Valedictory

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON (Croydon) (15:11): I commence my valedictory remarks, which I will complete in the last sitting week. When I worked for the Hawke government, I met recently retired Senator for New South Wales Tony Mulvihill. Tony Mulvihill had been a union and party official in the sturdy mould of New South Wales Labor. Senator Mulvihill's magnum opus was his valedictory speech on 14 December 1982 and, though I will try to emulate it today, I will never hold a candle to Tony Mulvihill's squaring the ledger with Ken McKeon and his brothers.

In the context of reviewing a history of the ironworkers' union and the book's account of Ken McKeon's failed attempt to be readmitted to the ALP in 1965, Tony Mulvihill told the Senate that Ken McKeon was the 'greatest degenerate of any member of the trade union movement in New South Wales', that he was known to knock on the door of union delegates he did not like when they were out and abuse their wives and expose himself, that it was well known he used a VD clinic in Sydney and that his brothers nicked cashed from the collection plate at a Sydney Catholic Church every other Sunday.

But the McKeon brothers' most unforgivable act was in the mid-1950s, when they were young lads attending the local church, to hit the future Senator's fox terrier, Jeff, with a brick as Jeff tried to follow his young master into mass. Tony Mulvihill told the Senate his fox terrier was left in a pool of blood in the churchyard. Jeff's honour was avenged on the adjournment, long after his death. In the spirit of Senator Mulvihill, I want today to focus on Gary Lockwood, a quondam employee of two state Labor MPs.

Lockwood joined the ALP when he was not eligible because he had been a candidate for another political party, but years later he complied with the party rules by fronting the ALP state convention to apply for membership. I was sitting in the front of convention and, to expedite business, I made the mistake of seconding Ralph Clarke's motion to admit him. After Ralph Clarke resigned from the ALP to run as an Independent in Enfield, Lockwood managed his campaign. I do not recall ever having a conversation with Lockwood.

In the 2002 state election, Ralph Clarke lost. He finished third in the seat he had held for eight years. Most of my waking hours were devoted to electing the now Deputy Premier, and the Croydon Labor team crossed the Regency Road frontier in force. I know the Deputy Premier is most grateful, as he was at the time. During the campaign, Ralph issued defamation proceedings against me which, he later told a select committee, had few prospects of success.

Lockwood kept Ralph and other dispossessed former Labor MPs company at long boozy lunches after Ralph's defeat and heard Ralph's boasts that he would have vengeance on those who had unseated him and that he would, by holding Atko hostage in the civil courts, force the Rann government, through Randall Ashbourne, to give him a spot on the WorkCover board in return for withdrawing his defamation action. Needless to say, this did not happen.

In 2003, Lockwood faxed to the Liberal Party a series of allegations—all hearsay. Rob Lucas took the opportunity to set up a select committee to inquire into the Lockwood/Clarke allegations. The police traced the fax to a machine used by Lockwood and were keen to talk to him. Lockwood unplugged the fax machine and sent it away on the day the police were due to visit, thinking that the absence of the machine would corroborate his denials that he sent the fax. No such luck. The police told the committee they regarded Lockwood as an unreliable witness. Clarke refused to be interviewed, based, he said, on legal advice.

The Lucas committee turned into scenes reminiscent of Hogarth's paintings of 18^th-century London, with Lucas prepping witnesses at Parlamento before the hearings. For Lockwood, it was the fulfilment of a lifelong dream: parliamentary privilege and a television audience. Lockwood and Clarke's former partner, Edith Pringle, starred, Lockwood as Baron Munchausen, giving the impression that he was an intimate of mine, evidenced by my seconding his readmission and imputing that in the early 1950s I or people associated with me had falsely imprisoned him in the offices of the Catholic Church on Wakefield Street and tried to run him down with a car near the Hawker Street bridge in Bowden. As members know, I do not drive and never have, but there was another problem with Lockwood's imputations: I was not born at the time. After this, the media lost interest in the story.

Returning to Senator Mulvihill, I know members would be relieved to know that the fox terrier, Jeff, not only survived the attack of the McKeon brothers but went on to live another seven years, much as I survived the attack of Gary Lockwood, Ralph Clarke and Rob Lucas to serve another 12 years in state parliament. Randall Ashbourne was cleared.

The moral of the story for young people who wish to make a vocation in political life is that if a person seems of dubious integrity give them a wide berth. If you engage in the briefest of conversations with them, such as remarking that the weather seems fine, be prepared for that person to appear years later in a Rob Lucas select committee, several Today Tonight stories and no committee report, claiming to be an intimate of yours and providing the committee with outlandish perjured testimony. No matter how young you are, Rob Lucas will probably still be there and, whatever you do, do not second things you know little or nothing about at state convention just to expedite business or get one's name in the minutes.

Members interjecting:

The ACTING SPEAKER (Hon. T.R. Kenyon): Order! The member's time has expired.