Condolence

Lewis, Hon. I.P.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Minister for the Arts) (14:01): I move:

That this House of Assembly expresses its deep regret at the death of the Hon. Ivan Peter Lewis, former member and Speaker of the House of Assembly, and places on record its appreciation of his long and meritorious service, and that as a mark of respect to his memory the sitting of the house be suspended until the ringing of the bells.

On 26 September 2017, South Australia lost one of its most individualistic former parliamentarians with the passing of the Hon. Peter Lewis. He lived a colourful, eventful life. Over a period of more than 26 years, he served his constituents with remarkable energy and intelligence, and in this chamber as a member and then later as Speaker, he was quite often the source of controversy and at the centre of pivotal events. Mr Lewis's approach to this parliament and his work as an MP were outlined in the opening paragraph of his first speech on 19 February 1980. Here is what he said:

I come here to make improvements, not friends; to make decisions through consultation, not confrontation; to promote understanding and insight, not antagonism and acrimony; and to represent people, not institutions or organisations. I have been honoured with the responsibility of representing the electors of Mallee. My first responsibility, then, is to the electors of Mallee, and my commitment is to the philosophy of the Liberal Party, to which I owe my allegiance, and give it gladly.

Today, we remember Peter Lewis and honour his achievements. I am very pleased that we do so in the company of family members in the gallery to whom I extend my deepest sympathies.

Ivan Peter Lewis was born in Gumeracha on 1 January 1942 and he had nine siblings. He was educated at Paracombe Primary School, Urrbrae High School and Roseworthy Agricultural College. On graduation, he took a job with the then department of agriculture so as to apply science to horticulture. Other jobs followed: shearing sheep, marketing onions and growing strawberries before he became a consultant.

Mr Lewis joined the Liberal Party in 1968 and unsuccessfully contested the seat of Coles in 1975. His desire to enter parliament, which he did in 1979, was in part fuelled by frustration, once telling a journalist:

…as a management and marketing consultant, I got fed up with trying to get MPs to understand the effect their laws were having on businesses—they didn't understand or didn't care.

His knowledge of his electorate, which was at various times Mallee, Murray Mallee, Ridley and finally Hammond, was encyclopaedic such was his capacious mind and attention to detail. He was a member of or associated with all manner of local organisations, everything from sporting groups to the Caledonian Society to the Tailem Bend Rotary Club. He also seemed to know every square inch of his region, its industries, its geographies, its water, its crops and especially its people. He likened the electors of Mallee and 'country people generally' to a eucalyptus tree:

They are tough, drought-resistant and determined people, storing away the proceeds of the bounty of harvest in good years so that they can survive in the bad years and spring back to life again quickly, even after disaster strikes.

Mr Lewis was renowned for his hard work, for his capacity to operate with very few hours of sleep, for his ever-active and creative mind and for his willingness to challenge and question his parliamentary colleagues. In 1984, the Hon. Rob Lucas MLC was quoted in the Sunday Mail as saying the following about the member for Mallee:

Every party room needs a Peter Lewis. He's a lateral thinker and puts new light on old problems. Sometimes his thoughts are accepted, sometimes they're not.

Over the years, Mr Lewis made some rather unusual speeches and detailed some of his activities overseas as an aid worker. This included his revelation in this place in February 1993 that he carried out a mercy killing in Thailand in the 1960s after a colleague was severely wounded by guerrillas. I can remember in the aftermath that whenever anyone was feeling a little bit unwell or queasy they quickly reminded Peter that they were absolutely fine and that there was no need for remedial action.

Over time, obviously tensions between him and his Liberal Party colleagues intensified and he became the Independent member for Hammond in 2000. Mr Lewis played a central role in probably one of the most dramatic days (a day on which I won a bet actually), a day of long-term and continuing implications in the recent history of this parliament, and that was of course the day soon after the 2002 election when he decided to support Labor, so allowing it to form a government for the first time since 1993.

