HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Subject Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-11-14 Daily Xml
Contents
Xml

Weste, Dr J.

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (15:29): I rise to acknowledge the 10th anniversary of our South Australian Parliamentary Librarian, Dr John Weste, congratulate him on his significant milestone, and thank him for his many years of excellent service to our parliamentary library.

Dr Weste was born on Christmas Eve at Glenelg Community Hospital. He was well overdue and, according to his mother, his reluctance to appear earthside reflected eternal laziness. But with all due respect to Dr Weste's mother, I have to disagree. He works tremendously hard to manage our parliamentary library and staff, build the library's unique collection, and inform the many thousands of school students and members of the public through his entertaining tours of the library.

I can say this because Dr Weste himself jokes that he is in fact a mock librarian and did not study the profession; it is simply a title. He is instead a Doctor of Japanese Studies. So how does one go from undertaking a PhD in Cambridge on the military industrial capacity in Japan following World War II to the steward of our state's Parliament Research Library?

Dr Weste attended Seaview Downs Primary School and Seacombe High School before studying Japanese and history at the University of Adelaide. He was the first in his family to not take up an apprenticeship and head to a factory or workshop. He remembers this was quite confusing in that he had no idea how universities worked and he had no-one to ask. Even his concerned grandmother appeared at the family home to express concerns that he was leaving his societal class that he had been given and that all the posh kids at university would not want to know him.

Not taking the apprenticeship route turned out to be a blessing, as when he was a little boy his father would insist he spent time in the garden shed being exposed to tools. But they had to wrap a thick cloth nappy around Dr Weste's forehead as every time he lifted the hammer he would bang it into his head. His avoidance of such activities, Dr Weste is sure, rests in his subconscious memory of the pain of that hammer and led him to his ultimately academic career.

In 1985, Dr Weste was in Japan for a year on a working holiday. He lived in Kumamoto and ended up working in a bar. There he made quite a mess of standard Japanese, and fleshed it out with a mishmash of dialect and, he suspects, a number of obscenities couched as something else to everyone's amusement. He enjoyed it greatly.

Between 1989 and 1991, Dr Weste was undertaking a Japanese Ministry of Education scholarship at the University of Tsukuba, Japan, where he commenced research into what would become his PhD topic. In 1993-96 in Cambridge is where Dr Weste completed his PhD which, as I mentioned earlier, focused on the redevelopment of military industrial capacity in Japan following its defeat in 1945.

In 1996-2004, Dr Weste was a lecturer in Japanese Studies at Durham University, and then between 2004-06 a lecturer in Japanese Studies at the University of Leeds. Truthfully, Dr Weste does not miss academia, but he learnt so much and he also realised he loves public speaking. In my opinion, he is rather good at it. It never occurred to him that he would enjoy it, and he still does.

In late 2006, Dr Weste returned to Australia, and between then and August 2007 spent a lot of time reconnecting with family. He had both his maternal grandparents still at that point, and his sister had produced four boys, so he spent a lot of time with them and changed endless nappies. Wherever possible, he would sneak off to Hardwicke Bay where his grandmother came from. As he says, it is the best place in the world.

In August 2007, we were very lucky in the fact that he joined us here at the parliament. He got a one-year maternity fill-in contract as a research officer. Dr Weste then tells people he selectively murdered his way to the top, and in October 2014 was appointed Parliamentary Librarian. The truth is, he was very lucky in that a number of positions had become vacant, which allowed him the promotion.

Having visitor numbers through the library go from zero to more than 10,000 over his decade as Parliamentary Librarian is something Dr Weste is most happy about. There is always someone, regardless of age, who will react or say something in a way that is new, and he likes that. No parliament tour is complete without a visit to the library, where I do introduce the real star of the show—Dr Weste. It would not be the same without his tales of Jean Bottomley, the parliamentary waitress who served the late Queen Elizabeth II mock turtle soup—which cues sounds of disgust from the students—the stories of the lost bust of Sir Torrens, the reason the Orrery does not have Pluto and why one of the globes has a crater where Adelaide should be.

Dr Weste opens up our parliamentary library and in turn opens up the minds and imaginations of thousands of South Australians who come through its doors, all while, alongside his staff, providing parliamentarians and their advisers with impartial, relevant, timely, confidential research and reference services. Thank you, Dr Weste, for your service to our state's parliament, alongside your fashionable suits and colour combinations, your clever turn of phrase, your enthusiasm and wit. It is a pleasure working with you.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT