CONDOLENCES

Senator McGRATH (Queensland) (16:07): While I've spoken previously about the service of former senator Collard, I want to make a few more comments. Today, the Conservative Breakfast Club had a breakfast in Brisbane, and Greg Sheridan was the guest speaker. The Conservative Breakfast Club is, as Senator McDonald pointed out, where Liberals and Nationals came together in a dark time in Queensland, when Labor were on the ascendancy and the Liberals and Nationals were going through one of their periodic bouts—they'd been going on for some decades by that point—where they liked to fight each other rather than fight the Labor Party.

Stan, with a number of other concerned conservatives, brought people together, brought together Liberals and Nationals, and said, 'We've far more in common than what divides us, and we should focus on those issues.' The Conservative Breakfast Club became, in a way, the forerunner to the Liberal National Party, in which the conservative forces, the Liberal Party and the National Party, are stronger together in Queensland than they are apart.

I speak as a Liberal National Party senator and as someone who sits down here as a Liberal but who acknowledges the importance of the National Party tradition and the Country Party tradition in Queensland. It is important that men and women come to this place with calloused hands and dust on their shoes and sit in this chamber, and Stan Collard was one of those people.

It is important that there are men here like Stan Collard, who lived and worked very long days and saw that setting sun, knowing it was a long day but also knowing that dawn would bring a better day. He did that in his career before going into politics, and he lived that motto when he was in politics. He was a senator in this Senate chamber when the National Party was going through a period of turbulence and the Liberal Party was going through a period of turbulence.

He lived by the motto that people should read before they think, and they should think before they speak. If more people in this place thought and if more people in this place read before they opened their mouths, then this chamber would be a far more informed chamber than what currently happens with some of the debates. I want to thank Stan for his service.

I want to thank his family for lending us Stan. When someone goes to frontline politics, they take their husband or their wife and their children with them. It can be tough, especially when children are growing up, if their mum or their dad is a politician.

So I acknowledge the family would have had some tough times with the fights that Stan took and stood up for. He was standing up for his beliefs and his values. Thank you for lending us Stan.

Queensland is a better place because of his service. Australia is a better place for his service. The Liberal-National coalition exists because he laid the groundwork for a united conservative force in Queensland.

Vale Stan Collard. Question agreed to, honourable senators joining in a moment of silence.