Parliamentary Speeches
Death of Adrian John Cruickshank, a Former Member of the Legislative Assembly ( 09/06/2010)
Mr DONALD PAGE (Ballina) [11.06 a.m.]: I support the condolence motion for Adrian Cruikshank and offer my condolences to his family. I served with Adrian for 11 years between 1988 and 1999. I want to share a few recollections of my experiences with Adrian. My first memory of Adrian is in a National Party room meeting after the Government had assembled in 1988 when then Deputy Premier Ian Armstrong and Minister for Agriculture made a routine announcement about the Egg Marketing Board. Adrian met this announcement with a withering attack on the Egg Marketing Board and the Deputy Premier. At the time Adrian was supporting Mr Galea, an independent egg producer who wanted nothing to do with the Egg Marketing Board. Adrian was vigorous outside the party room, but he was vigorous inside as well. Although we do not talk about what happens in the party room, as this occurred 22 years ago I am sure I can be given some latitude. As a new member, I was shocked to see Adrian's fearless passion and courageous expression of views in front of his Deputy Leader. That was one of many exchanges between those two gentlemen over the issue of orderly marketing. Adrian was a fearless and courageous advocate for the free market and that was in a Country Party room where a certain degree of agrarian socialism was tolerated.
I remember another time later in his career that showed Adrian's level of commitment to his beliefs. A canned fruit factory in Leeton was struggling financially and the easiest course for the Government was to give the business a subsidy to enable it to keep going. Adrian was intellectually very honest—it was one of his great attributes—and, to his intellectual credit, he said to the Government, "No, we do not want the subsidy. If they cannot cut it in the private sector they cannot cut it." Not many members of Parliament have got the courage to say that about a business in their own electorate when they know the political ramifications of doing so would be significant. But he had intellectual honesty and he had consistency in the way he thought about things.
My second main recollection of Adrian was when we were both appointed to an inquiry into the Flemington markets. Adrian was Chair and he had a very deep interest in how the markets operated. I was the Deputy Chair. As we have heard from other speakers, Adrian believed in free-marketing arrangements but he thought that the farmers were not getting a very good deal and that the agents were getting too good a deal at the farmers' expense. Typically a witness would come before the inquiry and Adrian would be in the chair and he would conduct a Perry Mason style forensic examination of the witness, particularly if he was antagonistic towards the witness.
I can recall quite distinctly on a couple of occasions, having completed his interrogation and being totally unhappy with the response that a witness had given, he tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Can you come into the chair because I want to appear as a witness?" I went into the chair and I would ask him a question. We had a few debates about whether that was within the parliamentary inquiry rules. Peter Nagle, a barrister, was also on the committee and, of course, he thought it was most inappropriate that the Chair should suddenly want to leave the chair and get into the witness box and have his say in response to what a witness had just said. But that was exactly what happened. We found that there was nothing unparliamentary about it, that members of Parliament are entitled to appear before parliamentary inquiries, and Adrian did that on a few occasions. It was an indication of the way he thought: there was an opportunity to get his view across to the committee and to get it on the record, because all public inquiries are recorded by Hansard.
My third recollection of Adrian was in 1995 when I became the shadow Minister for Land and Water Conservation. He invited me to a branch meeting in Griffith. Shadow Ministers often get invited to branch meetings. I arrived at the function that night about seven o'clock at a fairly big club. There were a lot of people there and I thought there must be something happening there that night because it did not look like a National Party branch meeting. I thought I would wander around and find out where the branch meeting was, because I was expecting about 20 people to be in attendance. I bumped into Adrian and said, "Gee, there are a lot of people here tonight. What's going on?" He said, "This is our branch meeting." There were 400 men and women dressed up in suits and what have you who were at the club for a dinner and Adrian had invited them to go and hear the shadow Minister for Land and Water Conservation talk mainly about water.
Mr Richard Amery: You call us branch stackers!
Mr DONALD PAGE: It is a measure of the popularity of the guy that he was able to have 400 people come and listen to a new shadow Minister. I remember feeling a little bit apprehensive about it because it was not what I expected, although I had prepared to some extent. Adrian decided to introduce me in Italian. I had no idea whether he was telling them that I was a good bloke or a dud because I do not speak Italian. But they clapped after the introduction so I assumed that he must have said something nice about me. I asked him for suggestions about what to say to them. He said, "Tell them a joke to start with and then start talking about water. They will hang off every word because water is a big issue here." It was an interesting night.
The next day we went out in Adrian's car to have a look at a couple of farms. I do not know if any other people here have had experience with Adrian Cruickshank as a driver but there are two people who, after my first experience, I would never go in a car with again if they were driving, and that was Adrian Cruickshank and Bill Rixon. In my opinion they were seriously dangerous drivers. Adrian would talk and point things out and the car would go off to the side of the road and he would have to steer it back onto the road. That is one of my vivid recollections about Adrian.
Other members have spoken about the extra dimension that Adrian had to his life apart from what he did here in Parliament. He was a miner and a prospector in Africa and worked in the Department of External Affairs, as it was called then, both in Canberra and Saigon. Quite often when you went into his room he would have the television switched on to Foxtel or overseas channels and he would be listening to something in a different language, which is not very common, and he would be understanding what they were saying. He was certainly a different man, and I endorse the comments made by the current member for Murrumbidgee about the added dimension of Adrian Cruickshank in that after he retired from this place, when most of us would just want to go away and have a nice quiet life, he went to Togo and assisted the local population over there with all the work that he did.
Adrian Cruickshank was certainly a skilful, a colourful and a dedicated political representative. He was a passionate man who fought hard for the causes in which he believed. As I said, he was intellectually honest and he was a man of compassion. We have lost a former colleague, the family have lost a respected and loved member and our State and country has lost a passionate advocate for smaller government. He was a gifted and generous man. He may be gone but he is not forgotten.