As part of that arrangement, Mr Lewis became Speaker of the House of Assembly and he set a series of conditions for his ongoing support of the Rann government. These included not just changes to the way parliament operated and the canvassing of constitutional reform but also his efforts to help his electorate by attacking invasive weeds and by stopping net fishing in the River Murray. In fact, I think the premier, Mike Rann, had to quickly find out what branched broomrape meant. He thought it was some attack on some heinous sexual crime, but he quickly realised it was more about a weed.

Obviously, he led a very controversial period during his three years as Speaker. Mr Lewis announced to the chamber in April 2005 that he was leaving his position. I always recall a conversation with Peter when he described his political tactics in this way, and it has stuck in my mind. He said: 'What I do is I jump into the stream, the fast-flowing river, try to knock some of my opponents off balance and take them in with me and then, hopefully before the waterfall, grab for a rock.' It seemed like a rather risky strategy, but one well suited to a man who was used to taking risks. For those of you who knew Peter well, that story will resonate with you.

As I said, his controversial time ended when he walked out of this building, crossed King William Street to Government House and formally resigned his position to the Governor. Peter stayed on as the member for Hammond for almost another year, but failed to gain a seat at the March 2006 election. I can recall a time when he was the member for Hammond, or one of its predecessors, when I was not in this parliament but actually a lawyer representing a client of mine who happened to be Korean.

He came in contact with her in the course of his work, and no doubt through the work of his wife, Kerry. He was ringing to make sure that I was looking after her, and I received a very thorough cross-examination from Peter. It was clear that he had the interests of my client at heart—she was his constituent also—and wanted to assure himself that she was being properly represented. After he had grilled me extensively for a period, I think he was satisfied that we were looking after her best interests. He was a powerful and forceful advocate for what he regarded as his cause.

With a fierce independence of mind, Peter Lewis was never a man to unthinkingly follow orthodoxy. As foreshadowed in his first speech, he did not make friends with everyone he worked with in this chamber. What he certainly did do, however, was represent people in his electorate for more than quarter of a century with passion, in a unique way but with great determination. On behalf of members on this side of the house, I express my condolences to Mr Lewis's wife, Kerry, his stepchildren, June and Cheryl, and members of his extended family.

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:09): I second the motion moved by the Premier. Peter Lewis sat in this house as a Liberal member for just over 20 years, yet he is likely to be remembered most as the person who saved the career of a state Labor leader. That sums up Peter: unpredictable, maverick, independent and idiosyncratic. Peter attracted many epithets in his life. The longer he served, the more he seemed to revel in them. His first contribution to an Address in Reply debate was a portent of what was going to come: a man insisting on being heard and wanting to share his knowledge with others.

On that evening in February 1980, his remarks required nine pages of Hansard to record. It was a detailed discussion about issues of concern to his electors in the then seat of Mallee. The speech underlined Peter's knowledge of agriculture gained from his education at Urrbrae school and Roseworthy College. By his early 30s, he had become determined to serve in this parliament. At the 1975 election, he stood against Des Corcoran in the metropolitan seat of Coles. His eventual success in Mallee at the 1979 election began a parliamentary career lasting more than 26 years. He opened that first Address in Reply speech by stating that he had not come to parliament to make friends.

I did not know Peter, but those to whom I have spoken who did serve with him or know him refer to a member who took an active part in most party room debates, a person of considerable intellect who could at the same time often infuriate because of a propensity to believe dogmatically in his own point of view. He brought that approach out of a party room and into this chamber. The record shows a conspicuous work ethic, a determination to be heard on most issues coming before the house, an ability to express a point of view sharply. While Peter had his critics in the Liberal party room as well as beyond it, one thing was never in doubt: his veneration for the forms and processes of this parliament as an institution. He deserves to be remembered for that.

Of course, a consideration of Peter's parliamentary career cannot end without a reflection on the last few tumultuous years when his loyalty to the Liberal Party lapsed and he decided to deny the party, which had sponsored his election to this place at six successive elections, an opportunity to govern for a third term from 2002. That may have saved Mike Rann's career. Suffice to say, it did not save Peter's. It brought an instability to this parliament which we should all endeavour never to repeat.

