23 December 2024
St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne
E&OE
——
It’s an honour to be giving this address, on behalf of the Andrews family; because for all his achievements on the national stage, it’s the family that Kevin and Margaret have built, inside their home – with five wonderful children and their spouses, and seven adored grandchildren – that will stand as his legacy, as much as anything he did in Canberra.
As Margie has said, in messages to many of you, speaking for all the family, including Kevin’s 99 year old mother Sheila, here today; and his brothers, Paul and Mark: “my beautiful husband was courageous and uncomplaining to the end…He leaves a proud legacy of service to his family, his country and his faith, which has sustained him always, but particularly in recent times”.
As Margie was only too-achingly-aware, for the 31 years of his federal parliamentary service, Kevin was often the significant absence at family dinners, children’s sports events, and parent teacher nights. Yet when his service to the parliament was finally ended, no one was more disappointed-for-Kevin than Margie; even though she was looking forward finally to having Kevin to herself and to the children and grandchildren. So while Kevin is now in the hands of God, the Andrews family remains in our hands; and it’s our duty to support them as best we can, in this sad time, when the companionship they expected has been so painfully snatched away.
The consolation to Margie, and to the family, is that Kevin turned out to be such a singular politician, so universally admired for being a decent human being, as well as someone who made a difference in all he did. As the Prime Minister said: “Kevin’s Liberal colleagues and his Labor opponents would agree, he was a man of conviction. He was respected as someone who held his views firmly and argued them fiercely”. As Bill Shorten said: “while we were opposed on many political fronts, I respected that he always fought for his values”; with Kevin, “what you saw was what you got”. There were wonderful tributes from John Howard and Peter Dutton too, but these are especially significant tributes, coming as they did, from opponents and critics who could have chosen to be silent.
We are, indeed, much the poorer for his passing; but we are so much the richer for his living. The presence here of Kevin’s former Labor colleagues, Bill Shorten and his great friend Chris Hayes, as well as nearly all the Liberal leaders he served, testifies to the high regard he had abundantly earned.
Kevin was a man of character, conviction, and courage; a man of honour in the bear pit of public life; for whom politics was a calling not a career, and who never put personal preferment ahead of principle. Above all, he was a gentleman, who never stooped to the dark arts of politics. His contributions to debate, in the party room, in the cabinet, and in the parliament, invariably commanded respect; because they were clear, concise, to the point, and devoid of personal rancour.
It’s fitting that Kevin represented the seat of Menzies, because few contemporary Liberals have so closely reflected our founder’s values: especially the final exhortation in the original We Believe statement, that “under the blessing of Divine Providence…there is no task that Australia cannot perform and no difficulty that she cannot overcome”. The business of politics, Kevin believed, was to make life better for ordinary people – not through the heavy hand of big government – but by encouraging and enabling people to be their best selves, in their characters and in their communities, as well as to get ahead.
In every portfolio he held, he was a problem solver; because government’s job is to respond intelligently to the challenges of the day; and, in so doing, to nudge the country in a better direction. Kevin was one of those surprisingly rare ministers who sought to fix policy problems rather than neutralise political ones, and who understood that it was the elected and accountable minister who must drive the portfolio.
As aged care minister, his focus was getting allocated beds into operation and reducing the burden of paperwork on nursing home staff. As workplace relations minister, his focus was on creating a tough cop-on-the-beat to police the Wild West of the commercial construction industry. As immigration minister, his focus was to ensure that our migrants really did join Team Australia rather than simply live in Hotel Australia, via introducing the citizenship test. As minister for social services, he successfully tackled the exploding numbers on the disability pension, by requiring applicants to convince a government doctor, rather than just their own, that they really were incapable of working more than 15 hours a week. And as defence minister, Kevin’s mission was “peace through strength”, via deploying our armed forces anywhere in the world where they could be useful.
The replacement of our naval fleet, that Kevin authorised, as yet undelivered almost a decade later, is one of the most miserable consequences of our ministerial churn. It’s not Kevin’s fault that we still have over-regulated nursing homes; thuggish unions; poorly integrated migrant communities; an entrenched “something for nothing” welfare mindset; and a defence department that’s better at hounding our own than preparing to defeat the King’s enemies. It just means that government is the labour of Sisyphus: you are always striving to push the same boulders up the same hills.
But as so often in life, it’s not the work you’re given, but the work you choose, that’s the real test of character. Quite apart from doing his immediate job, Kevin was prepared to take stands on principle, where needed, and was not deterred by calculations of personal advancement.
The Andrews private member’s bill, one of just 14 private member’s bills ever to pass the parliament, blocked the Northern Territory’s then-law permitting doctors to give lethal injections to sick patients, and thus kept the scourge of medically-assisted suicide at bay for a further 25 years. As Kevin later said: back in 1996, when he’d first confided in Margie that he planned to introduce this bill, her response was that this alone justified his absences from home and her having to juggle five young children.
Then, late in 2009, Kevin stood as leader of the federal parliamentary Liberal Party. It was a cheeky move, designed to change the policy rather than to change the leadership, but it ended up doing both. His subsequent suggestion, that the issue of an emissions trading scheme be formally put to a party room vote – the only time in our history, I believe, that a policy has ever formally been voted upon, in the party room – crystallised and unified our opposition to carbon taxes in any form.
The Monash Forum, that Kevin started, along with Craig Kelly and me, to stress that the power system should exist to produce affordable and reliable electricity, rather than to reduce emissions, was a necessary if only partially-heeded voice against the energy insanity of these times. Much earlier, along with Chris Miles and Alan Cadman, Kevin had created the Lyons Forum, to push for a fair go for families with children, such as the family tax benefit part B, a form of income splitting, that the Howard government ultimately introduced. I remember saying to Kevin, at one of those meetings, that if we took the family as seriously in practice as we do in theory, none of us would be here in Canberra.
Being away so often certainly gnawed at Kevin, much as it sometimes upset Margie; yet for what it’s worth, I can’t think of any MP who surpassed Kevin as a husband and a father. And Margie has been a great partner, not just in Kevin’s parliamentary and electorate work, but also in the marriage guidance service that they both provided together to other couples over many years.
Indeed, while Kevin was only in his mid thirties when he joined the parliament, he’d already had a big life; as a barrister and Young Lawyer of the Year, and as a contributor to the community through service on Melbourne University’s Newman College council. There was nothing narrow or politically obsessive about Kevin. As a young man, he’d been a weekend race caller – and for some years one of the highlights of the Pollie Pedal charity bike ride was Kevin’s Melbourne Cup phantom race call. Another speciality was the love songs, that Kevin would sing on Pollie Pedal karaoke nights, usually while gazing intently at Margie, who was often impatiently attending to the logistics of the ride.
In a crowded public life, Kevin found time to write five books: on marriage, on cycling, and on Joe Lyons; one of them, titled One People, One Destiny, an early rebuke to identity politics. Just two weeks back, notwithstanding the ravages of the cancer diagnosed a year ago, Kevin published his final book: on his local Catholic Church. And on his last full day on Earth, not long after receiving a final anointing, he was emailing his publisher about his forthcoming memoirs. Kevin truly was one of those rare souls who “fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run”.
In reflecting on Kevin’s life of duty and service, each of us should examine our own conscience, and be even more resolved to tackle the integrity deficit that mars our public life.
Kevin was a man of state, in the mould of Thomas More and Edmund Burke; and a man of faith, in the tradition of John Henry Newman, and a lay activist in the tradition of B.A Santamaria; mighty saints of old whose honoured company he now keeps.
May God bless Kevin and may God bless Australia. And may his life inspire us all, to better serve our country and our God.