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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2017-05-09 Daily Xml
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Condolence

Millhouse, Hon. R.R.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Employment, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation, Minister for Manufacturing and Innovation, Minister for Automotive Transformation, Minister for Science and Information Economy) (14:20): By leave, I move:

That the Legislative Council expresses its deep regret at the death of the Hon. Robin Rhodes Millhouse QC RFD LLB, former minister of the Crown, member of the House of Assembly and Supreme Court judge, and places on record its appreciation of his distinguished public service.

I think all would agree that the Hon. Robin Millhouse lived a distinguished and very colourful life. Throughout his long career of serving the people of South Australia in various ways, he became known for many things. He was noted for certain eccentric habits, least of all commuting to and from the Supreme Court by bicycle in often very unconventional clothing—much like the Hon. Mark Parnell in this chamber.

In causing a spectacle, he was not a shy person. When it came to just about everything that he did, from his political activities as a progressive voice within the Liberal and Country League, as a founder of the Liberal movement alongside Steele Hall, and later as the first elected member of the Australian Democrats, right down to his much spoken about propensity for nudism—which he expressed in a number of ways and which may also be a trait he shares with the Hon. Mark Parnell, but I would not know—Robin Millhouse was unashamedly himself.

His eccentric habits and his political activities are related by the common thread of the way in which he handled personal and political opposition. He stood firm on the matters in which he believed and clung fiercely to his passions, without regard for the criticism that may have been directed at him, no matter by whom.

I am informed that he was famously derided as a streaker in this place for walking short distances in the hallway after a shower wearing what has been variously described as 'only a towel', 'part of a towel' or 'not at all a towel'. He bore the moral outrage that he caused with equal parts of amusement and scorn. We can be quite confident that, both in politics and in life, he found a certain value in making people uncomfortable.

In a career in public service that spanned well over half a century and reads on paper more like the life's work of at least three individuals, Robin Millhouse touched the lives of many across many nations. After a long parliamentary career and then a fairly long service on the Supreme Court of South Australia, he retired, only to take up the position of Chief Justice of the High Court of Kiribati, and a few years later, and simultaneously, the position of Chief Justice of Nauru.

He was in fact, I am informed, the only person in the world at that time to head the judiciary of two nations simultaneously, and I am not certain if a distinction like that has been matched since. It is a fairly remarkable way to spend one's working hours, to begin the day deciding matters in the High Court of Kiribati and finish the day in the same capacity in the court of Nauru. To cap it all off, he served a couple of years in the High Court of Tuvalu, finally retiring in 2015. By any measure, he had an extraordinary career and led an extraordinary life.

During his political career in South Australia, he was known to relish the discomfort that he caused people within both major parties. In the wake of his passing, it is more clear than ever that he was a very greatly loved person, cherished by his family, his many friends and all those whose lives he touched. It is a comfort to hear his children report that by the time he passed away he was ready to go. May we all be so fortunate to live a life that is such a full life and to embrace its end with grace and peacefulness. I am very confident that Robin Millhouse will be long remembered in South Australia and in other places far beyond.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (14:24): I second the motion and add some comments on behalf of the opposition, although my colleagues the Hon. Rob Lucas and the Hon. Andrew McLachlan will also be adding some comments.

The Hon. Robin Millhouse QC was an esteemed member of the House of Assembly for 27 years between 1955 and 1982. Mr Millhouse represented those who resided in the inner southern suburbs during his time in the South Australian parliament and was the member for Mitcham. Incidentally, that is the area in which I currently reside.

Throughout his long and distinguished career, the Hon. Robin Millhouse QC held many important positions or portfolios within the party and the government and from 1968 to 1970 he was a minister in the Hall Liberal government. Most notably, I suppose, because of what direction his career would take after his parliamentary career, he was attorney-general as well as the minister for social welfare, Aboriginal affairs and industry. Following the 1970 election defeat, he was elected deputy leader of the Liberal Party while it was in opposition.

