CONDOLENCES
Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Prime Minister) (14:00): on indulgence—Yesterday, at the age of 83, the great Mary Gaudron left us. With her passing, I pay tribute and reflect on the life of a great Australian—a fearless trailblazer, a tenacious reformer and a beloved resident of Lilyfield, in Sydney's inner west. Mary was born in Moree, in northern New South Wales, to a Catholic working-class family.
It was her childhood that imbued her with the qualities that were to sustain her throughout a life of public service and social justice, endlessly working against the forces of discrimination, whether it was any Aboriginal racism she first saw as a child in Moree or the entrenched sexism she faced when she arrived at the University of Sydney Law School in 1961.
Mary's passion and integrity powered what the Australian Law Journal described as her 'outstanding and ingenious advocacy'. She possessed a sharp analytical mind that began with that most essential of qualities: knowing which questions to ask. Indeed, as an eight-year-old in Moree, she encountered Labor Party leader Doc Evatt and asked him what he was referring to when he spoke about this mysterious object called the Constitution.
As Malcolm Brown wrote in today's Sydney Morning Herald, Evatt took her seriously, 'and after a discussion relating the Ten Commandments to government, he sent her a copy of the Australian Constitution'. That eight-year-old girl went very far. Even if you were to just add up the list of firsts to which her name is attached, it is like looking at the peaks of a mountain range.
She was the first woman to be appointed Queen's Counsel in New South Wales, the first woman to serve as a state solicitor-general for any state, our youngest federal judge ever and the first woman appointed to the High Court of Australia. Mary was also foundation chair of the New South Wales Legal Services Commission. She successfully argued the Whitlam government's equal-pay case.
She determined a test case for maternity leave that would allow for a year's unpaid leave for all full-time and permanent part-time workers. She was pivotal in the judgement on the Mabo case that overturned the legal doctrine of terra nullius, and she went on to serve with the International Labour Organization in Geneva. When Mary opened doors, she didn't merely hold them open for those who followed; she took them off their hinges and made sure that they stayed off.
She could so clearly see the possibility of a better Australia, a more just and more equal Australia. As she worked towards that, she added so much to the life of our great country. Now Mary is gone, but she leaves for us the glow of the trail that she blazed so emphatically and so decisively.
Our hearts, right now, are with her family and all who loved her, all who admired her and all whose lives were changed for the better by her. May Mary Gaudron rest in peace.