Condolence

Cornwall, Dr J.R.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:00): I move:

That the House of Assembly expresses its deep regret at the death of Hon. Dr John Cornwall, former minister of the Crown and member of the Legislative Council, 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.

Compassionate, colourful, controversial, confrontational. These are just some of the character references John Cornwall attracted during a career spanning almost 14 years in this parliament. John Cornwall was a child of the Great Depression. Born in Bendigo, Victoria, on the first day of 1935, he went on to study at the Queensland University, graduating with a Bachelor of Veterinary Science.

From 1961 until 1975, Dr Cornwall operated veterinary practices in Mount Gambier and Adelaide. During this time, he became politically active on behalf of the Labor Party, standing in the seat of Barker at the 1969 and 1972 federal elections and drawing swings to his party on both occasions, if not ultimate victory. His federal campaigns drew strong praise from Chris Schacht, then a senior Labor Party official. Chris Schacht has described Dr Cornwall as 'the best ALP candidate who has run in a federal rural seat in SA that ever I observed in the last 50 years'.

Dr Cornwall's performance had marked him as a man destined for a parliamentary career. Subsequently, in 1975 he was elected to the other place in our parliament. Within four years, he became a minister, serving first in the environment and lands portfolios for the Corcoran government in 1979. After Labor's return to office in 1982, Dr Cornwall was appointed health minister and later community services minister. It was during this period that he was consistently in the public eye.

It was a time when a federal Labor government was introducing Medicare. At the state level, health systems were also under very close public scrutiny. Dr Cornwall championed the development of health and community services for disadvantaged groups, including women's health services, Aboriginal health services, child and adolescent mental health services and child protection services. He was committed to a community-based system of health care to link services to specific population or geographic areas.

Dr Cornwall took a deep interest in environmental health and was very instrumental in the initial work to combat the effects of lead pollutants in Port Pirie. He also took a strong interest in anti-smoking campaigns. It was this activity that led him into one of a number of major public controversies. To inform the government's program, some market research was undertaken at taxpayers' expense. Apparently, unbeknown to Dr Cornwall, the premier's office arranged for some questions to be added to the market research which were, let us just say, 'overtly political'.

My colleague the Treasurer in the other place was at the time cutting his parliamentary teeth and pursued Dr Cornwall in the other place over this issue. The Treasurer's intuition drew from Dr Cornwall the following praise in a subsequent memoir:

A diligent young Liberal backbencher, Rob Lucas, was not satisfied. Lucas, an intelligent and competent Economics graduate, had worked as a Liberal Party research officer. He had professional training in political research and polling techniques.

And so the Treasurer exposed this Labor ruse while Dr Cornwall gallantly sought to avoid having to admit the role of the premier's office in it. It was not the last of his controversies. Ultimately, he left parliament in 1989 after having to resign from the ministry following an adverse court judgement in a defamation case. He felt at the time that he could have received stronger support from some of his cabinet colleagues. Undeterred, however, he pursued a new career outside politics.

After moving to Sydney, Dr Cornwall took up senior executive roles for non-government organisations. These included serving as chief executive officer of the Australian Veterinary Association, director of the Australian Youth Foundation, and managing consultant for Delta Society Australia. While Dr Cornwall retired from an active professional life in 2007, he continued to remain active as a volunteer for the Horn of Africa Relief and Development Agency.

It can be said that Dr John Cornwall lived an active life in which he sought to bring benefit to those he served or represented as a member of this parliament. To his wife, Patrice, their seven children and many grandchildren, we offer our sincere condolences for the loss of a husband, father, grandfather and faithful servant to many people and communities over a long parliamentary and professional career. Vale, Dr John Cornwall.

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:05): I rise to support the motion. Dr John Cornwall was born in Victoria, studied in Queensland, worked and served this parliament in South Australia and completed his community contribution in New South Wales. He was a social justice reformist whose commitment to a fair go and a fair share for all benefited our state and also our nation. A Doctor of Veterinary Science, his five years as the state's health minister delivered several legacies in public health. His 1989 reflections, titled Just for the Record, sum up his often tumultuous political career as having 'tapped more than my quota of kneecaps because I always played to win'. Those who witnessed that era could only agree.

