Motions

Ridgway, Hon. D.W.

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon R.I. Lucas:

That this council notes and thanks the Hon. David Ridgway for his service to the Legislative Council and the community since his election to the Legislative Council in 2002.

(Continued from 9 September 2021.)

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (16:32): I rise to say nice things about Ridgy. I had my whip in my ear behind me saying exactly that and then the Leader of the Government from across the chamber telling me exactly the same thing, so I guess I do not have a choice but to say nice things about Ridgy so I am going to entirely change the nature and tenor of my speech.

David Ridgway was born in Adelaide on 14 November 1960 and studied at Bordertown High School. He grew up in the small South-East community of Wasleys and with the Rural Youth, as he was fond of telling us occasionally, he travelled to the USA and Europe. He took over the family farm, which diversified from growing bulbs for the cut flower industry and I think became the biggest supplier of gladioli in Australia. I note that that is Dame Edna Everage's favourite flower, so the similarities between Dame Edna Everage and David Ridgway continue.

David won a seat in the state's upper house, the Legislative Council, in 2002 and held some very important positions, including Leader of the Opposition, in this chamber. Growing up, David Ridgway always had an interest in leadership but I am told he had a ferocious appetite as a young man and his devotion to the pastime of eating earned him the nickname growing up of 'the Grub'. I am very well informed.

David Ridgway has been passionate about our state. I have not always agreed with the methods or the policies in terms of promoting the state, but there is no doubt that his interest was in seeing South Australia succeed. For his family and for the whole of the state, that was a motivating factor in most of what David Ridgway did.

The PRESIDENT: I remind the leader that he is the Hon. Mr Ridgway.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: The Hon. David Ridgway—and I am assuming that whatever process needs to happen to retain the honourable title, the Hon. David Ridgway did those things.

The PRESIDENT: I understand that.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: The still Hon. Ridgy, sir, as I said, was first elected in 2002 and held many different shadow ministry positions, shadow ministry appointments, over those long 16 years. The full decade when the Hon. Ridgy was a shadow minister spanned many different portfolio areas including the environment, planning, police, resources, assisting multicultural affairs, small business, housing and then in areas such as tourism where he went on to serve as minister when the Liberals won the election in 2018.

The Hon. Ridgy was always good-natured and I think many in this chamber have enjoyed spending time with him regardless of what side of politics they were on. The Hon. David Ridgway always had time for a chat or a catch-up, and I think, as is often the case in this place, everyone appreciated that.

I will note that the Hon. David Ridgway still owes me $50 and unless he can get up and claim otherwise that will stand as a claim in this chamber. We had a bet about whether he would be a minister by the time the election rolled around, and (a) because he is now this state's Agent General in London but (b) because he was not a minister before that, he clearly owes me $50, and I will spend the remainder of my time in this parliament—as the Hon. Robert Lucas does about bets he has made with members of the opposing side—bringing this up very often. The $50 that the Hon. Ridgy owes me might even be the subject of a motion at some stage in this chamber.

He served his party and his state with distinction. I think that will continue and I think if any of us from this chamber have a need with work to find ourselves in London I am sure he will extend the hospitality for which he has become famous.

The Hon. T.T. NGO (16:36): I stand to support this motion. I, too, have a few nice things to say about the Hon. David Ridgway. I first met the Hon. David Ridgway in 2008 at the first of many Vietnamese community functions that he attended. I got to know him well, along with other honourable members in this place, when I entered parliament after the March 2014 election. Even though the Hon. David Ridgway was from the opposite side, some might say the dark side, I found him to always be friendly and helpful. One thing I found especially pleasant about the Hon. David Ridgway was that he did not take things too personally. Once he became a minister, whenever I needed advice or assistance from his ministerial portfolios, he was always willing to help.