If I could sum up what I have been told about Peter, he was a man of fierce intellect who was not always able to apply his abilities to his own advantage. As a result, in his long parliamentary career he did not achieve his ambition to serve as a minister. Instead, he remained true to his word that he had not sought parliamentary office to make friends. I think that we can safely say that we will not see the likes of Peter Lewis again. On behalf of the Liberal Party, I express my sincere condolences to Peter's family and friends for their loss.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (14:12): I rise to speak to this motion in regard to Peter Lewis. Peter and I came from the same Liberal branch, Lower Murray. I was Peter's branch president for six years—an interesting time, to say the least.

Peter was elected on 15 September 1979, then as the member for Mallee and then the seat turned into Murray-Mallee and then Ridley, and then he became the member for Hammond later on. Peter held the seat until 18 March 2006, when I became successful in taking the seat of Hammond and representing the Liberal Party. It is probably no surprise to anyone that Peter and I did not always agree on matters, but I wish the family my condolences.

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:13): I wish to briefly make a contribution to the condolence motion for Peter Lewis and to extend my sympathies to the family, particularly those who are present today.

Peter Lewis will be remembered for many things. There are three I am going to touch upon today. One is the occasion when he informed me that there is an ancient common law right not to be interfered with as a member for parliament travelling to and from parliament for the purpose of undertaking parliamentary duties. It is not one I had ever heard of, I certainly did not know about it at law school and I am not sure that it was actually ever vested in some judicial determination. He assured me that it was sufficient to ensure, if any police officer stopped him when he was speeding on his way to parliament, that this ancient defence could be called upon. I do not know that he was ever required to run this defence in a court case, but I am certain that it had the effect of his not getting some fines along the way. It is one I will remember if Mr Deegan, as the head of the transport department, should interfere with my right to park outside the front of Parliament House to attend duties if required in due course.

Secondly, Peter served the time in this parliament as Chair of the Public Works Committee. Obviously, it is an important committee. It assesses and gives advice to the parliament as to government projects. He was utterly fearless in his determination to advise any government that the expenditure of public money was a matter of serious consideration and that his committee was not going to be ignored or overlooked. Nor would any attempts to break up projects in less than $4 million lots be tolerated; he made that perfectly clear.

Thirdly, Peter Lewis is the only member of this parliament, to my knowledge, who ever spoke against the State Bank bill in the early 1980s. He is the only one who warned the people of South Australia that he would not be supporting the government underwriting that legislation. For that piece of wise foresight, I think he should be commended. Clearly, it was a message that they should have listened to. May he rest in peace.

Mr SNELLING (Playford) (14:16): I want to say a few words about Peter Lewis, and in particular reflect very briefly on his role as Speaker. As a former Speaker of this place, I know it can be an extremely trying job at times. Peter took the role of Speaker very seriously and endeavoured to bring to the role an impartiality and fairness. He held the role of Speaker in great esteem.

One of the things that Peter brought to this chamber is an insistence that ministers not engage in debate during question time, and he held to that very firmly. I think that was an important thing to bring to the role because it is very important that question time not descend into political brawling, or any more than is absolutely necessary.

I think Peter certainly insisted on the standing order preventing ministers and those asking questions from engaging in debate. I think that would be well replicated in other parliaments, and in the commonwealth parliament in particular, which I think often descends into farce. With that, Mr Speaker, my sincere condolences to Kerry and to Peter's extended family.

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (14:18): It may not be well known in this place, but Peter and I had a unique bond, in that he was my constituent and would often come into the office and had done so for many years. Peter was, of course, a larger than life figure, and I think perhaps the member for Bragg's contribution reminded us of some of the light-hearted things about him.

I remember one night when we were all very new in this place—the class of '97, that is—one of our number was in the Chair, having a turn at being Deputy Speaker. We all thought it would be a very good idea to call a point of order, not realising that Peter was actually on his feet and speaking. So I stood up and called the point of order of relevance on Peter Lewis, and I suffered for nearly three years before he spoke to me again. But he did, of course, and that was wonderful.

I also remember most vividly the night that Kerry brought in the Korean drummers, and we were all drumming upstairs in the Balcony Room. So I have very colourful memories of Peter and of our long chats when he came to the office to use our services as Justices of the Peace. I would like to add my condolences to Kerry and his family and remember him as a larger than life figure.

