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Wednesday, 8 February 2012
Page: 405

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( 16:45 ): Leave is granted for two minutes.

Senator MASON: Vaclav Havel, the first president of post-communist Czechoslovakia, was one of the most remarkable freedom fighters of the 20th century. He was a playwright; he was a writer; he was a poet; and he was an intellectual. He was imprisoned, beaten and brutalised by the communist dictatorship. Unlike far too many in the West, he never romanticised or made excuses for commu­nism. I hope all senators, including the Greens, understand that. Havel understood from painful personal experience commu­nism's horror, degradation and the cancer it is to the human spirit.

I had the good fortune to meet President Havel in New York in 2006. I handed him a copy of a book he wrote called Living in Truth. He was good enough to sign it for me using a green pen. Then he took out a red pen and he drew a little red heart underneath it. He winked at me and he said one word: 'Love'. I thought we had made some connection. What struck me was his apparent innocence, an innocence that even communism could not belt out of him. But his innocence was truly luminous. It lit his face, his smile, his native Czechoslovakia and all of central Europe and all those who love and yearn for freedom.