A few years ago, when he held the trade, tourism and investment portfolio, he told me that he was visiting regional councils and visiting Streaky Bay over the weekend. As a fun gesture from me I jokingly asked the Hon. David Ridgway if he could grab me some oysters on the way back. Following that conversation, one Sunday afternoon I got a text from David asking me for my address in Kilburn.

Within an hour he was at the front of my place with five dozen oysters. He said that he had to drop one of his staff off near my place and it was easy to pop these oysters to me so that I could have them for dinner that night. I know my wife was very impressed with what the Hon. David Ridgway did. The Hon. Terry Stephens often jokingly told people, when he introduced me to new people, that I run the government because I got the minister to get me some oysters and drop them off at my place, so I actually run the government and not him.

In April last year, right at the start of the pandemic, everyone thought the world was coming to an end. State and federal governments were announcing financial packages to help Australians out with jobs. One group which contributed so much to the Australian economy over the past few decades was not eligible for this assistance because they were not Australian citizens. This group, the international students who contributed over $40 billion to the Australian economy and over $1 billion to the South Australian economy, had been left to fend for themselves. At a time when we had shut our city down as we struggled to deal with the spread of COVID, many of those international students were scared and worried about their life and felt abandoned by Australia for not helping them in a time of need.

I was happy to stand in this place and was one of the first members of parliament in Australia to speak out about the plight of international students, how this country was ignoring their needs, and I called on our state government to help out. With good fortune, the Hon. David Ridgway happened to be in the chamber listening to my speech. Afterwards, in the corridor, he told me that he agreed with what I said. He then said to leave it with him and he would work with his department and the Treasurer to come up with a financial package for our international students.

A couple of weeks later, a financial package worth more than $14 million was announced by the Hon. David Ridgway. We were the first state in Australia to act and provide financial assistance to our international students. Other states then followed. South Australia's financial package created a sense of goodwill. Our international students appreciated that they were the first to get government help.

When the country opens up and travel can be a part of life once again, I think South Australia's support can become a selling point for enticing international students to our state, because we were the first state to reach out to our international students, showing them that they, too, are members of this state's community. I posted my speech on Facebook, and I had many positive comments. In fact, the post received over 100,000 interactions. Many international students living in South Australia said they were so proud that they lived in the place that was the first to offer them help.

This is probably something I know the Hon. David Ridgway would be very proud of. He said to me a few weeks later, when all other states were doing the same thing, 'We can often achieve so much when we work together in bipartisanship.' With that kind of positive attitude, I am sure the Hon. David Ridgway will effect positive changes that will benefit our state in his role as Agent General. I wish him all the best in his new role.

The PRESIDENT: I call the Hon. Mr Stephens.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: Hear, hear!

The Hon. T.J. STEPHENS (16:43): With the Treasurer's enthusiastic approval of my standing to make a small contribution, I want to tell him he is going to be disappointed from the outset because there will be things that we know that I will not be including in my speech. In 100 years, when people are trawling through Hansard, there will be things that they do not need to know about the illustrious career of the Hon. David Ridgway and myself.

My first encounter with the Hon. David Ridgway was more than 20 years ago when we were both, as some of the older heads would say, young colts going around for preselection. Both of us were fortunate to have a wonderful, now former, member in the Hon. Caroline Schaefer as one of our mentors. The Hon. Caroline Schaefer organised a meeting between these two young colts, one from the South-East and one basically from Eyre Peninsula.

She told both of us that we would get on fabulously well and, should we be successful, would be good friends within the parliament and outside. We met on The Parade for a coffee one Sunday morning, I think, from memory. I was quite enthusiastic, looking forward to meeting this guy, who had already been acknowledged by some supporters within the Liberal Party that he was going to be higher up the ticket than I was. He had been a vice-president of the party and I was a nobody from Whyalla who had run a couple of times in Giles, so I was very comfortable with that scenario.

