CONDOLENCES

Mr LEESER (Berowra) (11:42): It's an honour to follow my friend the member for Monash in her beautiful tribute to Bruce Baird, a lion of the Liberal Party, a lion of this parliament, a tremendous human being, a wonderful state minister, a great contributor to our party and a great contributor to the state of New South Wales, to tourism, to international education and to small business and a wonderful Christian and a family man.

I have the privilege of representing in the federal parliament the same suburbs that he represented when he was member for Northcott in the state parliament, the suburbs of Beecroft, Cheltenham, Epping, Pennant Hills, Thornleigh, Normanhurst, Westleigh, Hornsby, Wahroonga and Waitara all now come within the Berowra electorate, and, indeed, there were people involved in my conference when I first became the member for Berowra whose time went back to Bruce's time as the member for Northcott, including Robin Timmins, the very long-serving secretary of the Berowra Liberal Party FMC and the long-serving secretary of the Pennant Hills branch of the Liberal Party, who played such an active role in Bruce's career and then in Barry O'Farrell's and in my own career as well.

I want to say something about Bruce's contribution locally as the member for Northcott that is still very strongly felt in our community, and that is his championing of the M2 Hills Motorway. Without the M2 Hills Motorway, the situation for commuters in my part of Sydney to come to town would be so much worse and so much more difficult. Bruce stood up for his residents, but he also stood up for the need for greater public transport, as the state minister for transport, and improved transport and infrastructure in our area.

When Mike Baird was premier, he recalled, when he was pursuing his own infrastructure agenda, some of the death threats that Bruce Baird received for his advocacy for the M2, but it's hard to imagine Sydney—in particular, it's hard to imagine my part of Sydney—without the M2 and the speed in which it allows people to bypass large amounts of suburbs to get between the city and my electorate.

It is the absolute lifeline for people in my area, and it's become a great relief for the major arterial roads within the electorate in terms of traffic congestion. It's hard to imagine what the electorate would be like today without the M2. In fact, it's hard to imagine what Sydney would be like today were it not for the M2.

That is one of Bruce's many political achievements in our local community. In a more direct and personal sense, I want to thank him for a decision that he made on 3 May 1991. On 3 May 1991, Bruce established, with Richard Lennon, the then mayor of Ku-ring-gai, as president, the Fox Valley branch of the Liberal Party.

The Fox Valley branch of the Liberal Party is my branch of the Liberal Party. It was convened that night because, having had the Northcott electorate, Bruce was looking for a branch in a new part of the electorate in the Fox Valley area. There was a pretty distinguished roll-up to the first meeting.

That roll-up included the branch's first treasurer, Mike Baird, and one of its members, Barry O'Farrell, who of course both later went on to become premiers of New South Wales. That branch has also produced not only me but Ross Cameron and Senator Maria Kovacic. So it has been a very important branch in the life of the Liberal Party in terms of the people it's produced.

It grew to be one of the largest branches in the Liberal Party in New South Wales and certainly one of the most successful. That would never have started without Bruce's foresight and his great work. Bruce's career as the state minister for the Olympics and the state minister for transport during the Greiner and O'Farrell governments, in my view, is the absolute high point of his career.

He was so well regarded as the transport minister in New South Wales. Of course, he was the minister that secured Sydney the Olympics. Australia hadn't hosted the Olympics since 1956 in Melbourne.

I feel a great degree of excitement for the people of Brisbane, for the Olympics that they will host, because we in Sydney got to see the city at its very best. In those weeks of the 2000 Olympics the city came alive. We were the focus of the world.

It felt like anything was possible for our country, and we would never have had that opportunity without the wonderful work that Bruce did to bring the Sydney Olympics to Australia. For that, he will always be remembered and celebrated. Before Bruce was a parliamentarian, he, of course, had already served the country as a trade commissioner in a range of different places, including West Germany and New York, and he'd worked as the government relations manager for Esso.

Bruce was a very strong, committed Anglican and a person of deep faith. I had a memory that I can't find a reference for that at one point he taught at the Anglican school in Cranbrook that I attended, but I haven't been able to find a verification of that fact. He brought to parliament real life experience.

He understood how government worked, and he also helped, through his own office, to blossom and burgeon the careers of other people, like Barry O'Farrell, who ultimately became his successor as the member for Northcott when he retired. Soon after his retirement from state politics, he became the member for Cook and served in this place. I think, in many respects, that Bruce's time in the federal parliament would have been frustrating.

Having served as one of the most successful ministers in the state Liberal government, he would have been right to have expected that he would have had the opportunity to serve here as a minister as well. Yet that wasn't to be. But, rather than being frustrated and angry, Bruce used his time here in a way that has impacted Australia for its great benefit.

When I first worked in the building 25 years ago, I was the adviser to Tony Abbott when he was the minister for workplace relations and small business. We regularly quoted the Baird committee on small business deregulation and regulatory reduction. Bruce's work looking at ways to improve the operation of small business in this place was so important.

Bruce's later work in international education is still as relevant today as it was when he chaired the committees in those areas. Bruce brought his very deep commitment to his Christian faith to everything that he did. He particularly brought it to issues around dealing with asylum seekers and refugees.

That very much motivated his passion for those issues, for which he became very much known. He was a regular figure around Liberal Party events in New South Wales. He was also a regular figure at arts community events.

I think the last time I saw Bruce would have been at an opening of a play at the Sydney Theatre Company earlier this year that I attended. He took a great interest in the culture of our city, not just its sporting culture—and he was a very well regarded ocean swimmer—but also the artistic culture of the life of the city which he loved. I think it's very often possible to stand in this place or to think about coming to serve in this place and think the most important contribution that we will make, the legacy we will leave, is the service that we give in this parliament.

I think, on reflection, that that is not the most important legacy and contribution that we give. The most important legacy and contribution that we give is actually our children. And, when a parliamentarian has children that are successful despite the fact that they are away so much, it's partly a tribute to the spouse of the parliamentarian—to Judy, who Bruce Baird loved so much—but it's also a tribute to the way in which they conducted themselves.

For somebody who served in both the federal and state parliament to produce well-adjusted children of any sort is an amazing feat. But to produce children who have gone on to succeed in their own fields and to lead in their own fields is something that's remarkable. Mike Baird, in my view, is one of the very best premiers that we have ever produced in our party.

A person with reforming zeal who was prepared to sacrifice office to achieve infrastructure reform in our state always deserves to be lauded. Bruce tried to discourage him from going into politics. He said in an interview that he gave that he spent a year trying to talk him out of it because he knew the downsides of politics and the pain it could cause him.

But I'm pleased that Mike persevered nonetheless, because our state and our country would be so much poorer without the contribution Mike has made. Julia Baird is a wonderful journalist and author—her book on Queen Victoria is one of the very best books on that subject—and a wonderful interviewer, for anyone who's been on the Drum program, and somebody who's battled rare health conditions and been very public about that in her advocacy.

Indeed, all of his children have demonstrated that the faith tradition, the flame of belief that burned so bright in Bruce, burns in them. Of course, Steve ran the International Justice Mission. Although I've not met Steve, I've had quite a bit to do with the International Justice Mission in my roles as shadow minister for education and shadow attorney-general in relation to dealing with child sexual abuse matters, which are just such a scourge.

So he produced a wonderful family. He was a wonderful servant, Bruce Baird. He was a wonderful Liberal, a wonderful local member in my community.

His name deserves to be celebrated among the greats of our party. May his memory be a blessing. Vale, Bruce Baird.