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Tuesday, 8 May 2012
Page: 2721

Senator MILNE (Tasmania—Leader of the Australian Greens) (13:45): I rise today to express my sadness and to support the condolence motion on the death of Senator Judith Adams. I certainly want to convey my best wishes to her two sons Stuart and Robert and to her granddaughters.

Senator Adams was elected at the same time as I was. We were all part of what we refer to among ourselves as the class of 2004. I remember very keenly her first speech. I remember it because it was so different. She stood up and said, 'I am really proud to be one of the oldest women elected to the Australian Senate.' It was a cutting-through thing to say because it was about valuing life's experience. She went on to say, 'Life experience cannot be bought or traded.' It was just such a statement of where she was going to come from as a senator representing Western Australia. Then she went on to talk about the life experience she had had and how she hoped to bring that life experience to her parliamentary life. She talked about the fact that she had had this long history in her family of association with the military, from Gallipoli to her mother's experience as a nurse and her own, her own engagement in the military, how proud she was of that and how Anzac Day made her reflect on the values of Australia, but particularly in the military.

She also talked of her experiences in rural and regional Australia. I was interested in that because I was sitting there thinking we will have a quite a bit in common because she talked about the impact of salinity in Western Australia. She talked about feral animals and the need for appropriate quarantine. She talked about a whole range of issues from which I then got to know her better on the rural and regional committee. I sat on that committee with Judith over many years and with my colleagues in here as she raised a number of those issues.

I thought it was interesting that she brought the combination of her background as a nurse with her total identification with rural and regional Australia, and that her husband Gordon had been a pilot with the Royal Flying Doctor Service. They knew the remote communities around Western Australia collectively and individually from their different experiences. She brought that commitment for rural issues, for rural health issues as well as environmental sustainability issues. She often talked about the need for greater attention to mental health support for rural communities, particularly in times when the drought was making things very difficult.

Her hard work has already been talked about here and she certainly was a keen worker on all of those community consulta­tions through the committee system. But her stoicism was characteristic of Australian women, particularly older Australian women who have been incredibly stoic having experienced some pretty tough things in their lifetime. Judith faced her long battle with cancer and other sorts of things with that personal resilience she had, with courage in being an advocate for cancer sufferers and for people in rural and regional Australia who need access to health services and also, as has been discussed, her resilience at the time of the death of her husband.

I remember talking to her then. This was when her depth of experience and her rural experience, particularly, came to hand. She talked about at what point will we deal with the issue of succession planning in rural and regional Australia, helping people to get from the farm and hand over to their children, the next generation. How are they going to manage it? She talked often about being worried that she and Gordon probably needed to leave the farm, to sell and go. She thought that through, that he was taking longer to come to the same conclusion, which is often the case. It was certainly the case in my own family. It is the case you find in most rural communities. She often talked about this being not a simple policy matter; this is a cultural context and we have to talk about ways to help people make these really hard decisions. People who have identified so long with one place, one community, one property—they know it like the back of their hand.

I remember having those conversations with her and thinking she was really able to represent the voice of her communities. She has lived it, she has experienced it and she has led a lot of others through those difficult decisions. She was a good person. She was generous; she was kind; and she was compassionate.

As Senator Moore and my colleague Senator Siewert said, she recognised through the committee system of the Senate the opportunity to develop relationships across party politics and to work to put the issue above politics, where she possibly could. She certainly had a view about how things should be done; but, where she could, she saw the value of building alliances and maximising the strength of those alliances to get out­comes for people. As such, she was certainly a valued colleague in this Senate. She was a good senator for Western Australia, she was a loving mother and, as I said, she was a respected and valued colleague. I will finish by reminding people what Senator Adams said in her first speech:

… I will do my best to represent you with honesty, sincerity and integrity.

And she did.