Senator Andrew Murray
Portfolio: Arts & Sport
| Dated: 1 Mar 2004
Location: Parliament House - Canberra
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Senator Andrew Murray speaks on the Adjournment: Ms Shirely Strickland de la Hunty |
Senator MURRAY (Western Australia) (10.00 p.m.) I wish to pay tribute to a truly remarkable Australian, a woman who contributed so much to this country in a wide variety of fields. I am indebted to Jack Evans for some of the research for this speech. Shirley Strickland de la Hunty was mainly recognised nationally and internationally in just one of these fieldssportbut, in Western Australia, she was recognised for achievements in many more fields. I must confess to being surprised by the media coverage of Shirley's death last month. It was substantial, as she deserved, but large sections of her life were left out. Shirley's achievements were truly Olympian, but she was also a renaissance woman with not just an array of extraordinary talents but the application to realise them. Learned, cultured and an activist, she was far more than an outstanding athlete. Her big themes in life included learning and teaching, human rights and social justice, community activism, politics, strong environmentalism, and family and friends as well as athletics and sport. She worked hard at, and achieved much in, all these fields.
Shirley Strickland de la Hunty was born in Western Australia and raised on a farm in the wheat belt. Bright and ambitious, Shirley won a place as a boarder at high school with a state scholarship. Living away from home at the CWA hostel, she became a top-ranking student, a prefect and a star on the school sports fields. Her athletic prowess at Northam High School made her a popular member of the athletics and hockey teams but, at that stage, sport did not dominate her life, and Shirley had set her mind on going to university. She had drive and determination and gained high marks in her chosen subjects. She graduated with results that enabled her to choose her own path at university.
With a pioneering spirit, inherited perhaps from her father, Shirley was determined to break down the barriers that kept women from entry to many male-dominated careersand she did. With her science degree in hand, she went on to study in the embryonic field of nuclear physics for her honours degree, which she passed with flying colours. Then the passion for sportathletics and hockeytook hold again and she trained seriously, so seriously that she was chosen to represent Australia in four successive Olympic teams. Altogether, she won seven Olympic medals, more than any other Australian athletethree gold, one silver and three bronze.
In 1948 in London she won bronze medals in the 100 metres and the 80 metres hurdles and a silver medal in the 4 x 100 metres relay event. In 1952 in Helsinki she won the bronze medal in the 100 metres and gold in the 80 metres hurdles. In 1956 in Melbourne she was made the athletics team's captain. She went on to again win gold in the 80 metres hurdles and to become the first woman to successfully defend an Olympic title. She also won gold in the 4 x 100 metres relay. She was given the honour of being a torchbearer and television commentator for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Her dedication to training was matched by her input to sports coaching and administration in her own sports and in sport generally. While she was very proud of her achievements in athletics, she made a crunch decision three years ago to sell all her Olympic medals and gave the proceedssome $400,000to her children and to her beloved environmental causes. At the same time as she was devoting time to training, she went on to lecture in maths at Perth Technical College and then at the Claremont College of Advanced Education, now renamed Edith Cowan University. Shirley was later awarded an honorary fellowship by the university in 1991 and subsequently was made an honorary Doctor of Philosophy in 2001. But there were other overwhelming concerns pulling her into public life.
As an ardent environmentalist, Shirley invested much of her time working to protect and save our environmentour rivers, our seabeds, our farm lands, our native forests and many other heritage areas and buildings. She was a leader in the environmental movement in Western Australia and often found herself leading the conservationists against the conservatives. Conservatives of the right and left, strongly supported by big business interests and many rural industry groups and unions, fought vigorously to retain their rights to log old-growth forests, convert Western Australia's unique trees into woodchips and continue farming in marginal areas, which only turned them into saltpans. Shirley battled with them at every level. Her energies and time also encompassed the protection of the Western Australian river systems, including our beautiful Swan River which, at one stageuntil the environmentalists' campaign to save itwas dying from neglect. Thanks to the conservation and environment groups to which Shirley dedicated herself, these river systems and their surrounds are now being protected, although there is still much to be done.
Coming from an endangered farming area, Shirley recognised the colossal damage to Australia's rural areas from the encroaching saltbeds, and she worked with others to persuade governments and farming bodies to remedy the causes of this devastation. Her belief in the importance of preserving Australia's heritage put her in close touch with Indigenous peoples and made her even more conscious of their loss of rights to land, culture, language and the societal rights which non-Indigenous Australians take for granted in health, education, employment, housing and so on. She believed very strongly in the need for all Australians to embrace the concept of reconciliation between the Indigenous and the non-Indigenous people in this land of ours.
I think it was Shirley's recognition of the lack of social justice from which so many Australians suffer that made her decide to go into politicsfederal, state and localto remedy this. She and her husband Laurie were involved in the formation of the Australian Democrats in 1977 and worked together to build the new party, serving as state president and holding other offices over two decades. She contested many federal and state elections, and her name appeared on many Democrat tickets. Because of family and other commitments, Shirley decided that distant Canberra was not for heralthough I know she would have made a terrific contribution in this placeso she allowed her name to be listed as the No. 2 candidate to support Australian Democrats on Senate tickets for five elections. In one of these, she helped former Senator Jack Evans to win a Senate seat, and she did the same for me in 1996. She was kind and good to me, and I valued her support and advice.
She decided that there was a level of politics in which she could become directly involved from her homethat is, local governmentand she worked assiduously to break into this. She won a seat as a councillor for the City of Melville and stirred the pot to the discomfort of some but gained the admiration of many of the ratepayers she represented. I remember her telling me how hard the developers fought to knock her out of the situation when she questioned both their motives and their methods.
Her family life was considerable in its depth and richness. Shirley and her husband, Laurie, successfully raised four children: Phillip, Barbara, Matthew and David. When Laurie died suddenly, Shirley was left with the responsibility of raising the children. The family were fortunate to have a close extended family to help. In particular, Shirley's mother, Violet Strickland, lived with them and they cared for each other for over 30 years until Violet passed away at the grand age of 101. There were 13 adored grandchildren, and they brought great joy into all their lives as they thrived on the loving environment of their Applecross home in Perth, which was always open to the many friends and colleagues of all the family and to the many causes the people brought to her door.
This rich blend of family, civic, sports and community life made for the very full life of this person who had much to give and who used her many talents contributing to the advancement of her country, which she represented with distinction in so many fields. I pay tribute to the memory of this remarkable woman who gave so generously of herself, her time, her knowledge, her resources and her spirit. She was a very proud Western Australian, and a very proud Australian, of whom this nation is justifiably proud.
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