The Hon. Robin Millhouse was respected by all sides of politics and has been described as a reformist. During his time in parliament he campaigned on progressive social issues such as legislation for prostitution reform. He was also well known for his achievements post politics, which were as distinguished and notable as his political career.

In 1979, the Hon. Robin Millhouse was appointed as a QC. In 1982, he retired from state politics and was appointed as a judge in the Supreme Court, where he served until 1999. After this time he was appointed as Chief Justice of the High Court of Kiribati, a position he held until 2011, and was also appointed as the Chief Justice of Nauru from 2006 until 2010. As the leader of the government said, following his retirement as the Chief Justice of Kiribati he also served on the High Court of Tuvalu for just over a year between 2014 and 2015.

The Hon. Robin Millhouse had a long, enviable and distinguished career. Outside of politics and the legal profession, he also served our great country. He served in Vietnam and I believe that probably some of the comments associated with the Hon. Andrew McLachlan will be around the military contribution of the Hon. Robin Millhouse. He was also a great family man, with five children. He was married to Ann, who sadly passed away quite some time ago in 1992. In his spare time, the Hon. Robin Millhouse ran marathons—as if he had not achieved enough in his life he even found time to run marathons. I recall some early vision where I saw him on the ABC news running a marathon.

The Leader of the Government referred to the behaviour of the Hon. Robin Millhouse, where he might have walked from the showers and things in this place, and people often talk about it although I do not think anybody in the current parliament has been wanting to follow in those footsteps. With those few words, I am happy to second the motion.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (14:27): I rise to pay public tribute to the many years of public service from Robin Millhouse. Unlike most other members, I had some association with Robin in my early days in the parliament in the 1970s when he was serving in the state parliament. I was variously working for David Tonkin for a period of time and also for the Liberal Party. During that particular period of the late sixties and early 1970s, which was a tumultuous time for Liberal politics in South Australia, Robin Millhouse together with Steele Hall, his colleague at the time, was at the forefront of the debate within the Liberal Party.

In looking at the record of Robin Millhouse one sees that he commenced his service, as members have acknowledged already, with what was then called the Liberal and Country League (the LCL) in South Australia, which is now the Liberal Party of Australia SA Division. He was part of the movement within the Liberal Party, originally called the Liberal Movement, together with Steele Hall and a number of others who set about, from their viewpoint, modernising or reforming the then LCL in relation in particular to the debates on electoral reform. There were other issues as well but it was principally electoral reform.

When the major movers and shakers within the Liberal Movement reunited with the LCL to form the Liberal Party in 1976, Steele Hall and others rejoined the Liberal Party but Robin Millhouse voted against the merger and then struck out on his own, together with a loyal band of followers, and established the New Liberal Movement. He had gone from the LCL to the Liberal Movement, to then the New Liberal Movement, and then soon after that he became part of the Australian Democrats. So, he variously, within the space of a short period of time, served four political parties: the Liberal and Country League, the Liberal Movement, the New Liberal Movement and then the Australian Democrats.

All through that period, as I think other members have acknowledged, he was a reformer, as he sought to reform not only within the Liberal Party but also within the state parliament. His views, together with those of Steele Hall and others, on electoral reform issues are well known and well documented, culminating—ultimately together with the Labor leader Don Dunstan in the early to mid-seventies—in the changes which occurred in South Australia in terms of our electoral laws in both the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council.

Of course, among those reforms were those we moved in the Legislative Council, for example, from regions or provinces or districts to a statewide proportional representation voting system—a bit different to the one we have now and are currently debating, but nevertheless a statewide system—which soon after that saw the election of the first non-major party member in the Legislative Council. As we have highlighted on a number of occasions, since then—since 1979—with the election of Lance Milne, no government, Labor or Liberal, in South Australia has ever controlled the numbers in the Legislative Council.