John Cornwall came into the parliament in 1975 and left in 1989. He served in a state cabinet, first as minister for the environment and lands, in 1979, and then as the minister for health and community services in two Bannon governments, from 1982 to the end of 1988. His legacy achievements include our state's world-leading response to the emergence of AIDS and the HIV virus, breaking the link between tobacco advertising and sport sponsorship and pioneering community health programs to prevent sickness rather than just treat it.

Early in his time as health minister, clinical cases of AIDS were diagnosed in Australia for the first time. Little was known about the virus, so it was no surprise that in many jurisdictions policies reflected community hysteria and witch-hunts. In South Australia, a more inclusive and progressive approach was taken. One example of the differing policies was the decision by New South Wales authorities to make the diagnosis of AIDS and HIV a mandatory reportable event. Cornwall's view was that such an aggressive response would drive at-risk groups underground and out of the reach of important health programs. In South Australia, he focused on counselling and support services as part of the testing regime.

Added to that was the then controversial program of the free supply of sterile syringes, via community pharmacies, and needle exchange programs, administered through the Drug and Alcohol Services program. As a result, South Australia's per capita rate of HIV positive cases was one-quarter of the national average. More importantly, the community was educated about the issue and hysteria and division were minimised. Several years later, Dr Cornwall faced another challenge of having to stand up to the loud voices of discontent: this time it was the tobacco industry. In 1988, he introduced the Tobacco Products Control Bill aimed at banning tobacco advertising in sport and cinemas.

There were some transitional arrangements for international sports but also strident opposition from the Liberal Party. This policy was not a popular one. Sporting groups were being convinced that they would suffer financially. Major media organisations were looking at advertising losses. John Cornwall ploughed ahead, telling the parliament that he had 'the highest commitment to this legislation. I regard it as the apex of my career'. It passed and Australia's first comprehensive legislative package to restrict tobacco advertising paved the way for reforms in other states and, indeed, the commonwealth. Medical research shows that the rate of smoking dropped along with rates of smoking-related disease and mortality.

John Cornwall was also committed to the principles of the Health in All agenda of the World Health Organization. Those principles focused on improving community health. He drove his development of health and community services for disadvantaged groups, such as women's health services, Aboriginal health services and child protection services. Elsewhere in his health portfolio, he pioneered systematic service monitoring in hospitals and established the patient complaints service giving a voice to the voiceless.

Another significant contribution was his long campaign to merge the services of the Queen Victoria Women's Hospital on Fullarton Road and the Adelaide Children's Hospital in North Adelaide—not an uncontroversial proposition. He revealed many years later that his first attempt was defeated in cabinet because of a fear that the Liberal Party would whip up community opposition to the move. He did eventually succeed in his push, and the merger was endorsed in 1988 and the Queen Vic was substantially closed.

After leaving politics John Cornwall pursued a third career in human and companion animal health, in helping disadvantaged young people and international aid programs. One of Australia's greatest public intellectuals, Adelaide academic and historian Hugh Stretton once wrote of Dr Cornwall that he was an ‘active, interfering minister driven by a passion to leave the world a better place than he found it’. As a servant of the people and this parliament, he certainly achieved that aim. May he rest in peace.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General) (14:10): I rise to support the motion presented by the Premier and supported by the Leader of the Opposition in recognition of Dr John Cornwall. His contribution as a minister in difficult portfolios should not go unnoticed, the details of which have been outlined by the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition. However, I think it is fair to say that one of the most difficult areas of public life, which I am sure the Minister for Child Protection recognises, is to deal with the welfare of the community and those who are most vulnerable, in particular in relation to child protection.

