James Savoulidis, 7 February 2013

I rise to pay tribute to James Savoulidis, known as ‘Gentleman Jim’, who passed away on 20 December last year at the age of 93. Gentleman Jim was Canberra’s pizza pioneer. He was born in Greece, grew up during the Great Depression and was sent to Australia in 1938 by parents who wanted a better life for him. In 1959 he settled here in Canberra and opened a number of businesses, including the Mondial Night Club in East Row. He helped many Greek families who migrated to Australia get established in Canberra. In 1971 he established the Plaka restaurant in Mawson, where Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was a regular patron. As I noted in my first speech to this place, it was James Savoulidis who taught Gough Whitlam to dance the Zorba.

He was painted by local artist Peter Engel—a painting which hung proudly in my local café in Hackett, Wilbur’s. Wilbur’s is one of the many fine dining establishments that have been set up by James Savoulidis’s sons who have followed him into the business. To bring pizza to Canberra in the 1960s was tougher than it is today. This was a more white-bread city, one which lacked the cultural diversity that we now appreciate. James Savoulidis was an innovator and a risk taker. He has a great entrepreneurial spirit and the wishes that his parents had for him when they sent him to Australia from Greece at the age of just 18 were, I think, greatly fulfilled.

His son, Steven Savoulidis, wrote to me and, after modestly telling me that I did not need to speak in parliament about his father at all, said:

‘… he had a long and great life, of which 3/4 of a century was here in OZ. He always told us the best thing his parents did for him was to send him to AUSTRALIA. He said “if you put in the effort, respect people, have respect for yourself, you will get everything you’ll ever need from Australia” he loved it here. We were lucky to have him and call him our father.’

With the passing of James Savoulidis, we lose the second of two great Canberra culinary pioneers, the other being Augustin ‘Gus’ Petersilka, who passed away in 1994. They were for a period both in Garema Arcade—Mr Savoulidis on the Garema Place side, Gus on Bunda Street.

While James Savoulidis fought for pizza and the Zorba, Gus was fighting for open-air dining. It was Gus who engaged in legendary battles with local Canberra bureaucrats over the right to put tables on the footpath. They thought footpaths were for walking; he felt that it added to the character of the place to have outdoor eating. History, I think, has proven Gus right. He petitioned the Queen and said he was willing to go to jail for his right to have tables on the footpaths. Eventually he was made Canberran of the Year in 1978. Many Canberrans know him through Gus’s Cafe in Garema Place. Gus himself said, in an interview in the Canberra Times, ‘I had a fair go’. In the same interview, he went on to say:

‘To the Viennese, homes are only to sleep; the coffee house is their home away from home.’

This is a recognition that so much of the social capital in Canberra, which is indeed the nation’s social capital, occurs in our cafes and restaurants. Our vibrant cafe and restaurant scene is not just a matter of increasing total GDP; it is about improving the social connectedness of Canberra. Having great restaurateurs and great local establishments has made Canberra a so much more exciting city in which to live.

We are greatly in the debt of Gus and greatly in the debt of the late James Savoulidis. My condolences go to Mr Savoulidis’s widow, Helen; his sons, Steven, Nasi and Andrew, and their partners, Vicky, Geraldine and Cherie; and his grandchildren, James, Eleni, Crystal, Dimitri, Kasia and Jasmine. Rest in peace, James Savoulidis.

Coral Bell, 11 October 2012

I rise to speak about a great constituent of mine, Coral Bell, AO, who passed away on 26 September 2012. Coral Bell was a former academic at the Australian National University and one of the great international relations scholars in Australia. Her former ANU colleague Andrew Carr said, ‘She was a landmark figure in Australia’s international relations who was often the only woman in the room yet was always well heard and respected for her intelligence and character’. My friend Michael Fullilove, who has recently taken over as executive director of the Lowy Institute—and I congratulate him on that—called Dr Bell ‘a giant of the Australian foreign policy scene’.

Dr Bell came to adulthood during the Second World War and, as Robert O’Neill noted in his obituary for her, knew from her own experience just how much was at stake when great powers went to war with each other with modern weapons. She understood the challenge of nuclear war and was part of a key group of Australian scholars working on key issues around understanding the Cold War. Her doctoral thesis, which formed the basis of her first book, was based on understanding how the United States was managing the Cold War. She returned to teach at the University of Sydney from 1961 to 1965, then to a readership at the London School of Economics and was a professor at the University of Sussex until 1972.