Those reforms stem from those reforms of the mid-seventies: major changes in the way the boundaries were redistributed in the House of Assembly. There were other provisions—little-known provisions. Prior to 1975 you could be young and foolish and under the age of 30 and be elected to the House of Assembly and become Premier, minister and anything else, but you could not be elected to the Legislative Council. Prior to 1975 there was an age bar that said that members like the Hon. Kelly Vincent now and indeed like myself, when I was elected, shortly after that in 1982, were constitutionally ineligible to be elected to the Legislative Council because we would not have been deemed to be old enough, wise enough or mature enough to sit in the state upper house to opine on the views of those in another chamber.

There were, of course, much more widely known and documented changes in relation to the universal franchise, in terms of whether or not you were a landowner and those sorts of things, which came about as part of those reforms of the sixties and ultimately the early to mid-seventies. Robin Millhouse, together with Steele Hall and others—it was not just the two of them—and ultimately Don Dunstan need to accept the credit for some of those significant changes in terms of electoral reform.

Soon after that—I am not sure whether he was campaigning on this whilst he was within the LCL, but certainly the media reports refer to his commencing the campaign in relation to disclosure of political donations, reforms in those particular areas which now, decades later, we have seen in their latest incarnation as the public funding-related changes that both major parties or the parliament agreed to two or three years ago which will operate for the first time in an election environment in this period leading up to March 2018.

Robin Millhouse was, in those very early days, campaigning for early disclosures. When he was parliamentary leader of the New Liberal Movement and the Australian Democrats he said he would not accept a donation of greater than $500 unless the donor was prepared to have their name publicly revealed—if someone asked, he said. There was a caveat at the end. He did say 'if someone asked' he would reveal the names of the particular donors.

I am struck by the fact that, as he matured, or moved on perhaps, from a major party representative to being a minor party representative, the public stances of the Hon. Robin Millhouse during that period perhaps were an early role model for some of the latter-day Independents and minor parties that we have seen. I refer in particular to being perhaps a role model for the Hon. Nick Xenophon and possibly even for the Australian Greens on occasion. He railed publicly and in the house against perks for MPs: they were paid too much and had too many benefits. He complained about electoral allowances and travel allowances being introduced for members of parliament, and that the cost of food in the parliamentary dining room was too cheap. So, he made a public cause, a very popular public cause one suspects, of complaining about MPs' perks and salaries.

I recall during that period that, whenever there was an MPs' pay rise, Mr Millhouse would publicly issue a statement saying he would refuse to accept the increase that was being paid. When it was pointed out that there was no way for him to opt out, he then indicated that he would be donating all of his salary increase to a worthy charity. Subsequently, it transpired that, generally, that lasted for about 12 months and then he happily accepted the increase and moved on, until the next MP's pay rise was publicly announced. As a leader of a minor party, as he was with the New Liberal Movement and then Australian Democrats, he knew the value of populism and he knew the issues that were of particular political value in terms of putting public positions on MPs' perks, salaries and pay rises.

As some other members have referred to, he did have some eccentricities in relation to his public, political and personal behaviour, not all of which bear repeating in the state Legislative Council. Some were legendary. It was well known, when he was leader of the New Liberal Movement and then the Australian Democrats, that on most Wednesdays Mr Millhouse would come into the House of Assembly during the middle of question time, in front of the media would bow deeply to the Speaker, would be marked off as present on the House of Assembly roster and would then disappear for the rest of the day down to his duties as the lieutenant colonel, a commander of the Adelaide Universities Regiment at the Torrens Parade Ground. Most of the stories indicate that he continued that role and service through a significant period of his parliamentary life, but he always made sure that he was marked off as present in the parliament during that particular period.

As other members have attested to or hinted at, he did not necessarily have a great affection for always having to wear clothes. He nuded it up on a number of occasions. I think he become more open about that after he left his parliamentary career and commenced his judicial career. Certainly in those days of the 1960s and 1970s there were limited sleeping quarters available in Parliament House, in particular for country members, up on the second floor on the House of Assembly side, for those members.