The SPEAKER (14:19): On his day, Peter Lewis was the most insightful and lucid member of the parliament with whom I served and the member with the most prodigious memory. He was a gifted lateral thinker. Peter's electorate was called first Murray-Mallee, then Ridley and then Hammond. Alas, in the history of our parliament, he will be remembered more for what went wrong for him than what went right. There were things he achieved, such as a ban on netting fish in the River Murray. This gave recreational anglers a chance to catch something on a visit to the Murraylands, and I thought of Peter on the last holiday Monday when I guided a child angler's callop into the shallows and up the bank near Blanchetown.

Peter was from a big family working on farms in the Hills. Among the places he lived were Cudlee Creek and Paracombe. Peter had many brothers. He was a crack shot, an accordionist in the family band and full of ideas about how to grow fruit and vegetables better, how to water them more efficiently and how to market them. Peter studied at Urrbrae and Roseworthy and he sometimes wore a splendid harlequin blazer from his Roseworthy days. In his early working life, Peter served with a United Nations agency charged with persuading South-East Asian farmers to grow crops that could not be turned into illicit drugs.

I served 16 years with Peter in the house and became close to Peter when I was in opposition and would visit him to promote the opposition's amendments to government bills and my private member's bills. Peter crossed the floor with Karlene Maywald to support my bill to allow victims of crime to make an oral victim impact statement in the sentencing hearing. Owing to that, the bill passed the House of Assembly. Peter could be volatile in the house and he and my old friend the late Frank Blevins had a special antipathy. On one occasion, the member for Murray-Mallee exclaimed to the Speaker apropos the member for Whyalla, 'You sit him down, or I will!'

Peter stood for the Liberal Party in the state district of Coles in the early election of 1975. Under the 1969 weighting of electorates, Coles was roughly what Hartley and the metropolitan part of Morialta are today. Labor had shifted Deputy Premier Des Corcoran from Millicent, a seat we were to lose at that election, to Len King's comparatively safe seat of Coles. Peter got a 5 per cent swing towards him, but Des won one on primaries and finished with 54.2 per cent after the Liberal Movement's 17 per cent was distributed.

At the next election in 1977, when the weighting against the metropolitan area was abolished, two state districts were created out of Coles: Hartley, which Des Corcoran won with almost 60 per cent of the primary vote—oh, happy day!—and highly marginal Coles, which Jennifer Adamson as she then was, won narrowly against Greg Crafter, despite The Advertiser poll having Greg winning a couple of days out. I mention this because Jennifer Adamson told me that she had defeated Peter in preselection for the new Coles, but Peter was to win a bigger prize. Peter was to win Liberal Party preselection for the state seat of Murray-Mallee in a big field against the hot favourite, Jamie Irwin, for the 1979 state election. Peter won that preselection as a maverick and he stayed maverick.

After he was elected, Peter once tried to intervene with duck shooters he argued were unlawfully hunting. He copped from the middle distance the contents of a shotgun cartridge in the backside. This may have been presented as funny but, from then on, Peter had to sit in the house on a special pillow shaped like a mould for a bundt cake. A Tailem Bend Australian Railways Union official told me that he had done it, but who knows?

After Peter left the Liberal Party in August 2000, he was close to Labor adviser Randall Ashbourne. Randall helped him with his 2002 election campaign under the banner of CLIC, the Community Leadership Independence Coalition, in the seat of Hammond. At the election in February 2002, Peter defeated the Liberal Party candidate. Peter polled 31.8 per cent of the primary vote and 52.1 per cent of the two-party preferred vote. I am just guessing that the name CLIC was Peter's idea, not Randall's.

Peter knew much about wine and he tried to make me progress from my wine philistinism. Randall Ashbourne and I enjoyed Peter's brutally honest assessment of homemade wine given to me in my capacity as multicultural spokesman, vintages such as Republic of Croatia 1991. Peter also imparted recondite knowledge to me at dinners with Randall at Enjoy Inn, on Woodville Road, where he would talk about freemasonry, of which he was a brother.

