Durack, Peter Drew, Biographical Collection.Pdf

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News and Features - Timelines Mild sheet-anchor of Fraser era

The obituary of Peter Durack, the former attorney-general (July 21), should have included the Human Rights Commission Act 1981 among the legislation for which he was responsible. He also returned as the Opposition's deputy leader in the Senate 1990-92.

PETER DURACK 1926-2008

PETER DURACK was a paradox. He was a mild-mannered man who rarely said an unkind word about anyone and appeared to disdain the aggressive cut and thrust of Australian politics, yet he made politics his career.

He was a mediocre communicator who sounded like a suburban solicitor, but became a barrister and the nation's attorney-general. He was no good at the political numbers game but became one of the longest-serving senators, at 22 years, and deputy leader of the Coalition in the Senate for nine years.

He said on his retirement: "I accept the fact that I'm a fairly conservative lawyer, I guess." Yet, at least with hindsight from beyond the Howard government years, much of his work was in the liberal, rather than conservative, tradition.

Peter Drew Durack, who has died at 81, was a member of the pioneering family of Patrick Durack who drove cattle from their home in Goulburn to south-west Queensland before resettling in the East Kimberley in 1883. Patrick's granddaughters, Mary and Elizabeth, were Peter's cousins. Mary wrote the family story in Kings in Grass Castles (1959); Elizabeth, a painter, revealed in 1997 that, among her oeuvre, were paintings thought to have been by Eddie Burrup, an Aboriginal artist.

Peter's father, J. P. Durack, was a king's counsel who raised his son as a Catholic - he lapsed later - and sent him to Christian Brothers College and Aquinas College in Perth. Peter then took an honours degree in law at the University of Western Australia, where he was a debater, co-founder of the Liberal Club and president of National Union of University Students. A Rhodes Scholar in 1949, he graduated in law at Oxford, practised for a while in London and returned to Perth, to the law and politics.

In the years before the state's resources boom, Durack thought so few opportunities existed that he might move east. Politics, however, soon offered opportunity.

He won the state seat of Perth from Labor in 1965, lost it in 1968 and became state president of the Liberal Party. He entered the Senate in 1971, saw Gough Whitlam's Labor Party overturn 23 years of conservative power in 1972, and the Coalition's return three years later.

Malcolm Fraser made Durack minister for repatriation (now Veterans Affairs) in 1976. After Bob Ellicott's resignation in 1977, Durack became attorney-general. Tactically and temperamentally, Durack was quite different to the more dramatic attorneys-general who had preceded him, including Ellicott, Lionel Murphy, Tom Hughes and Garfield Barwick.

He was not the pushy type. Physically slow-moving and phlegmatic, he seemed humourless to outsiders, although he was wryly amused by the goings-on around him. His role in legislation became important to the Fraser government.

Durack was involved in preparing the two-airline agreement, broadcasting and television legislation, changes to copyright law, to administrative appeals, the powers of federal police and ASIO and the constitutional settlement with the states on offshore sovereignty. He worked on the Acts Interpretation Act, aimed at instructing judiciary to take a broader view of the purpose of legislation, against a literal interpretation. He fought against the extraterritorial pretensions of US antitrust laws, for the ending of appeals to the Privy Council and for early freedom-of-information legislation.

One view of his tenure from 1977 until Labor won under Bob Hawke in 1983 was that he was a man of principle with a fine legal mind and a considerable contributor in cabinet. Another view was that most of what he achieved would have been achieved by any attorney-general. However, his appointments of Ronald Wilson, William Deane and Gerard Brennan to the High Court suggest that Durack was more liberal than conservative.

According to a popular story of the time, after Durack would slowly analyse in cabinet a particular problem, another minister would ask Ellicott: "What's he saying, Bob?" Ellicott would say: "He's saying you can't do it."

Frank Costigan's 1982 royal commission report on bottom-of-the-harbour tax avoidance schemes and organised crime attacked the Crown Solicitor's office for which Durack was responsible, particularly the Perth office. Its negligence, Costigan said, permitted the law to be disregarded.

Durack said he didn't know all that the office was doing, or not doing. Critics, including some on his own political side, pointed to the Westminster system of parliamentary responsibility and called on him to resign. Durack resisted and had a heart attack. The government lost office the next year.

In opposition John Howard dumped Durack from the Liberal leadership team in 1987. After John Hewson became Liberal leader, he made Durack shadow attorney-general but, when the Liberals left him off the ticket for the half-Senate election in 1993, Durack resigned from the shadow ministry. His Liberal opponents said his age was against him, but factionalism in the west had more to do with it.

Peter Durack is survived by his wife, Isabel, an historian, and their two children, Anne and Philip, both lawyers, and four grandchildren.

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News Tributes for respected politician

FORMER federal Liberal senator Peter Durack, who died at the weekend, was a remarkable person who may have never uttered an unkind word about anyone, former prime minister Malcolm Fraser said yesterday.

Senator Durack, attorney-general in the Fraser government from 1977 to 1983 and one of Western Australia's longest serving senators, died at his Perth home on Sunday, aged 81.

He held the Senate seat from 1971 to his retirement in 1993. Mr Fraser said Mr Durack had always been one of the most valuable people in Cabinet who contributed immensely to the political life of the country.

A member of the pioneering Durack family, his contribution was made outside ``the more traditional Australian sense'' of pioneering, Mr Fraser said.

His appointments of people like Sir Ronald Wilson, Sir William Deane and Sir Francis Brennan to the High Court had shown he was a broad-minded ``true liberal''.

``There was nothing conservative about him,'' Mr Fraser told ABC Radio.

Former federal Liberal MP and West Australian Fred Chaney said Mr Durack was a man of principle who was ``one of the best political and legal minds I have ever worked with''.

A funeral will be held for Mr Durack in Perth on Thursday.

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