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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-09-10 Daily Xml
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Condolence

Keneally, Hon. G.F.

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

That the House of Assembly expresses its deep regret at the death of the Hon. Gavin Francis Keneally, former member of the House of Assembly, former deputy speaker and former minister of the Crown, 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.

Gavin Keneally was a member of this house for almost 19 years, from 1970 until his retirement in 1989. He was a rarity in the modern Labor Party, a member who had represented a regional electorate for a long period. He first won the seat of Stuart based on Port Augusta in 1970. On his retirement, he had successfully defended the seat on six separate occasions.

Mr Kenneally was an important voice for our regions in the Dunstan and Bannon governments. Before that, he worked for the former commonwealth railways. Apparently he came to this parliament reluctantly. I am told on all sides of politics Mr Keneally was regarded as a gentleman and a very reasonable person to deal with as a member and, subsequently, as a minister. He was a minister for the first nine years of the Bannon premiership. He held the portfolios of chief secretary, tourism, local government and transport over that period. Before that, he had been chairman of committees and a diligent participant in the public accounts committee.

Mr Keneally was a noted sportsman before he entered this parliament, obtaining local legendary status as a footballer for Central Augusta. He was well under six feet tall but often played at centre half-forward. One of his greatest memories was lining up for Centrals against Barrie Robran during Barrie's first senior game of football at Whyalla.

On his retirement from this parliament, Mr Keneally continued to be very active in his local community. On behalf of all members of my government, I express appreciation to Mr Keneally for his service to this parliament and to his electors and express our condolences on his passing to his wife, Judith, and their family. Vale, Gavin Keneally.

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:02): I rise to second the Premier's motion. The very full life of Gavin Keneally was one that will be rightly remembered for great service and commitment to his community. That service encompassed his time as the MP for Stuart not only as a long-serving minister in the Bannon government but also representing Port Augusta in a range of sports and local community activities, as the Premier mentioned.

He was an accomplished footy player and a gun cricketer by all accounts, and he also represented his city in tennis, table tennis and basketball. He also wrote for his local newspaper and produced his own radio program. A native of Quorn, he was transferred to Port Augusta in his role with the commonwealth railways, and it was there his political career commenced when he became secretary and president of the Port Augusta sub-branch of the Labor Party—a great branch, I might add.

Gavin Keneally won preselection for the seat of Stuart for the 1970 election and was thus one of those Labor MPs swept to power when Don Dunstan was elected 50 years ago for the first time in his own right. In his maiden speech, his passion for Port Augusta was apparent as he reflected that the city's reputation should be principally about its best all-round weather all year and that its untapped tourism potential must be realised.

He also set out what would continue to inform his participation in many debates over the following 20 years: his deep and sincere concern about the quality of life of every single South Australian, particularly those people who were continuing to live in poverty. He asked why so many people did not receive a decent education, why it was that growing old was seen to be a crime and why it was that people could not afford to become ill in South Australia. His concerns very much represent many true Labor values to this day.

His time on the backbench was interrupted in 1977 when he became the new deputy speaker. The Adelaide News reflected then:

Since his election to parliament in 1970, he has become one of the most popular on either side—with either side.

By all accounts, Gavin Keneally was a modest man. According to another newspaper article, entitled 'Modest habits make a minister', he led Labor MPs in support of the tobacco control act, declaring he was fortunate not to have been encouraged to smoke cigarettes when he was young. He said, and I quote:

You are speaking to someone who is so pure he has never smoked a cigarette in his life…I didn’t drink alcohol until I was 30 and I have not made up for it since.

Gavin Keneally's work in public office often focused on public safety measures. On his first day as transport minister, he encountered a protest on the steps of parliament by the drivers of the well-known Dino's pizza delivery cars, which were topped with red telephone-shaped lights, said by the road traffic board to be hazardous. The minister announced he would personally go along on delivery runs to see for himself what dangers, if any, those signs posed.

During his time as transport minister, some of his accomplishments included overseeing the sealing of the Stuart Highway between Port Augusta and the NT border, commencing planning for tunnels to improve road safety through the Adelaide Hills to the freeway, introducing the state's first red-light traffic cameras, overseeing an increase of security on public trains, streamlining vehicle registration and car ownership transfer, making baby safety capsules mandatory—that is an interesting one—as well as establishing a pool of capsules for hire to make the measure affordable for all South Australians, and introducing a pre-licence training scheme for motorcyclists to combat a rise in motorcyclist deaths.