Peter, in his Compact for Good Government, required a concerted effort by primary industries to eradicate the agricultural weed, branched broomrape. The subterranean growth of the weed meant that, although it could be contained, it could never be eliminated. Reading the constitutional and parliamentary procedure aspects of the Compact for Good Government, such as a minimum of 69 sitting days a year, there is a remarkably strong similarity to Senator Nick Xenophon's program for the next state election—and there is a good reason for that. Among the other authors of that document were solicitor Jacob van Dissel and another whose name it would not be politic to disclose, even at this remove. But, bear in mind, Peter's Compact for Good Government could have become the foundation document of a re-elected Kerin government—and it almost did.

Days after the 2002 state election, I was in the leader of the opposition's room (I refer to Mike Rann) with Kevin Foley, Pat Conlon and Stephen Halliday. Randall Ashbourne brought Peter into the room with his draft Compact for Good Government. Peter respectfully submitted it to Mike Rann and departed. Randall made photocopies and gave each of us a copy. When Pat Conlon came to the part headed Citizens Initiated Referendums, he let out a cry of indignation and spluttered, 'We're not going to cop this!' I removed my fountain pen from the inside pocket of my jacket, silently handed it to Mike Rann and he signed forthwith.

On the day on which Peter was to announce whether he would put the Liberal Party or the Labor Party in office, Peter's deliberation dragged on for hours longer than we thought it might. I think the Liberal Party underestimated the influence on Peter's deliberations of his wife, Kerry, a strong and enterprising woman who enriched Peter's life and was a constructive critic of his. In defence of Peter's decision, a different decision for Rob Kerin and the Liberals, meant stitching together a minority government that had to rely on all of Peter Lewis, Karlene Maywald, Rory McEwen, and Bob Such. How long would that have lasted?

I remember Rory McEwen telling me in Parlamento's, at a table with Karlene in the tense days after the state election of February 2002, that there was no way Labor would enter a minority government with a mad bastard like Peter Lewis. Or was it that even a mad bastard like me would not be mad enough to form a government with Peter Lewis? I forget. The government that Peter Lewis caused to be formed is still with us.

Once in office, Peter embarked on a series of town and country meetings all over South Australia to promote the constitutional aspects of his Compact for Good Government and, as luck would have it, cabinet decided to make me the government's representative. It was a joy to travel all over South Australia with Peter and hear, at each of these public meetings, the then President of the Legislative Council introduce the upper house's view on Peter's proposals with the words, 'I wasn't invited to these meetings, but on behalf of Her Majesty's Legislative Council I would like to say—' For dinner in Port Lincoln, I caught a kingfish and a mulloway, but I did not tell Peter and our companions that I had been given permission to fish in Hagen Stehr's nets.

Peter had a gift for looking at fault lines on a geological map and predicting where minerals would be found at locations he nominated. Later, he would correctly identify huge iron ore deposits in the state's north, at Razorback Ridge on the Broken Hill side of Yunta, but in the long run it availed him not. He had a company called Goldus, and it had a big machine that at that time, 2002, was meant to be working in dry creek beds in Queensland scooping up stones and sand and extricating from it specks of gold. There was a problem: it was raining in Queensland and the contraption could not operate if the creeks were flowing.

Peter's creditors were pressing for repayment. The Liberal Party was hoping that Peter would go bankrupt and be ineligible to sit in parliament. It was also challenging Peter's election for Hammond in a Court of Disputed Returns, and Graham Archer at Channel 7's Today Tonight was hammering Peter about a cache of guns based on the testimony of that witness of truth, Terry Stephens, whose full criminal history Today Tonight chose not to share with viewers contemporaneously. I am not of course referring to that splendid fellow and colourful racing identity who graces the other place.

In these circumstances, as the minister for Peter Lewis I sent my chief of staff, Andrew Lamb, to join Peter's staff and be the liaison between Peter and the ministry. Neither Rory McEwen nor Karlene Maywald were at that time open to supporting the Rann government. It was our year of living dangerously. Peter's straitened circumstances and his exhaustion of the parliamentary travel allowance meant that on one occasion he had the Speaker's driver drive him to Melbourne. The party stayed in Ballarat to minimise costs.

