Mr Pallas (Tarneit) — I rise to condole with the house on the passing of Alan John Hunt, and in so doing I reflect upon the fact that quite often when we come into this place we take the view that our  contributions fall into the formulaic and sometimes the academic,  and  all too often the contributions people make to this place and to this state are forgotten. Not so with Alan Hunt. His legacy is around  us in  the institutions that we populate and of course in  the community amenity he was so vital in preserving.

I  do not wish to  dwell  too much on Alan’s  early  life other than  to say  he brought a forensic lawyer’s brain to the calling that  he chose, and he chose it with great robustness.

He contributed 31  years  of his life to  this place, and he greatly  valued the institutions that  he  participated in.  He  was  reputed to  have  an  enormous appetite for work, allegedly working something like 80 hours a week, and he also enjoyed, in his own  words,  picking other people’s brains. The thing about Alan Hunt and my dealings  with him is that he always listened to people  rather than simply thinking that  the point of a conversation  was to hear his own voice. He was somebody who genuinely believed that public life was a great opportunity and offering, and one  who  saw all too often that he  had  to value and measure the contribution he could make  against his moral principles. Indeed on occasion  he sacrificed high office at the altar of high principle.

He was a man I had great regard for.

Over the course of his career he was Minister for Local Government, Minister for Planning,  Attorney-General,  Minister  for  Federal  Affairs  and  Minister  of Education, but his elevation to the ministry did not happen, it would appear, as a  normal  or logical trajectory  for somebody with  his undoubted competencies. Indeed he lost some 10 years after he entered Parliament essentially as a member of the  backbench,  and he did so  for  a reason that I  think  demonstrates the nature of his principles.

In 1963, as a backbencher, he incurred the wrath of his Premier when he stood up for  a widow  in the face of an unfair compulsory acquisition. Without going too far into the details I can say that he was  at least successful in shining light on how these kinds of processes can be distorted.

He did  his career  no favours  by taking  this  stand,  but  the principle  was important to him.

I  think  it is a hallmark  of  Alan’s career that  he  believed  a principle is something that  a man should stand up for —  that a member of this place should stand up for. He said at one point in the context of that particular matter:

  One  cannot  escape  the  conclusion  that  Mr  Ansett  received  far  greater  consideration  than did the widow … and that he received it because he was a  man of greater influence ….

Those were enormously powerful words from a man who was effectively critical  of the behaviour of his own party at the time. I wonder if many of us could reflect that same  level of  courage in the circumstances, because  it was  in effect  a career-altering contribution, and  it  did shine a  light  on those matters.  We could  perhaps  be forgiven for  comparing him to another  Australian lawyer who stood up for the  little  guy in the  face  of the forces of  unjust  compulsory acquisition — that is, Mr Dennis Denuto from the film The Castle.

With  Alan  it  was  always about  the vibe;  it was  about the  principle  that underpinned everything. Alan was big enough to honestly evaluate his own actions in government with the benefit of hindsight. He provided some sage words for all ministers  when  he  said  that  ‘powers  need  to  be  exercised  sensibly  and sensitively’.

My dealings  with Alan were  of course  during his  later years,  after he  left public life.  On his retirement from  public office the Age  editorialised about his career. It described him as  ‘a staunch  defender of  the Parliament and its institutional values and  conventions’. That is  an idea that  constantly  comes back to me. Throughout his  career Alan  had a  strong and abiding commitment to the  role  of  the Parliament in our democracy. He  never  saw it as a pro forma process that you have to go  through; he genuinely believed in the robustness of debate  and the value that  parliamentary oversight could add to the performance of the executive.

He often warned against the tendency of all  sides  of  politics  to  ‘disregard Parliament and to treat it as an encumbrance’. He believed that without a strong Parliament a government  would become ‘an  elected dictatorship which  would  be unaccountable between elections’.

Alan’s  experience  as a minister  and  as President of  the Legislative Council ultimately put him in a position to provide very competent  advice to government about  what needed to happen in order to reform our  upper house and improve our democracy.  He participated with  Ian Macphee and George  Hampel in producing  A House for  Our  Future,  which  was  a  proposal  for  legislative  change  that subsequently came into being in many substantive and material terms. I might say that at the time  it  raised a few eyebrows  among his colleagues that he  would take up such a role.

I would like to share the story of  one meeting I  had with Alan  when I was the Premier’s  chief of staff that probably defines him better than  any  other.  We bumped into each other on the street when  he was performing his role as part of the Constitution  Commission Victoria, and  we  discussed the broad  issues that were being put to that commission. A few minutes into the conversation he looked at me and asked rather quizzically, ‘Are we having a  conversation here?’. I did not quite understand the content of  the question.  I said, ‘Yes, of course’. He said, ‘That’s good. I wouldn’t want to think we were having a negotiation’. That was Alan Hunt to  me: he was his own man, guided by impeccable principles and by unimpeachable values. His contribution  to this state will be remembered, and in many  ways it  will be  a living  heritage because  of  his  commitment  to  the environment  and his commitment to maintaining these institutions as vibrant and ongoing things.

He was a father of five sons, Bob, John, Peter, Steve and of course Greg, who is here today. Greg, I am  sure your father would be very proud  of  you, given the fact that you  have  gone into the family business, as it  were. Alan was also a grandfather of 10. Goodness only knows how  he managed to father five sons given that he was working  80  hours a week, but  then  he was a man who  embraced all things robustly and was a man  of  great conviction. To his wife of the  last 10 years, Leila, I say thank you for the contribution you made in making  Alan Hunt a substantive  contributor  to our state. He  was  a great man, and  I mourn his passing.

See Tim’s speech in Hansard here.