Dr Bell returned to work at the Australian National University from 1977 until 1988 and then continued to contribute to the field. She characterised the NATO alliance as ‘always in disarray’, an observation which I think contains more than a kernel of truth. Her paper The End of the Vasco da Gama Era, one of the Lowy Institute’s first, is considered one of its best. Dr Bell was regarded as a conservative realist—not an international relations tradition with which a small ‘l’ liberal like me would associate—but she was nonetheless very much a conservative and not a neocon. In that capacity she was a strong critic of George W Bush’s foreign and military policies and held the view that the United States had lost its sole superpower status and we were moving towards a world order where power would be shared among several major states.

Lowy Institute board director Robert O’Neill noted in his obituary:

‘Her analytical legacy is this view of a world where US power and influence have slipped, and those of China, Europe, Russia, and India are rising to form a condominium.’

Dr Bell’s recent publication A World Out of Balance: American Ascendancy and International Politics in the 21st Century highlighted the unique economic and security challenge this context presents for international affairs. Our understanding of international affairs has been enriched by this giant, Coral Bell, and those of us who seek to contribute to the ideas and policy debate in international relations stand on her shoulders.

Bryce Courtenay, 27 November 2012

A little over 12 months ago Paul Keating told Leigh Sales during a Lateline interview:

‘Well, it’s all about telling the stories. You gotta be able to tell the stories, I think.’

Today I pay tribute to one of our greatest ever storytellers. Australian author Bryce Courtenay lived in the suburb of Reid in my electorate, a few kilometres from my electorate office. Last week he died of stomach cancer, aged 79. He was a prolific author. In his 23 years of writing he wrote 23 books—almost one a year. I say ‘almost’ because the only time he missed his annual deadline was last year. He was upset by this even though the arthritis in his hands were so severe he could only perform two-finger typing.

 As somebody who has a couple of books with my name on the spine of them I can only marvel at a man almost 40 years my senior who worked 12 hours a day, six days a week, for months on end to tell us his stories. I remember once reading a book about fiction writing which said that if you want to be a good fiction writer you have to be at the desk every day: some days the muse will come and sit on your shoulder and you will write beautiful prose, while other days the muse will not come and nothing will come out. But you have to be there, otherwise the muse will turn up and you will be off somewhere else.

Bryce Courtenay was there day in, day out, waiting for the muse to land on his shoulder and produce those wonderful stories. Great storytellers like Bryce Courtenay can inspire us. They fill us with vision and sometimes even tell us things we do not want to hear. Bryce Courtenay’s power to tell a compelling story saw him sell more than 20 million books worldwide—nearly a book for every Australian. He wrote 12 of the most borrowed books in Australia’s public libraries. It is estimated that one in three Australian households have a Bryce Courtenay book on their bookshelves.

What was it about Bryce Courtenay the man and the writer that so enthralled us? I believe it was his ability to tell stories about the strength and triumph of the human condition. His own life was testimony to that. It is hard to read The Power of One or April Fools’ Day without being touched by how he spoke to us on this eternal theme. In The Power of One he wrote:

‘The power of one is above all things the power to believe in yourself, often well beyond any latent ability you may previously have demonstrated.’

These are powerful words from storyteller who could reach out and grab the heart of the reader.

Bryce Courtenay, like all of us, was very much human—a man with his own imperfections—and he showed us through his life and his writing that we should not hide from them; the imperfections and hardships of life are what makes a story worth celebrating. Two weeks ago Bryce Courtenay posted a final message on YouTube to his readers. Here is part of what he said:

‘Well kids, here we go. The book coming out this year, Jack of Diamonds, is my last book. It is my last book because my use-by date has finally come up, and I’ve probably got just a few months to live. I don’t mind that—I’ve had a wonderful life—but part of that wonderful life has been those people who have been kind enough to pick up a Bryce Courtenay book, and read it and enjoy it and buy the next one, and be with me in what has been, for me, an incredible journey.’

He paused before continuing:

‘All I’d like to say is, as simply as I possibly can—’

with his voice now starting to break—

‘thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.’

I say here to Bryce Courtenay that it is we who should thank you. Vale, Bryce Courtenay.

Sir Richard Kingsland, 13 September 2012

Sir Richard Kingsland passed away at Calvary John James Hospital after a short illness on Monday, the 27th. Like many of my constituents, his was a life of public service. His wartime service was marked by the bravery and ingenuity he displayed in the 1940 retrieval of Field Marshal Viscount Gort VC from a Moroccan hotel. It is a tale of derring-do that befits 007, perhaps with a hint of the Pink Panther.

Having received orders to extract Gort from the hotel in Rabat, he first seized a police boat, commandeered a car, then shot his way into the hotel. Then, because the French failed to take away his revolver, he shot off the lock, managed to free them both from the room in which they were held captive and made a dawn escape by flying out of Morocco under a guard of pro-Nazi police.

He later served with distinction in the Royal Australian Air Force, was Secretary of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire, receiving his knighthood in 1978. He was an extraordinary Australian.