CONDOLENCES

Ms PLIBERSEK (Sydney—Minister for Social Services) (10:54): I, like a number of my colleagues, was very saddened to hear of the sudden passing of Bruce Baird, who died aged 84 in Singapore on his way home from a trip to Europe. I'm very proud of the fact that, just as I would have called Bruce a friend, he called me a friend. Like me, Bruce was from the Sutherland Shire in Sydney's south.

Born in 1942, he was a generation ahead of me, but our lives and our experiences weren't that different, and I think part of the reason we shared a world view is because of the place where we grew up together. Bruce was the son of a local shoe shop owner in Cronulla. He attended Cronulla Public School and the Sutherland Intermediate High School on Eaton Street in Sutherland.

He grew up next door to the Whitlam family in Cronulla when Gough was the member for Werriwa; Werriwa took in Cronulla in those days. Apparently he played football in the street and backyard cricket in the Whitlams' backyard with the Whitlam boys. Those early years perhaps did influence him a little, because he voted Labor in 1972, helping sweep the party to power after 23 long years in opposition.

Like my dad, Bruce worked at Qantas. That was where he started his career. He completed a Bachelor of Arts in psychology, was knocked back as an Anglican priest due to medical reasons and went on to complete an MBA.

He was the Assistant Trade Commissioner in Bonn, West Germany, and then the Trade Commissioner in New York before working for Esso. Following this, his career in representative politics took off, and Bruce went on to become a valued member of two parliaments over 20 years. He was first elected as the Liberal member for Northcott in Sydney's north, serving as state MP from 1984 to 1995.

By then, obviously, he had left voting Labor behind him, but he described himself as a moderate Liberal and an economic 'dry'. He wasn't a supporter of trade unions or what he saw as union control. Bruce made his mark in the New South Wales parliament, serving as a shadow minister in the final years of the Wran and Unsworth Labor governments, and then went on to take on ministerial roles in the Greiner and Fahey governments, holding various portfolios.

He was probably most well-known for his work in tourism, transport and roads, and, of course, he was instrumental in securing the 2000 Olympics for Sydney, my home city. I think his work in securing the Olympics and the work of the Carr Labor government in running the Olympics is a model for successful Olympic Games around the world. It was probably the achievement that Bruce is best known for and one of his most significant achievements.

When Nick Greiner resigned in 1992, Bruce contested the Liberal Party leadership but very narrowly lost a party-room ballot to John Fahey. He was then elected deputy leader of the New South Wales Liberals in 1992, holding the position until 1994. He left the parliament in 1995.

After leaving the New South Wales parliament, Bruce was the head of the Tourism Council and the chair of the National Rail Corporation. He entered the federal parliament in the same year that I did, 1998, as the member for Cook in Sydney's south, moving from Sydney's north to represent the people that he grew up with in the shire. His move into federal parliament was orchestrated by the New South Wales Liberals to deal with some local issues with their first-term MP Stephen Mutch, but it was opposed by John Howard at the time.

Howard tried to talk Bruce out of running, but Bruce persevered because he was passionate about Australia's future and believed he could contribute to public life, which he did. He also, of course, helped the Liberals avoid a nasty preselection that the member for Cook alluded to a moment ago. Bruce started his federal career on the back foot because the Prime Minister of the day, John Howard, was not a fan.

He served in the federal parliament until 2007, when he was replaced by Scott Morrison, who went on to become Australia's 30th prime minister. Bruce was an active, principled, compassionate and committed parliamentarian, valued and respected by all those he worked with across both sides of the aisle. He was great as a parliamentarian, as a local member and as a minister in the state government, but, much as he was successful as a parliamentarian, I would say he was even more successful as a human being.

Bruce described himself as a liberally minded Christian. He was a fundamentally decent human being. Many people have mentioned Bruce visiting detention centres, but not as many people perhaps knew that Bruce and his wife, Judy, were also regular visitors to jails in New South Wales.

As well as the humanitarian work that Bruce did both in jails and in detention centres as part of his congregation at his local churches, he used his opportunity in parliament to highlight all of these issues, but he really lived his Christian values by doing the work that didn't achieve any public attention at the same time. He was a very effective minister, as I said, in New South Wales, and I think it was a shame and a loss to the federal parliament that he wasn't also a minister at the federal level.

I mentioned a moment ago that Prime Minister Howard tried to dissuade him from running for federal politics. I certainly think that was a mark against him when it came to becoming a minister in a Howard government. Other people would say that his friendship with Peter Costello was also a mark against him, given the competitive nature of the relationship between John Howard and Peter Costello, but Bruce was pick and stick when it came to his friends.

He would never have downplayed or turned his back on the friendship with Peter Costello in order to progress within the Howard government. He talked about his support for reconciliation with Aboriginal Australians in his first speech and supported an apology to the stolen generations, again, despite John Howard's opposition to that. He supported Australia becoming a republic, again, in opposition to John Howard, and he was chair of the Amnesty International parliamentary group from 2000.

In 2005, along with a group of other fellow Liberal MPs like Petro Georgiou, Russell Broadbent and Judi Moylan, he opposed the mandatory detention of asylum seekers. I would say that Petro Georgiou is another great person overlooked for the ministry because of his firm belief in his values and his living of those values. These four MPs successfully negotiated with John Howard over proposals to change the detention system so that families with children could move into community accommodation and for the Commonwealth Ombudsman to review cases of detention exceeding two years.

He continued to speak out against mandatory detention and offshore processing even in his valedictory speech, where he talked about one of the 50 asylum seeker cases he personally championed to the immigration minister and the contribution that person made to their new community here in Australia. Bruce and I also worked together over many years on opposing the death penalty.

Throughout his parliamentary career, Bruce always stood for what was right and what was decent, and when he left parliament he continued to champion his passions, advising the Rudd government as the chair of the refugee resettlement advisory council and leading the Tourism & Transport Forum. He was also on the national apology board and a patron of the Asylum Seekers Centre, again displaying his true decency.

He was awarded an Order of the Member of Australia for service to Australian parliaments in 2010 and for service to the community of New South Wales through a range of business, tourism and welfare organisations. Many people have spoken about Bruce's love for his family, and that was displayed every time you spoke to him and every time you saw him. He will be much missed, I know, by his family and his many, many friends on both sides of politics.