This is the saddest first day back at school that I have ever experienced. It’s always a little bit of a downer, coming back and leaving your family to start the year, but the one silver lining is that you get to catch up with people you haven’t seen for some months. It’s people, like Jim, who are good natured, good humoured, that make this town bearable for half the year for us all. So it’s extremely sad not to see Jim here, this year, to catch up with him. It is very sad on a personal level to have lost him from this place, and it is sad for us as a nation as well to have lost his contribution, especially at these times.
Jim was a great Australian. He was the living embodiment of the best this country can be. He was a larrikin but always in a good-natured, good-humoured way. He was an authority figure. He was tall in stature and commanded a level of respect, but he was never subservient, either. He didn’t allow authority to dictate what he should do. And, most of all, he was just a mate to us all—a mate to everybody. He’d always have a kind word and a generous ear for anyone that came into this place or the House. He will be greatly missed.
Jim loved Australia, and Australia loved Jim too. He has a remarkable record at elections, despite not having won that many. I think he has received more votes at a personal level than probably anyone else in the parliament today. When he stood in an unwinnable position at the 2019 election, he ran a little bit of a campaign. It’s pretty hard to do in the Senate—to run a personal campaign—but he received over 137,000 personal votes, or below-the-line votes, as we call them. That’s a remarkable achievement. Most of us here are not here on the back of a personal following—all of us really. We’re here to represent a political party, and people vote overwhelmingly for that party. So we’re here as part of a team. But Jim was so well known and so loved by Australians that he was able to, as I say, achieve 137,000 votes. That’s more than anyone in the other place gets, either. They do get the personal votes, but even the most popular members of the House of Representatives would not achieve half of the vote tally that Jim did at that election.
Notwithstanding that support, he still wasn’t able to be elected, even on that remarkable backing. But we’re so glad that he did come back for a second stint, especially at the times we’ve faced. He really was the people’s senator, wasn’t he? He was a people’s senator because the people actually voted for Jim, unlike the rest of us. I do take some credit for helping Jim get here in the first place. He arrived on the back of the citizenship scandal of now over five years ago. As a suspected Italian at the time, I along with a few other people in this place helped to bring about the controversy that allowed Jim entry. Jim did get here on the unfortunate dismissal or removal of a fellow Nationals senator, so we were a little chagrined in the National Party that this upstart from the Liberal Party was coming to take one of our seats. But, after getting to know Jim very quickly, we still felt the loss of Fiona, but he was an ample replacement, especially for all the work I know he did in regional New South Wales.
When Jim first arrived here, I didn’t know Jim. I knew of Jim, particularly given his work on Operation Sovereign Borders, but I didn’t personally know him. He was one of the few senators to arrive in this place with a real baptism of fire, because for whatever reason the press gallery just had it out for him. They dragged up some retweets and Facebook posts. I looked it up before. I’d forgotten about it; everyone’s forgotten about it. It was such a silly controversy. But it was quite intense, as these things are, at that time. For a newly arrived senator it can be very, very intimidating. But I just remember it was water off a duck’s back to Jim. A few of us went up to see how he was going. As I said, I didn’t know him, but he never looked perturbed by it all under such intense pressure and glare. I suppose, after getting to know him, he was great in this place because he was able to disarm the press gallery with as much ease as disarming an unruly militia in a strife-worn town. They were nothing compared to what he had to deal with in his life, and a lot of us could take a leaf out of Jim’s book in not being intimidated by the respected ladies and gentlemen upstairs in the press gallery.
He very early established himself as a senior figure within this chamber. As many others have commented on, he contributed widely on a wide list of areas and policy imperatives for our nation.
As has been commented, Jim was a bit of a renaissance man. He was a soldier, but he was also a firefighter. He was a writer, a commentator, a father, a great family man, a great Australian. While he is most well known for his contributions on defence policy, I think it’s really important to note the unique perspective he brought to this most important area of concern for our country. I had long discussions with Jim about the need to reindustrialise this nation, or to at least avoid our deindustrialisation. Jim had a keen awareness that the ability to defend Australia does not begin and end with the men and women in khaki. It is probably more going to come down to our business men and women and our workers in high-vis who can make the things that would allow those men and women in khaki to ultimately defend our nation if the worst happens. Because he had such a wide range of life experiences, he was able to somewhat transcend the often narrow and at times self-interested agendas of the defence establishment in our nation. He wasn’t always looking at ships and guns and submarines and tanks, of course. Although he did make major contributions on those issues, he was also able to look beyond that and see the need for our country to actually have an industry and to have a strong economy that could help defend this great nation of ours.
If there’s anything that we can remember Jim for, it would be to take that wider lens on these issues: do not operate in silos and think that just because we’ve got the latest defence procurement plan ready and done we will be okay. We do need to take Jim’s approach to these issues and look at the broader risks and problems for our country.
He, of course, was an early harbinger of the challenge that we face with the rise of China in our region. I think Jim’s views here on those risks have been the most impactful, because they’re widely accepted. But it should be recalled that, when Jim started raising this issue of China, at the time Australia was signing a free trade agreement with the Chinese government. We had had almost four decades of uninterrupted improvements in Australian-Chinese relationships, and Jim belled the alarm more quickly than most about the fact that this relationship had the potential to go awry very quickly.
We’ve all seen over the weekend a big balloon flying over the continental United States, reminding us all of the wisdom of Jim’s approach. I hope that we do not ignore Jim, even though he is not in this place any longer, about the need to maintain a very clear-sighted view of the behaviours, interests and agendas of the Chinese Communist Party in our region, and not be sucked into doing business with a country that cannot be trusted. The way for us to avoid that is to take up Jim’s challenge of reinvesting back in our country, in our defences and in our economy. The best way we can honour Jim is to continue to live by his example of loving this country, and loving it so much that we will do anything to defend it.
I am confident that while Jim physically has gone from this place, his ideas, influence and legacy will long shadow over our debates. I often look up through that little glass window up there, when I’m sitting in the chamber, contemplating my life choices—hopefully I won’t look up and see a balloon anytime soon!—but I will look up now and think of Jim and do everything I can to live by his example in doing the best by our great country of Australia.
My full condolences go to Jim’s wonderful family. It was a beautiful service last week. That will be his best legacy: a wonderful and loving family. It’s great that so many of you can be here today. To Anne, his children and grandchildren, all my condolences. Vale, Jim Molan.
