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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-09-09 Daily Xml
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Doyle, Mr J.

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (15:46): We are fortunate in our union movement, and indeed in the Labor Party, to be blessed with some larger than life characters. More than that, our state and our nation are blessed with these characters who make up the history of our nation and how we came to be what we are. Today, I rise to speak of the passing of one of these characters, that being Jim Doyle.

Jim Doyle passed away in August this year at the age of 102. Jim's character stands out very much in the career and life he chose to pursue. It reads very much like the early history of our nation. Jim left school early and started his working career as a shearer. He worked on sheep stations in two states, New South Wales and Queensland. Even as a young man, Jim fought for what he believed in and he was instrumental within the Queensland and the South Australian union movement in helping fight for the 40-hour working week in those states. It is hard to imagine now, but prior to the 40-hour working week it was very common for people like shop assistants to always be working a 12-hour or more day.

Unfortunately, for his troubles Jim was rewarded for his hard work in fighting for the 40-hour week by being banned by many station owners and he was unable to shear sheep on their stations. This forced Jim to seek work in New Guinea at the Bougainville copper mines. After a bit of time there, Jim finally moved back to South Australia, where he became a worker in the gas fields of South Australia in the Far North, in Moomba.

As was the tragedy of the times for many of his age, Jim also signed up to fight in World War II, where among other things he humbly said he drove a truck even though he did not have a truck driver's licence. After the end of the war, Jim found work as a union organiser for the Australian Workers Union in Whyalla and we were glad to have him. He organised workers in those founding industries of our nation: the railways, the steelworks and, indeed, local councils.

During his time with the union, Jim worked from all the way from north in Moomba to the Riverland, and even as far south as Kangaroo Island. In the ranks of the union that boasts William Guthrie Spence and Henry Lawson as its members, Jim was known to be a great union organiser and a great recruiter as well as orator. His skill to connect and talk to everybody was not matched and is legend even today amongst Australian Workers Union members.

Until his recent passing away, Jim was not just a longstanding member of the Australian Workers Union, he was our longest. He was a member for 87 years. Jim maintained his membership through changing careers, through changing states, depressions, recessions and wars. Even after Jim's retirement from the union in 1986, you could not keep Jim down. Jim produced his own newspaper, famously named 'The Plod', and maintained a consistent pace of dialogue and discussion with many, from the lunchrooms of workplaces to the offices of premiers.

For my part, I fondly remember Jim being a guest speaker, particularly at the 2018 Australian Workers Union delegates members' dinner, where at the age of 100 he addressed a large crowd of over 500 people and spoke eloquently and passionately about his life and the values of working people—at 100.

I recall thinking, even then, how much value we must start placing in the living history that those like Jim provide our nation. It is not hard, even with Jim being at the age of 100, to imagine Jim there as a shearer, at a camp fire, listening and being influenced by others. As a young man Jim would have been around those minds that literally sat down and discussed not just the laws that we should have but the very idea that we might have a state and a nation.

Our nation was formed on and by many of the values that formed and shaped Jim’s life. It is a common phrase to say, when someone has passed, that they 'broke the mould', and it may seem apt but I do not think Jim would like me to say it. Anyone who ever met Jim would know that he wanted to see his life as a mould for others—that workplaces should be fairer, that we should all be involved in discussing the issues that affect not just ourselves but also those less fortunate than ourselves.

Indeed, as Jim would often say, despite his lifetime of work and efforts for working people, the problems of working people in our nation are as evident today as they were when he first started his work. Jim is a legend within the Australian Workers Union; he should be a legend within South Australia. To many, he is. He will be greatly missed and his hard work and dedication to the working class lives on. Vale, Jim Doyle.

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