On another occasion, Peter entered into what appeared to be a contract with the province of the People's Republic of China to supply dairy cows. After Peter gave the media the story, and the media hardly gave any attention to the part that Peter thought was important, I was dispatched to the Speaker's office to investigate. I asked Peter whether he had entered into the contract on behalf of the State of South Australia or as Speaker or as a private citizen. He replied by reciting the value of the contract to his constituents and asking me if the difference was material. I am afraid I lost it and I used a very bad word in the course of advising him to enjoy the office of Speaker, which seemed to be a much better gig than Premier or minister.

Although Peter and I were friends, there is one matter that all but ended our friendship. If I am to give a full picture of his parliamentary career, I must mention it. Peter gave the run of his office to two so-called volunteers, Wendy Utting and Barry Standfield, who were on a mission to expose what they claimed were pederasts who were members of our state's ruling elite. This is an allegation many people in South Australia are disposed to believe whenever it is made. Of course, allegations of criminal sexual conduct from time to time have been proved beyond reasonable doubt against prominent Australians, including people in the political sphere.

Peter Liddy we knew, but Utting and Standfield claimed that there were others, including a serving minister, who would abuse boys in the Veale Gardens, a former Liberal MP and two police officers, among others. The allegation against the minister had been investigated thoroughly and it had no substratum of fact. It was to be investigated again, with the accusers invited to give testimony, with the same result. I had heard the allegation against the minister four years earlier from a person the ICAC legislation would now call 'a public officer', who disseminated the allegation by referring to the target by a two-word alliterative name.

In the febrile political atmosphere of the time, my interlocutor was to Adelaide what the denunciatrix Polia Nikolaenko was to Kyiv in the 1930s. In 2005, Adelaide was convulsed by the allegations, with the opposition calling on the minister to identify himself. The allegations against the others were on no firmer foundation than the allegations against the minister. The principal source of the allegations later pleaded guilty to criminal defamation, an offence notoriously difficult to prosecute. Wendy Utting had been hired by Today Tonight for the purpose of authenticating the allegation, which had already been retailed on the program but not using the names. The case ended with a criminal defamation trial of Utting and Standfield, and they were acquitted. I will say more about that trial before I leave the house. The transcript of the trial rewards careful reading.

It appeared to the government that Peter was about to use parliamentary privilege to repeat the allegations against the minister and others. I went to Peter's office for a meeting about the allegations. He received me courteously, spoke about the allegations rationally for a long time and reserved his position. I asked him what would happen to the persons against whom the allegations were raised if Peter accused them in parliament and it was later established that the allegations were untrue. Peter looked at me sadly and said, 'That would be a terrible, terrible thing.'

With the government and others preparing to vote to remove Peter as Speaker and my bill before the house to suspend the application to South Australia of article 9 of the Bill of Rights, Peter resigned. He was right to resign. Making baseless allegations of criminal sexual misconduct under parliamentary privilege is something that should result in resignation, but it did not for Senator Heffernan and another senator whose name escapes me just at the moment. It is good that Peter Lewis, unlike the senators, did not name the innocent men in parliament.

Although I met Peter from time to time after he left parliament and had him around for drinks and a long conversation in the Speaker's office, I knew he was on hard times and I did not reach out to him. Yes, Peter Lewis was an eccentric and a maverick but, apart from the incident I just mentioned, I do not think he did the parliament or the political system much harm, and his passionate love for the parliament—which many will remember he always pronounced parlee-ah-ment—did much good in asserting the independence of the houses from the executive, an independence that prevails to this day.

I am pleased to have known him and to have enjoyed him as a polymath, a living encyclopaedia, a colourful personality in a parliament that has become more monochrome with every passing election and a true believer in an era of focus groups, opinion polls, pragmatism and trimming. Peter was also a believer in the Christian Scriptures. Rest eternal grant unto Peter Lewis, O Lord, and may light perpetual shine upon him.

Motion carried by members standing in their places in silence.

Sitting suspended from 14:39 to 14:51.