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24047 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY Wednesday 9 June 2010 __________ The Speaker (The Hon. George Richard Torbay) took the chair at 10.00 a.m. The Speaker read the Prayer and acknowledgement of country. HEALTH PRACTITIONER REGULATION AMENDMENT BILL 2010 THREATENED SPECIES CONSERVATION AMENDMENT (BIODIVERSITY CERTIFICATION) BILL 2010 Messages received from the Legislative Council returning the bills without amendment. BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE Notices of Motions General Business Notices of Motions (General Notices) given. VISITORS The SPEAKER: I recognise the presence in the gallery of the family of the late Adrian Cruickshank and welcome them to the Parliament on this sad occasion. DEATH OF ADRIAN JOHN CRUICKSHANK, A FORMER MEMBER OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY Mr RICHARD AMERY (Mount Druitt) [10.13 a.m.]: I move: That this House extends to the family the deep sympathy of members of the Legislative Assembly in the loss sustained by the death, on 21 May 2010, of Adrian John Cruickshank, a former member of the Legislative Assembly. It gives me a great deal of pride that I have been asked to move this condolence motion on behalf of the Government, representing the other side of politics to Adrian Cruickshank, who was a particularly interesting, colourful and intriguing member of this Parliament. Members of The Nationals, who are in the Chamber today, led by the Leader of The Nationals, will be making contributions regarding Adrian's political career and personal life, including Adrian's successor in Murrumbidgee, Mr Adrian Piccoli, who will talk more substantially about his personal involvement with the member who represented the Murrumbidgee in this House for some 15 years. I cannot say that I knew Adrian particularly well outside of this House or our roles as members of Parliament; however, as I was elected only five months before his own first election to Parliament in 1984, we shared many years together in this place and saw the history of this place unfold during some turbulent years of the 1980s and 1990s, and we saw it from different sides of politics representing different views. As I say, he served the electorate for some 15 years. Adrian Cruickshank was a prominent person outside this House in his family life, his business life, and of course, as has been recognised many times, for his substantial charitable work not only here but also in Africa, something which I understand was well acknowledged at his funeral recently. It is in his role as a member of this Parliament that I wish to pay particular tribute to him. The Murrumbidgee electorate is one that the Labor Party held for many years. It is an electorate with some incredible history. It is one of just two seats in this Parliament that has been constantly in existence since 1856, and a country seat held by Labor for over 40 years before Adrian Cruickshank was elected to the Parliament. 24048 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 9 June 2010 After George Enticknap won it from the Country Party in 1941 as part of the McKell Government, setting up 24 years of Labor Government between 1941 and 1965, it was held by various members of the Labor Party who had distinguished careers. I think George at the first election was an independent Labor candidate. George Enticknap held the seat until 1965 when the new Labor member Al Grassby won it, despite Labor losing the general election in 1965 to the then Premier Robert Askin. Grassby went to the Federal Parliament in about 1969 and he was followed by yet another Labor man, Lin Gordon—a man to whom I think members on both sides of the House would pay their respect, as Adrian Cruickshank did in his own maiden speech. Lin was a popular member and became a Minister in the Wran Government following Labor's election win in 1976. After a successful career, Lin Gordon announced his intention to retire at the 1984 elections. The Labor Party then selected Peggy Delves, a respected and popular local figure who had worked for Lin Gordon in his office. The Labor Party went into that election, despite difficult times, with some confidence of holding the Murrumbidgee electorate. With such a good candidate and a history of holding the seat going back to 1941, even when it had lost general elections, in 1984 Labor was quietly confident of holding on to Murrumbidgee yet again. After all, as I have said, it held it for some 43 years. The National Party endorsed Adrian Cruickshank. He had been active in Country and National party activities since the mid-1960s. He had also served in local government—but I will not hold that against him. As history shows, he was a formidable opponent, winning the seat back for the Conservatives, something that had not been done since the 1930s. Until Adrian Cruickshank won in 1984, the Country Party had not won an election in that electorate since the late 1930s. By the time the next session of Parliament got underway, all of the new members started to get to know each other across the Chamber, and I recall being involved in many debates and Adrian's name has been recorded as interjecting on many of my speeches—appalling behaviour— during the period 1984 to 1988. I have been reading a few of them over the last few days. The 1988 elections came around and, despite the Labor Party putting up yet another good candidate Terry Allen, Adrian won again. It appeared that his win of 1984 was no fluke. After that election I picked up the position of Shadow Minister for Natural Resources. One of the seats in our sights was the seat of Murrumbidgee. Whilst Adrian was a popular local figure and had a long history in the area, we felt that there were some issues that made him vulnerable—or so we thought. Let me explain. The Murrumbidgee had a long history of government involvement in the constituency—in its industries and in its people, in government capital works and government regulation in particular. For example, the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Scheme was a major government program starting from the first 10 years after Federation. The rice industry was heavily regulated, and also sustained by government regulation, or orderly marketing, were the wine grapes industry, the egg industry, and many others. With this landscape, and an electorate that was so much involved with government, both in the employment sector and in regulation, we always felt that Adrian Cruickshank's philosophy on politics made him a vulnerable local candidate—as I said before, so we thought. Adrian Cruickshank said in his maiden speech—and this is what we picked up on when we were looking at the profile of his electorate: I was elected on a platform of small Government, of small bureaucracies and a determination to see that Government does not get in the way of the individual. To me, he sounded more like a City Liberal than a National or Country Party member of the time, and I hear heckles from the Opposition. As I said earlier, the electorate was heavily involved with government. The electorate also had a large public sector employment base, along with many industries that relied on government regulations. When I say employment base, I mean the substantial water resources department, the Roads and Traffic Authority, agriculture, and so on. So, given Adrian Cruickshank's view about small government and less bureaucracy, and so on, we always thought we had some opportunities to highlight those sorts of policies, or that sort of rationale or theory— Mr John Williams: You should have adopted that theory. Mr RICHARD AMERY: That could be true. Along with many other members of Parliament—like Jack Hallam, the former Minister for Agriculture and shadow spokesman after 1988; Fred Hankinson, a former member of the Legislative Council; and Bob Christie, a former member for Seven Hills who was on our caucus committee—we, as Opposition, started making regular visits to the area after 1988. We were involved with the 9 June 2010 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 24049 very popular and substantial Labor listeners campaign. We chose places like Griffith and Leeton to espouse our views, and to tell the public just how bad the Coalition Government was here in New South Wales. Unfortunately, in some parts of the State they did not listen to us; but in other parts, thank goodness, they did. Our branch structure in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area was strong. With locals like Ron Anson, Les and Joan Spence, and Tony Catanzariti, we did tours all over the Murrumbidgee. I must say, we were terrified of being driven around in a Toyota bus a couple of times, and I was very pleased that we finished the day safely. We were not concerned about attacks from the Nationals but about the driving of our own people. We were trying to get the word out that Adrian Cruickshank was against regulation of agricultural industries, and that he was against bureaucracies. In effect, from our point of view, he was against government employment in his electorate. We thought, surely we could knock him off. We would tell the workforce that their jobs were at risk because of Adrian's view on small government, et cetera. At the 1991 elections, Labor made inroads into the Greiner Government's majority. In fact, the Government lost its majority. Indeed, the Greiner Government only survived because of the crossbenchers in this House. We campaigned hard and our candidate, Ron Anson, was everywhere. I know that, because I went with him on many occasions. Despite this effort, and despite what we thought were Adrian's policy issues, he beat us yet again.