In the debates leading to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in South Australia, Gavin Keneally was amongst those who argued the law should not encroach upon private consensual behaviour. In his final speech in the House of Assembly on 26 October 1989, he reflected strongly on an incident involving a Liberal candidate at the upcoming election. At the conclusion of his speech, the former Liberal MP the Hon. Jennifer Cashmore stood to rebut his speech but, before doing so, acknowledged that she regretted it was the last time she would hear from him and that she did indeed like him, a view it appears was shared by many in this chamber in times past on both sides of the house.

He was one of the longest serving ministers in the Bannon Labor government, and when he stepped away from politics he was just 56. The passing of the Hon. Gavin Keneally allows us to look back to another time, when the state faced another set of challenges. He played an important role in a Labor government stepping up to those challenges.

The Hon. Gavin Keneally enjoyed a rich life outside politics. Married to Judith, he had five children, six grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren. He was committed to his family, to his friends and to the community he loved. The parliament extends its condolences to his family, acknowledges his enormous contribution to the city of Port Augusta, to the state of South Australia and to the wider labour movement.

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart—Minister for Energy and Mining) (14:08): It is a pleasure to rise to support this motion; it is obviously not a pleasure that a former member for Stuart has passed away, and a very popular former member for Stuart. I certainly did not ever know the Hon. Gavin Keneally as a member of parliament—he was elected 40 years before I was elected and retired 20 years before I was elected—but I did know him as a person around Port Augusta.

I can assure people that as a local, as I am, many of the things that have been said are very true. He was a very genuine, down-to-earth, straightforward, local Port Augusta person, with no airs and graces but not scared of anything either. He was just his own man and he was a pleasure to engage with. I would have met Gavin perhaps five or six times, so I am not suggesting that we were close friends, but I certainly remember the first time we ever met each other when I was an inexperienced candidate going to my very first election. Gavin was a very strong local Port Augusta Labor man long after his retirement from parliament, but he was also a very, very good Port Augusta man.

He treated me in a very friendly manner. He treated me with great respect. It did not have to be even joked about whether or not he was going to vote for me. That was not going to happen, and he was going to encourage as many people as he could to vote against me, but within that reality we lived he was warm and he was genuine. He even gave me a bit of advice about what a new candidate ought to be trying to do and how to go about their business.

Judith was equally courteous and polite, but she did have—and I am sure she will not mind me saying this—that slightly steely reservation (which we would all appreciate our partners often have) when coming across somebody who was one way or another potentially on the other team to their own partner. She was very friendly, no doubt about it, but she made it clear that I was on the other team, perhaps in a slightly more direct way than Gavin actually did, but perhaps for him it just did not need to be said.

He was a very good sportsman. In fact, I was at the Centrals footy club two weekends ago, which was his home in Port Augusta, and he is still a revered person there. He led a combined country team at a state level as well. Up until, I think, about eight or so years ago he was still playing competitive tennis. I only came to know this because I bumped into him and another local Stuart person who I happened to know then whose political views were completely contrary to Gavin's. They were good friends. They played tennis together—with each other and against each other—for many years, and at that stage they were still playing. He enjoyed his sport and enjoyed, perhaps more importantly, sportsmanship well into his later years.

I add my voice to this motion. I add my appreciation to Gavin as one of my predecessors as a member for Stuart, and there have been a few. I thank him posthumously for his very decent treatment of me as a Liberal candidate and as a Liberal member of parliament and for his friendship as it was whenever we bumped into each other, and I certainly wish Judith, their five children, the grandchildren and the rest of his family and friends all the very, very best.

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (14:12): I will just add a few words. It is an honour to rise to speak about Gavin Keneally because he was a special person. He epitomised all that is good about regional South Australia. He was a son of Port Augusta and Quorn, but you could also say that he was a son of Upper Spencer Gulf. The seat of Stuart for a time included Port Pirie, and during its population heyday the seat of Stuart also included a sliver of Whyalla.

It was in that context that I first met him. I didn't know him from a bar of soap. I was a youngster, but my dad was active in the Labor Party and a unionist, and he and his mates came to love Gavin Keneally. They respected him for the work he did as the member for Stuart, and they respected him for the values that he brought to this place, which were good, solid, decent Labor Party values—an incredibly strong sense of equality that we are all equal, that we are going to look after everybody in our community, and that is what he did.