I think the story to which the Hon. Mr Ridgway refers, where there was a public spat, which was reported at the time, between Heini Becker, a Liberal member, and Robin Millhouse—the stories were quite legendary—of Robin Millhouse proudly walking, in all his glory, from his office to the men's shower at the end of the corridor and back again because he knew it would irritate a number of the other members at that particular time on the second floor.

In more recent years there have been any number of people who have mentioned to me and to others how he used to continue that practice of nuding it up in his judicial chambers, so much so that, on occasions when some people visited or knocked on the door, those visitors needed to try to work out where they were meant to look as they conducted a conversation with judge Millhouse in his room before a particular hearing.

To conclude, my contribution is that Robin Millhouse was elected at a very young age to the parliament. He was a reformer from the word go. He was unconcerned in many areas about what other people thought of him. For the benefit of what used to be Family First, now Australian Conservatives, I mention that he was a strong believer in the hereafter. As he said, he prayed both morning and night, attended church religiously every Sunday and retained that belief, or so we are led to believe, through his post-parliamentary career years as well.

He had some eccentric behaviours. As I said, he also took on the behaviours that many Independents and minor parties take on to ensure both public attention and populism with regard to their stances on particular issues, but then went on to the judicial career that the Hon. Mr Maher and the Hon. Mr Ridgway have highlighted, for many years post his parliamentary life. For all those reasons we thank him in terms of his public service, firstly to the various political parties, but in particular my own political party, the then LCL and the now Liberal Party, which he served for many years before he struck out into the minor parties.

For his public service to the people of South Australia in terms of the reforms that he fought for and in many respects achieved through the parliament, we thank him. Also for his long judicial career, both in Australia and in other places, we thank him. To those remaining—family, friends and acquaintances of Robin Millhouse—we pass on our condolences.

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (14:41): I also rise to support the motion. Robin Millhouse entered parliament before I was born, and he had retired from parliament by the time my wife Penny and I came to South Australia in the late 1980s. So, my memory of him was as a judge and, most importantly, as a judge who rode a bike. I recall, in the early 1990s, a new booklet was being published called Cycling and the Law, which, as its name implies, was a guide to cyclists and motorists about their legal obligations on the road.

The logical choice for a person to launch this booklet was His Honour Justice Robin Millhouse. After all, he knew a thing or two about the law and he rode a bike, so he was the perfect choice. In fact, it was also around this time that he created some furore by asking the courts administrators for a new bicycle in lieu of a new car as part of his judge's remuneration package. It made the papers and it was a matter of some controversy. I think it is probably fair to say that at the front bar or at the barbecue or around the water cooler, Robin Millhouse's gesture seemed like a no-brainer, as the cost to taxpayers of a bicycle would have been a fraction of the cost of a big white car.

However, it was refused as it was outside the guidelines, but more likely it was refused because it was seen to diminish the status of his high office, and it would have embarrassed his fellow judges, for whom driving a big car was the most appropriate transport, given their importance or at least their self-importance. In the alternative, he asked if he could lend his court-issued car to someone else who needed it more than he did, which, of course, was refused as well. As far as I know, His Honour Justice Robin Millhouse continued to ride his bike to court for work each day. Robin Millhouse certainly had the ability to name pompous attitudes when he saw them.

Back to the launch of the Cycling and the Law booklet: I remember talking with Robin outside the Supreme Court whilst we were waiting for the media to turn up. For me, this was incredibly exciting. He was a lawyer, a former attorney-general, a former member of parliament and a serving Supreme Court judge who shared my passion for not only the law but also running and cycling. As a young lawyer, getting to talk to a running, cycling Supreme Court judge outside the formality of the courthouse was a rare thing, so I took the opportunity to chew his ear about a legal cycling dilemma that was troubling me.