However, the Hon. David Ridgway was looking to cover all bases, so he had walked into this meeting and it was like the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. I was waiting for him to draw at 10 paces. He came with a very guarded attitude, but I am pleased to say that did not last too long. I made it quite clear that I was very pleased to support him ahead of me. He had done much more work with regard to positioning himself for the Legislative Council and, to be honest, I was almost an accident. The Hon. Mr Lucas has a bit to answer for my position in this place. So that was my first encounter with the Hon. Mr Ridgway, and we have been pretty solid friends ever since that day. We have shared plenty of good times and really supported each other through the lows of the long, dark 16 years in opposition.

The Hon. Mr Lucas has touched on the Hon. Mr Ridgway's maiden speech. Unfortunately for those of you who were not here at the time, you possibly will never know what we are alluding to, but at one point the Hon. Mr Ridgway was talking about his love of Bordertown, some of the things that happened in Bordertown, including the meatworks, where he was really pleased to be talking about how the meatworks had moved on from traditional lamb cuts to more exotic delicacies, shall we say. It was at that time—and God bless Hansard, because they certainly made that speech look not unusual—for those of us here at the time, that the temperature in this place rose quite considerably.

The Hon. Mr Ridgway's work ethic—and some people may not have acknowledged this, or known—was quite incredible. He almost never made himself unavailable to attend any function or event on behalf of the party or one of his colleagues. I am grateful, too, because he would drag me along on many occasions to all sorts of different events that either he had been invited to or he was representing somebody at and I would go as his plus one, but he also many times, if I was in a position where I could take a plus one, came along and attended with me. I am sure people in this place would acknowledge that two MPs working in a room are better than one MP working in a room.

Between us we both spent probably as many nights out with each other as we did with our wives over his parliamentary career. One of the things he always made well known was that, if he was available and somebody needed somebody to do something, he was never shy in putting up his hand and doing the work that perhaps some people may not have been prepared to do.

I will always remember a couple of little truisms that David gave to me, and one certainly has inspired me. One of his claims to fame was that, at a reasonably young age, he was the president of Rural Youth. I will not go into Rural Youth too much. I am not really sure that I understand Rural Youth, other than that they seem to do a hell of a lot of partying and there is a fair bit of fun and frivolity involved. However, it was a reasonably important position, and he was about 22 years of age at the time.

He was telling me how he told his father, who has sadly passed away, 'Dad, I am a bit concerned. I am not quite sure I am ready for this role. It's an important role. We are proud rural people.' He had quite a bit of respect for the organisation. His wonderful father said to him, 'Son, I had been to war, was back and demobbed. I had been flying missions for the RAAF for four years and by 22 I was back from war, so I think that you can stand up and get on with it,' which is exactly what the Hon. Mr Ridgway did. That is something that I will always remember that he told me, and it is really quite inspiring.

The other one that you may or may not know is that he used to say to me all the time, 'This place is full of rumours and innuendos and all sorts of stories that fly around the place, even outside, in the many things that we attend.' He said, 'Terry, if you haven't seen it or you haven't heard it, it didn't happen. If you just take that approach, you won't get yourself in any trouble.' I have always tried to remember that. I am not sure that he always abided by that himself, but that was his advice to me and I certainly listened at the time.

I have explained that he had an enormous work ethic. He certainly was a fabulous networker, and is still a fabulous networker, and he is obviously quite ideal for the role that he has. With Brexit happening, I am sure that there are opportunities for South Australian exporters, which will certainly mean jobs for South Australians, and that obviously should be our key focus. He is absolutely the right man in the right place at the right time, and I am sure he will do a fantastic job because, as I said, his skill is networking. The people that he has met along the journey, the friendships that he has made, the connections that he has made, and warmly so, I am sure will serve South Australia in great stead.

I want to thank David. I will explain that over the years my Liberal parliamentary colleagues have given it to us a fair bit because we used to share rooms at what were our 'love-ins', which were our conferences. From the time that we came into parliament together, we could not see any sense in paying for a room ourselves when we would probably be up late in the evening, we would probably enjoy a fair bit of social intercourse with those who were around us and by the time we headed to bed all we would want to do was snore.

The only trick was that I always had to have earplugs and make sure that I was asleep before the Hon. Mr Ridgway, who, God bless his lovely wife Meredith, is a fair snorer when he has had a couple of reds. Two country boys, we just never could understand why you would pay full cop for a room when you could share the cost of a room and at the end of the day all you are doing is getting to bed late in the evening and snoring anyhow.

I thank David for all of those trips that we did around South Australia, visiting constituents and various groups and various people. I will say that when we would travel through the countryside together, he would always tell me about the crops: 'Left, right, that's this, this is that, peas, beans.' I would not have any idea, and I am not sure that half the time he had any idea either, but I could not really challenge him on it. I take my small amount of rural knowledge from his agricultural background.

With that, I wish David and Meredith and their families all the very best for the future. I know that he will do a great job for us in the United Kingdom and I look forward to seeing the fruits of his efforts for making South Australia a better place.

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (16:53): I rise to very briefly say a few words, because it is very rare that I agree with the Treasurer, but I will get to that in a second.

The Hon. T.J. Stephens: You should do it more.

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE: It will be rare. I could also agree with the Hon. Terry Stephens in his feedback that the Hon. David Ridgway was an incredible networker, and I am sure he still is. I think the first time I met the Hon. Terry Stephens and the Hon. David Ridgway was at a Tour Down Under event. I thought, 'These guys know how to have a bit of fun.' I have always appreciated going to events from there and always being made to feel welcome and always up for a good laugh.

People do say, outside this building, that politicians never get along but I think that more often than not we do. When the Hon. Rob Lucas was giving his speech earlier in August he was coming out with a few lines and I was thinking, 'This is everything I was writing down, my thoughts.' He is a great networker. He is always able to be friendly and:

…even through his long years in opposition, is that the Hon. David Ridgway is a remarkable networker. He has the capacity to speak with people from all sorts of backgrounds, the capacity to put them at ease…

I was thinking all the time, 'I agree with all these points.' They are really good points to gathering information. It was at that point that I started replaying everything I ever said to the Hon. David Ridgway because maybe he was just using me to gather information, which I am sure he was not. He was a good guy to hang out with and I do appreciate him taking the time to catch up and share his thoughts about his involvement in the party and how he got involved through Young Liberal and everything else in between.

The chamber is not the same without him. We miss his banter and his lines of, 'Chuck him out.' It is just not quite the same without that or having to send messages to try to wake him up when he was falling asleep in the back corner. I do wish him and Meredith all the very best in his new role. He was very proud of his family and always spoke very highly of them and I do think you can judge a good character by that. I do wish David and Meredith all the very best in London.

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (16:56): I rise on behalf of SA-Best and my colleague the Hon. Connie Bonaros to speak about the Hon. David Ridgway, or 'rambunctious Ridgy' is I think a definition that perhaps sums him up, that he is uncontrollably exuberant and boisterous. It sums up his personality: a larger than life individual, always with a ready smile and a pretty loud sense of humour. Gregarious could also be another word used to describe him because a gregarious person is somebody who is fond of company and sociable. I think that also expresses the Hon. David Ridgway.

The Hon. Terry Stephens mentioned the Hon. David Ridgway's association with Rural Youth, and I actually have a faint recollection of writing something in The News when I was working as the Rural Youth reporter for the paper. It was one of the first jobs that young journalists received and certainly his name rings a bell. I remember on one of the trips that we undertook with David, he explained the history of his family in South Australia and it was quite a fascinating history. He also pointed out to us a property where his ancestors had lived. He was quite proud of his rural background but he seemed to be more accustomed to the life of a city slicker.