When you go back and read his speeches you read about the deprivation people suffered, especially back in the 1970s and before, and people who were on pensions then. They were far worse off than they are now. He spoke about the plight of the Aboriginal people in Port Augusta at the time and their inability—even when you went through school, even when you went through training—to get a job in that community. These were things that he passionately felt deeply about.

He was instrumental in ensuring the rail link between Port Augusta and Whyalla, connecting Whyalla to the national system. That has generated benefits forever and a day since. That was a really solid achievement. It was mentioned that when he was the transport minister the road just north of Port Augusta to the Northern Territory border was a dirt road. It was a dirt road all the way. This is part of our national highway system, and you would be choking in dust when you travelled on that road. It would have been a proud moment for a transport minister to oversee that particular work.

When he was the corrections minister, he was not an advocate of the rack 'em, pack 'em, stack 'em school of thought. He actually initiated some incredibly important changes to the penal system in this state. It was under his watch that he closed the old Adelaide Gaol. It was under his watch that the remand centre was built here in Adelaide and Mobilong, and also money was put into Yatala. Back in the seventies and early eighties it was not uncommon for riots to take place in our gaols nationally and also in this state. He actually did something about it and it led to an improvement in those facilities, so he can be proud of that.

His sporting prowess has been mentioned. I am a Westies supporter, so I am not a North Whyalla supporter, but we all recognise that Barrie Robran came from North Whyalla. When Central Augusta came down to play North Whyalla, it was Gavin's misfortune to stand Barrie Robran. Barrie at the time was 16. He was described as tall and gangly. At the time, Gavin was 29. Even though he was a great player, he was totally outclassed, and that 16 year old dominated that game. Of course, Barrie went on to be, I think it is widely conceded, the best football player that South Australia has ever produced, so no shame—

Members interjecting:

Mr HUGHES: Okay, we can have an argument about that but, hey, it is true. He was from Whyalla; he must have been. Of course, he played all sorts of sports.

When my dad spoke about him, that warmth did shine through. He was an incredibly decent man. He had a lot of integrity. He did have some annoying habits, though. I was speaking to one person who had the misfortune to work for him. I say 'misfortune' because he would have to get into the car with Gavin and go up to Port Augusta from Adelaide. Day in day out, every time they got in the car Gavin would play the Italian sopranos on a continuous tape cycle—and he would not play anything else. It drove the other two people in the car absolutely mad.

Gavin was an incredibly decent man. He has left a very large family—grandkids, great grandkids, and I think he has seven kids of his own. The contribution he has made to our state and the community of Port Augusta and the seat of Stuart is exemplary. Vale.

The SPEAKER: The member for Mawson.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (14:18): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, and congratulations on your elevation to the job. It is the first time I have had the opportunity to pass on my congratulations.

I knew Gavin Keneally when he was a minister and I was a young journalist at the Adelaide News and The Advertiser. He was always a very modest man. The story was never about him. It was always about what it was that he was bringing to South Australia. Every time he brought in some reform, it was for the good of the people of South Australia. He never wanted to leave anyone behind. He wanted to make sure that everyone had safer vehicles, safer roads and a better South Australia.

He was terrific to interview and I did catch up with him around four years ago when we had country cabinet up in Port Augusta. We talked about those days and about the politicians and journalists of the eighties and how things had changed a little bit. Gavin still had that passion for things like fishing rules and how you protect the fishing stocks. He was proud that he had worked with the government of the day, as the local MP, to make sure that he had done the best he could for his local area.

People have mentioned the sealing of the Stuart Highway; what a great change that was. I was driving up there just a few weeks ago and it has made such a difference to getting tourists to the South Australian outback. There are still people in Adelaide who think you have to have some really high-powered, specced-up four-wheel drive to be able to explore South Australia's outback. The sealed Stuart Highway, the Oodnadatta Track, the Birdsville Track and Strzelecki Track are in good nick. They are not red sandhills that you have to go after.

A lot of those reforms came through Gavin Keneally's time because he knew the roads. He knew the areas up there and he was fortunate to be in that position, as transport minister, where he could make a difference to the lives of the local people in the outback and also to the people of Adelaide and from interstate and overseas who wanted to get out and explore that beautiful part of our country. To Judith and the rest of Gavin's family, I extend my deepest condolences.

Motion carried by members standing in their places in silence.

The SPEAKER: The house will stand suspended until the ringing of the bells.

Sitting suspended from 14:22 to 14:32.

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