Mr BEAZLEY (Leader of the Opposition) (2:09 PM) —I second the motion and support the Prime Minister’s remarks. I thank the Prime Minister for those remarks. There were heartfelt and will be a source of great comfort, I know, to Peter’s family in the week that now confronts them prior to his burial. Peter Cook was many things. He was a hardworking and effective senior minister in the Hawke and Keating governments. He was a stalwart of the labour movement, a senior figure in the industrial wing and, to many who will miss him, a deeply loyal friend. He was more than that. He was a considered man. He was a person of powerful but ordered passion. He was a person who could think through issues at their very roots and determine a policy line free of prejudice. He had profound convictions but he was a man remarkably free of prejudice.

He remade himself in many ways in each of a series of careers. In each career he has pursued he has exposed a little more of himself to the public to emerge at the conclusion of his political career as one of the most significant politicians that the Australian Labor Party has provided in federal politics in the very long history of our organisation. He started, of course, in his political life as a labour leader, a union leader. As the longstanding Secretary of the Western Australian Trades and Labour Council, he pursued his union career in what is probably the toughest industrial environment in the country. Western Australia is a very difficult area to unionise. Whilst he was leader of the trade union movement in Western Australia and Secretary of the Trades and Labour Council, fierce battles were being fought over the unionisation of the work force and the mines in the north of the country. There was a struggle with the Court government which, from time to time, would introduce legislation affecting freedom of assembly issues. There was a whole range of concerns that made it very difficult for a labour leader of his time. It is also not easy to get recognition in the national movement as a labour leader from Western Australia. The fact that he was an elected Vice-President of the ACTU shows that his union colleagues around the country recognised the qualities of the man and the capacity that he had to contribute to a wider Australian view of the issues that the labour movement had to confront.

He remade himself too in other ways whilst he was a trade union leader. He was the son of a waterside worker; he was a fitter and turner by trade. When he assumed the role that he ultimately did in the union movement, when he shifted from South Australia where he had been involved with the Federated Clerks Union to being an organiser for the Building Workers Industrial Union—a predecessor of the CFMEU—in Western Australia, he realised that he needed to advance his knowledge to be more broadly effective in his representation. At that point, he chose to study for an economics degree. There is certainly no doubt at all that, when he subsequently pursued a parliamentary career, the value of those studies was made evident to all. To answer the Prime Minister’s question briefly as to how somebody could move from the South Australian Federated Clerks Union to the BWIU, it was the Left. The Federated Clerks were controlled by the Left in South Australia, which is why he was able to move across.

Mr Howard interjecting—

Mr BEAZLEY —It was, yes. I digress and I do not want to. He then entered parliament in the 1980s. He entered the ministry first outside the cabinet and then in 1990 he entered cabinet as the Minister for Industrial Relations. It was in this crucial portfolio that he demonstrated that fair and just reforms are best achieved through cooperation and inclusion. He was responsible for what has arguably been the most significant change in the Australian workplace in the last 30 years—the formal acceptance of enterprise bargaining by the Industrial Relations Commission in 1991. It was not easy, but his success was a credit to his energy, determination and ability and a credit to the trade union movement, which recognised that reform was essential to remake the Australian economy and underpin prosperity for all the Australian people.

So we in the Labor Party honour his memory today and vow to hold fast to the ideals of justice that guided his life. From his early days as a tradesman and union official and right through his distinguished career as a minister and a member of the Senate, he held fast to those convictions. His memory will be an inspiration to us as we will fight, in his name, the industrial relations changes which have come about in the last week. I know that one of the things he would most profoundly have regretted is that he would not be on deck over the next couple of years to find himself engaged in that battle.

Whilst Peter was a union official, he remade himself as a public figure. He was an extraordinarily effective minister. Over the last few years I have been conscious of the repeated gatherings, for the purpose of reminiscing, of the Cook office. The tens of people who worked with him have maintained relationships with him, though they are now in business, the legal profession and the Public Service. They have frequently gathered together to remember the achievements they had when they were members of Peter Cook’s staff. It speaks enormously well of his organisational capacities that he was able to do that.

But, while public servants, members of the legal profession and those who succeed in business like to have a friendly personality—a cheerful and kindly fellow—to do business with, they do not have that level of respect unless they respect a man’s intellect and his capacity to turn his convictions into sound and effective policy. Peter Cook got that respect because he was a man of considerable breadth, precision and depth in his thinking about the various portfolios he held. As Minister for Resources from 1988 to 1990, he was involved in resolving the Gove alumina dispute and presenting the Energy 2000 policy paper. As Minister for Trade, he chaired the Cairns Group and finalised the Uruguay Round of negotiations. I have already referred to his achievements as Minister for Industrial Relations. He subsequently took on the Industry, Science and Technology portfolio and recognised that, to become a clever country, we needed to go through substantial renewal in industry. He recognised that we needed to make the manufacturing industry in particular a more export oriented entity if we were to succeed and prosper in the years ahead in the world in which we operated.

Despite his background, he fully comprehended the changing terms and conditions of Australian success on a global scale that have been evident to us for the last 20 years but which have been so hard for governments to adjust to over those years. He was one of the leaders of thinking in the Labor Party and the labour movement about the need to change in order to make Australia an effective and competitive country. In opposition, he was on our frontbench and, for a time, on our backbench. His qualities as a parliamentarian showed through in his effectiveness as chairman of a series of very significant Senate committees. As I recollect, the penultimate committee he chaired was the Senate Select Committee on the Free Trade Agreement between Australia and the United States of America and that made a very significant contribution to my party’s determination ultimately to support that treaty. We looked to Peter for a lead on that. We are not naturally inclined towards bilateral agreements as foremost among the means by which trade agreements ought to be settled, and we required Peter’s advice before moving on that matter.

He was Chair of the Senate Select Committee on A Certain Maritime Incident, the ‘children overboard’ committee, and his last committee involvement was with the Senate Community Affairs References Committee inquiry into services and treatment options for persons diagnosed with cancer. Unfortunately, because of his own experience he was a standing witness on that committee. He was the person you could talk to: ‘What are you doing? What are you going through? How are the services affecting you?’ You could devise a whole committee report out of his experiences. He said:

He also said:

He did not rely on serendipity himself. When he was diagnosed, he coolly and rationally examined his situation and his options. He decided to fight that disease, that affliction, as hard as anything else he had fought in his life. In the end, it was one of the few battles he did not win.

Many of us on this side of the House recently had the opportunity to visit him in hospital in Sydney where his wife, Barbara, set up a watch at his bedside for month after month. All of us were impressed by his stoicism, his optimism, his care for all the things that we were doing and his fascination for every aspect of politics and public affairs. He was fascinated by the West Coast Eagles prospects for victory in the AFL Grand Final, which were so thoroughly dashed. His room had a life outside itself. It was not an insular sick room; it was a focal point in the hospital for public affairs.

But the focal point of that room, as much as Peter himself, was his wife, Barbara. I have never seen a person devote themselves to another person so intensely, with such forbearance, such unselfishness and such capacity to free herself from exhaustion while going through the most exhausting routine in looking after her husband. He finally came home in the desperate hope that this December he would spend at sea, because he developed during his parliamentary years a fascination with the sea and acquired several boats. He did not do so. He did not get back to his boat, but I am sure his spirit is there now. The thoughts of all members of my party and the labour movement will be with Barbara and his four children at this time.