Page 4244 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 20 November 1990
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When he was Chief Planner, of course, he had special tools available to him in the powers of the NCDC and the leasehold system, and he never lost sight of the importance of the leasehold system. That is something that he emphasised again and again in recent days. The knowledge of Peter Harrison in planning matters was encyclopaedic. Bruce Wright, who is a corporate relations adviser to the NCPA, writing in the Canberra Times, said:
All his teaching and advice was based on his confidence about the principles of planning in the community interest; his demand for commonsense solutions which responded to people's needs.
Peter Harrison was indeed a man of the people. In the funeral oration in St John,s Church, Reid, on the Friday after his death, Professor Max Neutze, himself an eminent academic in the planning field, commented that the best tribute to Peter Harrison is not just Canberra as it is but the best parts of Canberra.
With that in mind, a suggestion was made to me by Terry Connolly shortly after Peter Harrison's death that we should name one of the early suburbs in Gungahlin, perhaps one of the better suburbs, Harrison. It is a matter that I have discussed with a number of members on both sides of the house and it has received a favourable response. The advice I have had from the section in the department that looks after this is that there is no bar to that in particular. I would certainly hope that the Chief Minister, who makes the decision, is very receptive to that suggestion.
Apart from being a planner, Peter Harrison was not only a wonderful friend but also a wonderful human. He was different from other people in lots of ways. One of the images that I have of Peter Harrison is of him taking his two dogs, Patch and Lally, for a walk. He did not do it as other people do it; he put the two on leads and he would sit on his bike while they towed him for several kilometres - about 10 kilometres, I understand - around the suburbs and around the Canberra that he liked best.
One of the things that always amused me, and amused my children, was seeing this 70-year-old-plus man, cigarette in his mouth - he never did give up smoking - being towed along by two mongrels. He had a thing against purebred dogs and thought a mongrel was so much better. Perhaps that reflected his attitude to ordinary people.
One of the other things about Peter Harrison was his empathy with children. He had no children himself and I watched him with my three children. I guess I sometimes go for the word "grandfatherly", but perhaps the sort of role that Peter Harrison played was that of a great-uncle. He was at that time at his softest and at his gentlest.
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