I’m privileged to be here and honoured to have been asked to speak. I acknowledge the traditional owners of this beautiful land and welcome Branch members current and past. I especially acknowledge former Premier Kristina Keneally and her husband former Hunters Hill Councillor Ben Keneally.
Just over 30 years ago, I joined the Australian Labor Party when we moved to live in Hunters Hill. This was my first Branch and in those days it used to meet in the Fairland Hall in Church Street. I recall coming to that first meeting with some uncertainty. It was a small branch but always achieved a quorum. Its members were an eclectic group. People like John Birch and Margaret Christie, Sue and Phil Daniels, Tas Bull, Geoff Grace and Margaret Duckett. They were technicians, teachers, health care workers, union officials and professionals but more memorably they were committed, practical and welcoming people.
It’s harder to travel back the 125 years to the start of the branch in 1891. The world, our nation and this district has changed so much. But I suppose those first Branch members would have been just as eclectic. Labourers, teachers, seafarers and professionals drawn to involvement in the Labour movement by qualities that we would still recognise today; commitment to social justice, a belief in community activism and a deep sympathy for the needs and aspirations of working people.
Fifty eight years after this branch was first established our great Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley described what characterized a Labor member. Speaking at the NSW Labor Party Conference in 1949 he described sitting at an ALP meeting of ten or fifteen members and discovering that sitting next to him was someone who had worked for the movement for 54 years, ‘….not hoping for any advantage…not hoping for any personal gain but because (he) believed in a movement that had been built up to bring better conditions to the people.’
Chifley could have been describing one of those original Hunters Hill Branch members or indeed many who have been members of this branch over the past century and a quarter.
We know that those first members would have been enthused over better educational opportunities for children and a wish to see better health care. They would have been united behind the right of working people to organise for better conditions. They would have been men and women who loved the environment of this place and campaigned for parks and bushland protection.
Amongst them you could have also seen the first stirrings of the suffragette movement, heard the early voices calling for the creation of a Federation and noticed those calling for true independence for that Federation from the habits and stultifying culture of the Old World.
But we have always been an imperfect party, so there were also the voices calling for the restrictive White Australia policy, there was the blindness towards our first people and there was bigotry and intolerance also lurking in the hearts of some of those first members. We have always represented the people of this nation in all their strength and creativity and their weaknesses too.
That speech by Chifley in 1949, given at the last Conference before that long unproductive Menzies ascendency, is familiar to us as the ‘Light on the Hill’ speech. In it the Prime Minister went on to describe the Labor Party as a movement, ‘…bringing something better to the people, better standards of living, greater happiness to the mass of people. We have a great objective-the light on the hill-which we aim to reach by working for the betterment of mankind, not only here but anywhere we can give a helping hand.’ It’s no Gettysburg Address but thankfully so, for Lincoln’s speech was born out of a nation’s death wish. Chifley’s speech was more domestic, practical and workmanlike but it still speaks to us across the decades.
Working for the betterment of mankind, giving a helping hand, these are the qualities that characterize our movement, our branches like Hunters Hill and our people like those of us assembled here and this gives us confidence for the future.
No matter how much we change as a nation, no matter what happens to the nature of work or the lifestyle choices of Australians there will always be that deep seated urge for Labor people to look out for others, to lend a helping hand to those in need and speak out against injustice. Those qualities have been evident in the campaigns and involvements of this branch in the time I have known it. The protection of Kelly’s Bush, the unsuccessful fight to save Woolwich Public School and the successful campaign to keep open Hunter’s Hill High School, retention of the independence of the Municipality, the fight to stop the Lane Cove Valley Expressway, protection of our local environment and the constant demand for improved services for local residents.
It’s tempting to wonder how those original members from 125 years ago would see us today. I presume they’d be nonplussed by the debate over marriage equality, mystified by the NBN and probably confused by our stance over asylum seekers. They would recognise however the desire for justice and fairness that drives our responses, the challenge of finding clarity amidst competing ideas and the need to argue a position in the wider community. They faced their own controversies and own difficult decisions.
Surely one characteristic where there would be common ground between us would be in our joint understanding of the value of activism and the need for effective political and electoral activity. Our work has always been more than debating in meeting halls. Hunters Hill Branch has always seen practical electoral endeavour as part of its responsibility, inheritance and character. We have always campaigned effectively within the Branch boundaries despite the social and political environment often being so unwelcoming. Our members have staffed street stalls in the summer heat, stood at polling booths in the cold and rain of winter campaigns and walked the Jacaranda blossom strewn streets letterboxing pamphlets beyond number. We have been abused, spat at and ordered off the peninsular but we have also been rewarded over the years with effective, talented and passionate men and women being elected to public office at local and state levels and in leadership roles within the Party. Several are here tonight.
When I joined the Branch, former Hunters Hill Councillor Rodney Cavalier was the local member and Minister having won the seat of Fuller in 1978 when the peninsular and West Lane Cove were part of that electorate. We had other elected representatives before Rodney and many since who have volunteered to take part in the contest of ideas and who, by representing our Branch and Party with enthusiasm, courage and creativity have been elected by their fellow citizens to public office.
In the 125 years since the Branch first assembled it has met in church halls, school classrooms, private homes and local libraries. You can imagine those generations of members striding purposefully to their Branch meeting, month after month, year in year out, from one election to the next. Coming together to debate resolutions, discuss the issues of the day and refine their arguments. There is something deeply civil and inherently valuable in that history of this Branch. It is a story that sustains us through difficult times and lends us hope for the future. One hundred and twenty five years of continual, spirited and passionate involvement in the life of this community; a century and a quarter of devotion to an ideal, of belief in a noble cause. Surely that is something in that for us all to celebrate and something of which we can be all proud.
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