This dilemma was: in a situation where a cyclist comes up to an intersection with traffic lights, but the metal-detecting loop under the road surface is not sensitive enough to detect a bicycle so that the light remains red and will not change to green until a bigger metal object, such as a car, comes along to trigger the lights, what do you do? This is mostly a problem when car traffic is light and especially at night-time. The metal detecting loops often do not detect cyclists. My question for Justice Millhouse was: is it OK for a cyclist to disobey the traffic light and cross the intersection against a red light if it is clear that their presence has not been detected? It is almost like a third-year law exam: when is it OK to break the law?

When it came time for the judge to make his speech, launching the Cycling and the Law handbook, he started by saying how the law was still very unfair to cyclists. He used as his case study my problem of unresponsive traffic lights. He prefaced his remarks with the words, 'I make no admissions but'. He then went on to bemoan the state of cycling infrastructure in South Australia, and he more or less admitted that he too had crossed against a red light when the traffic signals were unresponsive to his bicycle.

Unfortunately, I do not think any media turned up that day, so the headline, 'Law-breaking judge's cycle of crime', never quite made it to the pages of The Advertiser. I think the only people impressed were the handful of cyclists who were listening to him outside the Supreme Court that day. By way of a postscript, and with the Minister for Road Safety present, I notice that the state government's website on cycling laws still has the following advice:

Position your bicycle in the middle of the lane—preferably on the centre wire which is the most sensitive part of the detector—

and this is the important bit—

and remain there until the green signal appears.

Whilst he made no admissions, I have no doubt that Robin Millhouse would not have remained until the green signal appeared. If the technique advised did not work, he would have crossed against the red light, which I think is a good metaphor for his political career as well. When I say his political career, I am not just talking about his initiatives to decriminalise prostitution, although that is a good segue as well.

We know and we have heard that Robin Millhouse was in a number of political parties over his long career: the Liberal and Country League, the Liberal Movement, the New Liberal Movement and, finally, the Australian Democrats. Sadly, this list did not include The Greens. However, I was delighted to read a few years ago, in a piece that Rex Jory wrote for The Advertiser, that Robin Millhouse said:

I voted for the Greens at the last federal election. I could never vote for the Liberals again and I could not vote for Labor.

On behalf of the Greens, I would like to add my thanks for the service that Robin Millhouse gave to South Australia and to offer my condolences to his family.

The Hon. A.L. McLACHLAN (14:47): I rise to support the motion. I wish to record my sadness at the passing of the Hon. Robin Millhouse RFD QC. Our paths crossed on many occasions, even late last year at the St Mark's College parent dinner, where he was supporting his granddaughter. He was his usual sprightly and fit self and still with a keen interest in the politics of the day.

I think it was our shared interest in the law and Army life that caused us to regularly meet on our respective travels on the road of life, or perhaps it was because we were shaped by so many of these same institutions. He rendered distinguished service in the Citizen Military Forces. I understand he even had a visit to Vietnam. He had a very long association with the Adelaide Universities Regiment. The Army was one of the great loves of his life outside of politics and, of course, his family.

He was the most courteous of judges, certainly when I used to appear before him. He always had a very strong belief in the principles of the Enlightenment. In fact, it is instructive, if you revisit his dissertation on liberalism, there are some dramatic quotes that stand out. He wrote:

To Liberals, the importance of mankind lies in the importance of every single human being, and not in the State or in a power structure.

He goes on to say:

Liberalism believes that sovereignty lies in the people. The sovereignty is expressed through a Parliamentary system in which elected representatives of the people are free to act upon their own convictions, which have previously been expressed and accepted by the majority of electors.

In the political sphere, Liberalism upholds:

an independent judiciary

the control of the executive by Parliament

the utmost possible decentralisation of Government

an election system which maintains majority rule and regularly-held elections.

He wrote that many years ago, and yet we are still debating many of the principles today. He was a man of great faith of the Anglican conviction. His labours having been done and his journey at an end, he now has a new guide to lead him. I thank him for his service and my thoughts are with his family.

The PRESIDENT: I will now ask all honourable members to stand in their places and carry the motion in silence.

Motion carried by members standing in their places in silence.

Sitting suspended from 14:50 to 15:08.

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