Women were a large area of public debate outside the public and environmental health that he advanced, but one of them was to deal with those who were ravaged by and abused in household circumstances and needed respite—immediate, urgent respite. I am sure that if the Hon. Stephanie Key were here she would, having herself pioneered significant work in relation to women's shelters, remember those times and the significance of the development of a network of centres around South Australia and, in particular, metropolitan Adelaide during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The problem was, and I think it should be acknowledged, that ultimately Dr Cornwall did fall foul in respect of his public statements and treatment of Dawn Rowan and the Christies Beach centre. All of that is on the record in relation to what happened, and the sad thing about the history of those who make a contribution to this parliament, particularly in difficult portfolios, is that probably that is one of the matters that he will always be remembered by, not the least of which are those statements, which ultimately resulted in litigation and which culminated in a very substantial cost of over $500,000 to the taxpayers of South Australia as a result of a successful defamation action against Dr Cornwall.

It was very fresh in my mind when I came into this parliament in 2002. In fact, I asked a couple of questions about the liability in respect of that to then attorney-general Atkinson. They have still got a sticker on them because I am still waiting for an answer, actually, but nevertheless they will go in that very thick folder from times of the previous administration.

However, one matter I want to recognise in Dr Cornwall's work was in relation to child protection during the 1980s and what became an explosion of allegations and exposure of child sexual abuse. We were the first state in Australia to do that, and that was partly under his watch. He was concerned to ensure that it be identified, that it be disclosed, that it be reported and that it be acted upon, and he had a very efficient, focused department in relation to this area.

It is fair to say that there was a lot of disquiet about that controversial issue, too, because not only was it new but people did not know how to identify it, they were not quite sure how children should be interviewed, they were concerned about leading questions and they were concerned about whether the police should be doing it or other parties. I think he did quite a lot to try to ensure that, in that very embryonic stage of trying to deal with these matters, the legal profession and others actually came together to try to work it out.

There was one occasion when Dr Cornwall completely smashed me out of the water, and I am happy to confess it because I think he deserves it. There was a time when we had the Community Welfare Act, and the children's court took precedence as a state court over determinations made by federal courts, in particular, the Family Court. A new case was instituted. There was a view, on my part, that Dr Cornwall, as a guardian of children, was being used to subvert the course of the federal jurisdiction and that he should be punished for contempt.

I issued contempt proceedings against him. He did not turn up. The judge said, 'What do you want to do now, Mrs Chapman?' I said, 'I want a warrant issued for his arrest.' I think that, having been newly appointed to the bench, he was not sure that it was a good career move to acquiesce to that. He said, 'I'm going to grant a short adjournment.' I said, 'You can issue the warrant. You can leave it on the bench, and, when he comes back from his overseas trip, it can be issued.' I was completely and wholly unsuccessful on this, so it has not been a useful precedent to use against other ministers, but it did bring his attention to this matter to the table.

Thereafter, we were able to sit down with his legal representatives and negotiate a sensible way forward on how we would deal with the conflicts between parents and their legal guardians, which now of course remains not with the minister but with the chief executive. To that end, I give him credit for the instructions that he clearly gave to try to help resolve these matters because he was in the middle of a monumental period of law reform in South Australia. It was difficult for everyone concerned, including Dr Cornwall.

Whilst he may not be remembered for his greatest achievements, which are slightly stained by the issue in relation to Dawn Rowan, he paid the price. Taxpayers paid the bill, but he paid the price. He ought to be recognised for the many other years during which he made a contribution to law reform and, in particular, public health. Vale.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Cheltenham has the call.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham) (14:17): I thank the chamber for the opportunity to say some words concerning the life and work of Dr John Cornwall. Can I pass on my condolences to his family and broader network of friends.

I am grateful that the member for Bragg passed on her grudging approval for the life's work of Dr Cornwall. I am sure we have all been edified by her words. It causes me to reflect on two matters that I was not going to raise but, to put in context his work, it might be worth pointing out that South Australia became the first state to protect women's health interests under an initiative that was pursued by Dr John Cornwall. He was also the first to embark on a statewide campaign against domestic violence through the auspices of the anti-domestic violence unit, a further initiative of Dr  John Cornwall. In one of his greatest achievements, he was absolutely central to the establishment of what I think is probably one of the nation's greatest public policy achievements, and that is the establishment of Medicare.

Medibank, as it then was in 1975, was established only when the final states signed up in August 1975. To understand the importance of that healthcare reform and the vital role that states played in it, one only needs to look at the fate of the Medibank scheme that was put in place by the Whitlam government through its first term. It was unable to achieve that in the three years of its office until the dying days of that government, which meant that it was quite easily swept away by the incoming Fraser government.

Absolutely central to the success of Medicare was its early implementation early in the life of the Hawke government. Essential to that was the leadership role that was played by Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia, and, in particular, the leadership of Dr John Cornwall. Dr Neal Blewett, who was the federal minister at the time, recalls the strong support he received from Dr John Cornwall in the establishment of that scheme.

When one looks through the career of Dr Cornwall, he said of his ambition, in terms of being a health minister, that he did not want to be a good minister for health but a minister for good health. He wanted to promote the notion of public health—that is, the social determinants of health—as being a vital public policy agenda.

He knew that as vital as those services were, what was possibly even more important was improving the general level of health and wellbeing of the community, which was vitally affected by issues of social justice. That is why he was such a powerful advocate for reforms in the areas of mental health, women's health, drug and alcohol abuse and Aboriginal health.

His efforts in relation to drug law reform and, indeed, the public health initiatives in relation to HIV/AIDS, and the way he took on the environmental issues in Port Pirie such as lead levels in the air and insisting on high standards there, are all examples of not only his fierce intellect and his analysis that those things were critically important to people's long-term health and wellbeing, but also his compassion, because he thought they were the most important things to be done.

Another crucial element to his character was his courage. He was prepared to take on anyone at any time to achieve his objectives. It is true that taking on the tobacco industry is not a simple matter and taking on public opinion to deal with the legalisation or decriminalisation of marijuana is not a simple matter either.

Of course, HIV health promotion at the time was a deeply controversial matter. In fact, there is a famous dispute he had with Jeremy Cordeaux, who refused to allow advertisements for condoms on his radio station. He suggested that this was because he had an above-average female audience whose sensibilities would be disturbed by hearing such things, to which Dr Cornwall snapped back, 'Reproductive health is, of course, not solely a matter for women: it ought to be the joint responsibility, at the very least, of men and women.'

However, he did balk at one thing: the federal minister for health at the time, Dr Neal Blewett, suggested that there ought to be a very large picture of a condom put on our public buses. Even Dr Cornwall blanched at the idea, especially at that of the articulated bus going around a corner with a large condom painted along its side. He thought that that would be a little too much for the good burghers of South Australia. In that respect, he resisted Dr Blewett, and that particular ad did not make it.

He has been described as irascible. For those who got the rough end of his tongue, I am sure he certainly earned that sobriquet. In 1977, one of the very first things that he said in coming to parliament and into the Legislative Council was that the Legislative Council was 'a moribund, anachronistic and disreputable chamber' and that the proceedings were 'a sham and a charade'. That would have improved their humour up there.

Apparently, though, he also got back as good as he gave. He seemed to get into a war of words during a rather robust exchange that occurred up there. As he announced his resignation, he said, 'On balance, I don't think we need a Legislative Council.' This is a conclusion that many ultimately reached after a long career in the Legislative Council.

It must have been fun up there. This was not his finest hour, of course, but, apparently, he was deliberately baited, and it is said that he would provide an instant reaction almost every time. He would call the Hon. Rob Lucas 'Rob the Blob' and Legh Davis 'Legh the Flea', and in return he would receive 'Dog Doctor' from Martin Cameron and 'A refugee from the psycho ward' from Mr Davis. Then it descended into this. Cameron on Cornwall: 'He should have stuck to veterinary medicine. Stop butchering the state's health system.' Cornwall on Cameron: 'You have to admit, Martin is the full hundred cents in the dollar; it's a pity it's all small change.' So it must have been fun up there in the Legislative Council back in the day.

There is no doubt that John went way too far on a number of occasions, including with the orthopaedic surgeon and the domestic violence shelters. I think he took on some health bureaucrats to his detriment as well on one occasion but, on all occasions, he was motivated by a strong sense of social justice. He was motivated by what he believed was in the best interests of South Australia. He was never cowed by entrenched interests, and he was never prepared to take a backward step when he was confronted with what seemed to be large and powerful forces.

