Fraser Government
and for the next seven years he and I were ministerial colleagues
together for the entire period of that Government. And Kevin held
no less than five ministries - Repatriation; Environment, Housing
and Community Development; National Developments; Productivity; and
Administrative Services. And he also in the course of discharging
his responsibilities in those two portfolios he assisted the Prime
Minister in Federal Affairs and he also assisted the Minister for
Defence.
Major General Phillips recalled the words, the injunction rather,
of Sir William Slim when he was Governor-General of Australia, that
the officers of the Australian Defence Forces should display courage,
faith and integrity. Throughout his parliamentary and ministerial
career Kevin lived out that injunction of the Labor Governor-General
of Australia.
I never found him to be other than unfailingly honest. I never found
him to be other than a loyal and dedicated member of a ministerial
team. He was a passionate advocate of the cause of the people of Tasmania
for whom he felt a special affinity and a special responsibility.
He was loyal to his Department. He advocated his causes and his beliefs
not always uncritically but always very tenaciously. He was always
of warm and friendly disposition to his colleagues.
During the time that he was Minister for National Development he had
to handle in 1979 and 1980 considerably difficult public debate about
the price of fuel and the introduction of new policies which led to
very significant dislocation for rural Australia and for many of the
businesses of Australia. And he did that with enormous skill and enormous
tenacity.
He played a very major role as the Minister for Administrative Services
and therefore as the Minister responsible for the Australian Federal
Police in the formation of the National Crime Authority where he played
a very major role in the fight against organised crime. And he was
one of the first ministers at a federal level to warn in very strong
and resolute terms about the threat of organised crime in this country
and its potential to corrupt people in high places and that was a
warning that was valid at the time and was subsequently borne out
by certain events.
I want to say to you, Jocelyn, on behalf of your many admiring friends
and supporters and colleagues in the Liberal Party and in the broader
community that you and your family are very much in our thoughts and
our prayers today.
Your partnership with Kevin was a very special one and something that
both of you treasured and all of us admired. Thirty-eight years of
being together you saw the difficulties of service life in that book
'Partners' both you and Kevin spoke of the difficulties of separation
when both of your children were young. Kevin worried about the burden
that you carried particularly in relation to some of the criticism
unfairly directed at the servicemen involved in the Vietnam War.
Both of you maintained faith to each other and both of you were a
wonderful example of the great partnership for life. And in that book
Kevin spoke of that partnership and I use some of his words. And he
said: 'over recent years we have each had to look a doctor in the
eye while we were told we not immortal. That can be pretty hard to
come to terms with but it can also be enormously positive. The heightened
appreciation of life, love, family and friends you subsequently experience.
We think fortune has smiled on us. When we married it was for love
but we all know that choosing a mate for life can be pig in a poke.
For us a long marriage that worked. We have been blessed with great
children and grandchildren. We have both had important and influential
careers but best of all we are still best mates.
And who amongst us wherever we might have come from and whatever we
might have done in our lives would not want more than anything else
to be able to say that of our life and our loves and our partnerships.
And I think it sums up better than any words I can muster what was
important to Kevin. It sums up the simple faith in his country, a
love of his family, a proper sense of priorities and a belief that
in the words of his Governor-General and Commander in Chief that if
you live according to the principles of courage and faith and integrity
you can endure the challenges, you can endure difficulties, you can
make a difference.
Kevin was a well-loved colleague. He was a great servant of Australia,
he was a great servant of Tasmania, he was a great servant of the
cause of the Liberal Party of Australia. And I think I can speak for
all of those identities in thanking him and thanking God for him,
and assuring Jocelyn and Kate and Campbell and their family and their
friends of our great love and support and affection at this time.
[ends]