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Tuesday, 8 May 2012
Page: 2753

Senator FISHER (South Australia) (16:12): I rise to pay tribute to our colleague and my friend Senator Judith Adams. Much of what I would say has already been said, so I shall not reput it, other than to say the following: thou shall not speak ill of the dead. When it comes to Judith Adams it is pretty easy to follow that, because there is no ill of which to speak other than, of course, the one which dogged her to her death—not that we or the outside world would know that from Judith herself. Here is another contradiction about Judith: whilst she pretty much wore her heart on her sleeve, when it came to her own physical illness we knew only that which Judith wanted us to know. In the end, the woman who had very little time for spin, in particular political spin, I suspect fed us a fair bit of spin about the truth of her own situation.

You would not say of Judith that she did not suffer fools gladly; in fact, Judith was pretty kind and very polite to fools. But Judith would not suffer pretenders gladly. She could spot one from about a hundred paces. Particularly if one of her colleagues was thinking of standing for something that she did not really think we stood for, she wasted very little time in putting her views directly to that person. There was no suffering pretenders gladly for our former senator Judith Adams. She pretty much put herself last. Her family knew very well what they had in their 'senator mum', as they put it at the funeral service. They knew what they had; they knew what they were letting Australian people share. I suspect even her husband, Gordon, not expecting that he would be taken first, knew that he was sharing Judith and the reduced time Judith had with the rest of the country. Her sons must have known that Judith was continuing to devote her diminishing time with the rest of the country instead of with them. The people of Kojonup in the south-west of WA—'Koji' as we called it when we were growing up in WA—knew exactly what they had in Senator Judith Adams and they knew exactly who was representing them in Canberra and across the country. My mum and I were speaking to the minister who conducted the service just before she started the service. I think she is from South Africa and had come to Australia three or five months prior. She said, in very polite terms, she had been waiting for someone to fall off the perch in Kojonup or Katanning—the two communities for which she was responsi­ble—and no-one had until Judith. Mum and I said: 'Well, this will be one out of the box. Koji probably hasn't seen one like it and probably will never see one like it again.'

Judith's influence in rural and regional Western Australia spread much further than the people of Kojonup and the south-west. It was my mum who first introduced me to Judith. My parents still farm at Beverley, where I grew up in the wheat belt, further north and more due east of Perth. Judith's influence spread far and wide, so much so that at the funeral service a family friend of mine and a good friend of Judith's, Lyn Hatherly, who farms at Arthur River, which forms a kind of border between the Great Southern region and the wheat belt, was at pains to call out: 'Mary, Mary'—as family friends call me—'can you introduce me to Tony Abbott? I've got something I want to say to him.' I thought now is not really the time at Judith's funeral, but I said, 'Sure, I'll get you introduced to Tony Abbott.' Of course, I dutifully did so just as Judith's hearse was going down the street. 'Tony, meet Lyn Hatherly, farmer from Arthur River.' She said, 'I just want to say one thing to you, Mr Abbott: Judith Adams was a fantastic advocate for country Western Australia.' That is all Lyn Hatherly had to say to Tony. Country Western Australia knew what they had and know what they have lost.

Judith was also very caring about individual people. Others have spoken about the importance of her undying love for estimates, even when she was crook. About a year or 1½ years ago, she tore herself away from estimates with me to help a mutual acquaintance whose mental health we had some concerns about. Judith spent so much time—time she did not have—speaking to the family and gave them news they probably did not want to hear. Judith managed to get professional help for this person—again, stepping outside herself when she could have been focusing on herself.

Judith set up an office in Albany, Western Australia, the Christmas before last—showing the great lengths to which she would go. Senator Back has an office in Esperance, but Senator Adams was prepared to do the hard yards to Albany, one of the more difficult and challenging metropolitan centres electorally for us. Senator Eggleston, Senator Back and I went to the opening. There, again, Judith thought totally outside the box. I got a phone call out of the blue: 'MJ, do you want to come to my opening?' She knew how much of my youth I had spent growing up in Albany and she thought to invite me along. Indeed, I did go along.

Thank you, Senator Judith. Thank you to her family, and in particular to Stuart and Robert, for having shared their 'senator mum' with us. We are, and the country is, all the richer for having been able to share her. Thank you.