We do need to acknowledge the extraordinary contribution he has made to public life. It came at some cost to his personal health. It was said that he would work extraordinary hours and, on occasions, had to take a break due to exhaustion. I am sure that his family, friends and all those who supported him during that period knew the price that he paid for the purposes of public service. I want to add my remarks in his honour and pay tribute to his life and service.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (14:26): Our family first came into contact with Dr John Cornwall when he was our vet on our dairy farm down in Glencoe. He had moved there from Bendigo, where he grew up as a working-class Catholic boy. He actually won a scholarship through the Victorian department of agriculture to study veterinary science. He moved to Mount Gambier and set up a practice there for about 10 years.

It was after a heavy defeat in the mid-sixties by federal Labor that he decided that not only would he pay his membership but he would become more active in the party. He became the local sub-branch president. Mick Young and a couple of other people approached him and asked him to run for the federal seat of Barker, which he did on two occasions. It meant a whole lot of visits, including from Lance Barnard and Gough Whitlam, and Bob Hawke made a trip over. These Labor luminaries were seen in fairly unfamiliar territory, such as at the Tantanoola Tiger Hotel and other places around the electorate of Barker.

In my family, dad was obviously a staunch Liberal voter and supporter and very outspoken in his views. He always said that John Cornwall was a better vet than he was a politician, but I think he was a little biased. Talking to his daughter Deborah, who I later worked with, she said that living in those conditions down in the South-East was like growing up being part of the Communist Party, or at least being suspected of being part of the Communist Party. She said that it affected her mum and dad and all seven kids as well. I am sure it was not easy. I am sure my family thought that they were from the Communist Party and all my rellies as well.

John Cornwall came into this place in the upper house, as people have mentioned, in the seventies. He was a reformer. He was, as I said, someone born in working-class Bendigo, someone who had seen a long, long reign of conservative governments at the federal level and also in Victoria. He was a man never to waste an opportunity, who every day got up and, when he had power, did not want to waste a day of it. He would work 16-hour days seven days a week because he knew that Labor governments were the best thing for the people of this state but they were not necessarily forever. 'Don't waste a day; work as hard as you possibly can' was his motto.

He had a lot of fights with a lot of people, including within his own government, but he went out there and fought for individuals. He fought for society. He was a reformer. He was a person with a social conscience. He went to Port Pirie and saw the terrible health effects that the lead smelters were having on the people up there and reformed it. He did not want people who may have been exposed to high-risk HIV activities to go away and hide. He wanted them to be part of our society and to feel free to be able to talk about their issues and make sure that they were behaving in responsible ways for their health and the health of others.

His greatest victory, as he saw it, was his work on tobacco advertising and cutting the link between smoking and sport, which was not easy to do because of the weight, money and might of all the TV stations and newspapers and the clout they carried, plus some pretty big international corporate companies that knew that, if something like that happened in South Australia, it would not be long until it spread to other states and other parts of the world.

He fought hard. He rubbed people up the wrong way a lot of the time, including some of his colleagues. I know that some people who were involved in the media unit back then who did not think that well of him when he would organise press conferences at the same time the premier of the day was going out doing one of his press conferences, but I guess that was what John Cornwall was all about. As a journalist, we loved him. He gave great quotes and was out there with ideas that stimulated discussion.

It was an era, in the eighties, when people were really polarised by the fellow and a lot of the views that he held, but it had people involved in the discussion in South Australia. Journalists and talkback radio hosts back then loved him as well and the work that he did and the ideas that he put up. He merged the Queen Victoria Hospital and the children's hospital to become the Women's and Children's Hospital. On the face of it, it was a pretty hard task to achieve, but he eventually brought people together and made sure that there were more efficient way of doing things to deliver better health services and results for the women and children of South Australia.

As I mentioned before, he had six daughters and a son. Mark, his son, became a very good political cartoonist. I remember going to the launch of one of his books, back in the late 1980s. Deborah was a journalist—and still is a journalist—on the news and then later for The Advertiser. She was a very good journalist, who used to just smile and say, 'Well, that's my dad,' every time there would be something controversial in our paper or in one of the other papers.

