Mr ANDREWS (Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) (9:24 PM) —I would like to commend to the House the memory of a great Australian, Dame Phyllis Frost, who died recently. Dame Phyllis was one of the few people in our community who became famous for the best of reasons: for taking the role of a professional beggar for thankless causes, most notably the plight of women prisoners in Victoria.

Born into a Croydon family in 1917, Dame Phyllis lived in that community all her life. Her Presbyterian parents instilled in her and her sisters the ethos of charity to the less well off. During the Depression her parents helped to feed and clothe, in their front parlour, those unfortunately devastated from their local township. Phyllis Frost became involved in prison reform when an acquaintance was incarcerated for a minor crime in the 1940s. Shocked into action by the degrading conditions that prisoners have endured since the 19th century, she lobbied to change and improve policies towards women prisoners. She studied criminology and, in 1953, she established the Victorian Women's Prisons Council, for many years assisting women as they served sentences. She served as the chair of this organisation for some 46 years.

Phyllis Frost was also involved in around 47 mainly charitable committees and organisations, and helped raise millions of dollars for charity. In 2000 the Victorian government honoured her achievements with women prisoners by renaming the Deer Park Metropolitan Women's Correctional Centre to the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre. The centre, with its humanising design, was the apex of her policy drive and is a model for other states.

Survived by her three daughters, five grandchildren and three great-grandsons, Dame Phyllis Frost was tireless, obstinate, frank, mischievous and a real achiever with real legacies. She was, in short, a great Australian. Many here would remember her daughter, Pauline Osmond, who served previous Speakers of the House of Representatives with great professionalism. Our thoughts are especially with her daughter, Pauline, tonight.

Question agreed to.