I certainly wish him well and his lovely wife, Meredith, and also his family. He is very proud of his family. I am sure he will do a great job in the Old Dart representing the interests of South Australia, just as his predecessor Bill Muirhead did. It is an important job—lots of talkfests and long lunches and dinners and important deals to be done—post-Brexit and also with a trade deal to be done with Australia.

I note that famous English cricket legend Ian Botham, Lord Ian Botham I must say, is now Britain's trade envoy to Australia. I am sure that David is going to have a lot to do with the 'Beefy' baron, who is winging his way to Australia at the moment because he will be part of the Ashes coverage on the Seven television network. Baron 'Beefy' also happens to have a very fond interest in South Australian wines, particularly from the Barossa Valley, so I am sure he will have a lot in common with David.

Even though we crossed paths briefly in my journalistic years, I obviously got to know David much better in the past three and a bit years since I was elected. I must say that I often enjoyed his company, particularly when he was ensconced in the office down the corridor from where we are at the moment.

He also lived near me at Torrens Park. I recall him spinning a story to me one day, but I did not know what to make of it. He was telling me that he would walk from Torrens Park into Parliament House on a regular basis. The Hon. Jing Lee is nodding in agreement. I must say that there were a few times I went out looking for him, because I often travel down Unley Road, and I cannot say I ever actually spotted him undertaking that trek into the city.

The Hon. T.J. Stephens interjecting:

The Hon. F. PANGALLO: I always used to look at his girth and I thought that I have not noticed it shrinking. I accept that he said it and that he did it and it seems to have won the support of the honourable members in here.

The PRESIDENT: I could remind the Hon. Mr Pangallo that standing order 193 says that you should not make injurious reflections; however, I now recall that that is about a current member. We are not discussing a current member, so I will let you continue.

The Hon. F. PANGALLO: Thank you, Mr President. I do not mean it in a disparaging way. As I said, I certainly enjoyed his company and his great sense of humour. He was an approachable person and I respected his views and the advice he gave me as a novice MP.

Sitting back during question time, particularly when he was a minister, I admired the way he used to take stick, particularly from the honourable Leader of the Opposition in this place. He seemed to take it quite well when it was dished out to him. I think it is a measure of his character that he was able to do that and then walk out of this place and still be on good talking terms with his colleagues.

I look forward to the day that our paths should cross again, should I be fortunate enough to make it to London and enjoy his bonhomie, which I guess is another word that sums up his personality—cheerful, friendly and genial. I wish the Hon. David Ridgway all the best in his new appointment in the UK and look forward to catching up with him again.

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (17:03): I would like to very briefly pay tribute to the Hon. David Ridgway. I knew David for the 15½ years that I have been in parliament. I took a number of trips with David around the state. You get to know a person very well while you are on a trip. You get to know things about a person that you would not know just by sitting in parliament.

I remember that one day we went to Baird Bay. We were on a boat where you see seals and all sorts of things. I stripped off and jumped in. I was swimming around and having a great time, but I did not know that he had jumped in as well. He had skin-coloured jocks on. I was swimming and all of a sudden this white thing went past me and it actually shook me for a minute to think what it was. I actually thought it was a dugong. I told David that, and I must say he was not very happy with that comparison.

At another time, he and I went to look at the problems with windmills near Peterborough. We stayed in a house and the whole idea was to listen for any negative effects. I must say, it was probably a futile exercise, but anyway I woke up in the morning with Hendrik Gout putting a TV camera in my face.

It was not very flattering, getting out of bed with a tracksuit and a jumper on. Lo and behold, two years later I see it on Today Tonight airing a bit of a negative story. There is me in bed, near the Hon. David Ridgway.

Ridgy was at his best when he was meeting with people. He got a bit of flak when he was a minister because he did quite a bit of travel, but I am sure he represented Australia well. He has a unique personality. I could think of no better person than the Hon. Mr Ridgway to represent this state in England. I wish him and Meredith and the family all the best in their future careers, and I look forward, if we can get over to London in the next three years, to catching up with him.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I. Pnevmatikos.