He left here not feeling all that great about some of his colleagues. He thought that they could have stood up for him more in the case that ultimately cost him his political career at the age of 53. He moved to Sydney and headed up the Australian Veterinary Association for many years, but he was also involved in a lot of voluntary organisations. He led a delegation called Delta, which was one of the first organisations to do work with companion dogs. He worked with refugee associations, and he worked in a voluntary or paid role right up until he was 79.

As well as doing that, he was pretty much a full-time carer for his wife, Patrice, and that continued right up until his death earlier this year at the age of 83. He worked through to the age of 79. He came back last October, after he wrote his book about his career, and made up with a lot of his former comrades and party members he left back in the late eighties under difficult circumstances. That was something that he was very grateful he did and is a reminder to all of us that, whether we are on this side, that side or the cross benches, we all come in here with different views of the way that we would go about things, but at the end of the day I think all of us come in with the right reasons.

We do it in different ways, but we all try to leave this place better than when we came in, and I think John Cornwall is definitely one of those people. When he came in during the Dunstan era, he had a style that reform was the thing of the day. If you looked at John Bannon, he was more of an economic rationalist, and that set up a combat that was probably sometimes very well disguised, but it was always simmering along. To Deborah, Mark, Patrice and all the Cornwall family, my deepest condolences.

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (14:34): I also rise to make some brief remarks about the life and career of. Dr John Cornwall, in particular focused on the almost six years he served as minister for health, six years in which he implemented a range of policies that were controversial at the time but which have had a long and massive impact in terms of improving the health of South Australians over that time. His legacy as Labor's health minister will be incredibly well remembered. He oversaw some important and longstanding reforms to our health care.

Importantly, he focused on primary health care and prevention. He wanted to keep people healthy and out of hospital, which was not always the focus of our healthcare system and which is still something we need to significantly improve on. He also focused on a number of important public health areas broader than our health system that were significantly impacting on people's health. One that was particularly important, and still is today, was in regard to the effects of lead pollution in Port Pirie. This was something on which he fought; in fact, he had a stoush at that time with the mayor. Cornwall got his way and in doing so positively impacted the lives of so many in the Port Pirie community.

As has been mentioned, he also furiously fought the tobacco companies. While that is obviously a popular thing to do today, to fight with the tobacco companies, 30 years ago it was very controversial indeed. They were at the height of their power and with the money they influenced, particularly in areas such as sport and other sponsorship and the media, they were incredibly powerful. To take them on and to get the restrictions he was able to achieve in terms of sport would have saved countless lives in South Australia and has helped spread those regulations around the country and around the world, saving many thousands if not millions of lives.

He also oversaw the implementation of the first policy promoting women's health, making South Australia the first state in the country to have a policy on women's health. He oversaw the implementation of legislation allowing, for the first time, organ transplants from individuals who were classified as legally dead. He also launched the system of enabling road death victims to donate urgently needed organs—something considered sensible and straightforward now but it was a significant reform at the time, and has no doubt saved many lives since then.

He took his progressive politics to the national stage and, as the former premier has outlined, he was one of the leaders of the movement to set up Medicare which, we now know, is seen as the bedrock of our healthcare system and something everyone claims to support. However, at the time it was definitely not that; it was very controversial and was opposed by a large percentage of doctors and many, many politicians. Dr Cornwall was a leader in getting South Australia to sign up to that, and we have seen the benefits over the past three decades. He also took to the national stage advocacy on HIV and AIDS, addressing public fears about them that were completely misheld and pushing for some very important campaigns about making sure we helped to prevent the spread of AIDS.

Of course, as has been mentioned, he was no wallflower. He was often a divisive and controversial character who had more than a few spats with his parliamentary colleagues and others. In fact, an article in the Sunday Mail in 1983 described him as the 'man who makes Muhammad Ali look meek' and who 'snaps with the force of a giant clam'. Regardless of his colourful character, what can certainly be said about Dr Cornwall as health minister is that he was bold, progressive and fearless, and it was well and truly to the benefit of South Australia that he was. May he rest in peace.

Motion carried by members standing in their places in silence.

Sitting suspended from 14:40 to 14:50.