Page 2252 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 17 August 1993
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Madam Speaker, as members have said, Dr Kinloch was a very passionate man. He was a very enthusiastic man. He was also a man with great courage. Members of that First Assembly will recall that he frequently came into this place and, in the middle of sometimes very heated debates on matters of enormous differences of view, irreconcilable differences of view, stood in his place and urged members of the Assembly to sink their differences, to somehow find a bridge between the two impossibly different positions.
I know that I, and I am sure other members of the Assembly, felt, at least on occasions, that he was being impossibly naive, even foolish. But I think we should also acknowledge that Hector Kinloch passionately believed that it was his duty as a Christian to attempt to reconcile people, even in the lions' den of politics. His imploring of people to make that leap of faith was, for him, a very important part of his life, even though it might have been considered by most people to be entirely vain. I think that kind of courage, Madam Speaker, is something that we can remember, particularly those who worked with him, and I hope that his example of passionate espousal of causes in this community will be a model that we can all use at various times for the better service of our community.
MS SZUTY: Madam Speaker, I wish to speak briefly to this condolence motion today marking the death of former Assembly member Dr Hector Kinloch. The Chief Minister referred to Hector as the seventeenth member elected to the First Assembly. As members would appreciate, I was the seventeenth member elected to this Assembly, so I feel that we have something in common from that point of view.
I should say at the outset that I did not know Hector well. The encounter I had with him occurred during the school closures debate of 1991 when he was the Executive Deputy to the Minister for Education and the Arts, Mr Humphries, in the Alliance Government, as Mr Humphries has mentioned. I remember it being suggested to me at the time that it would be a good idea to phone Hector and make my views on impending school closures known to him. I did so and I encountered a very flustered Hector at the end of the line. He was not able to offer me any constructive suggestion as to how the Alliance Government's program of school closures could be halted. Given his position in the Alliance Government at the time, perhaps that is not surprising.
Madam Speaker, I was pleased to be invited to Hector's Quaker funeral on Saturday and I found it to be a very different and moving experience. Many people who attended the funeral took the opportunity to speak about the Hector Kinloch they had known. I learnt much about Hector from listening to the people who spoke at the funeral on Saturday. Most importantly, Madam Speaker, I am speaking today because, although I did not know Hector well, I believe that it is important for us as members of this Assembly to acknowledge the contribution to the life of self-government made by members of the First Legislative Assembly. As has been mentioned today, Hector Kinloch was an integral member of the First Assembly. I believe that it is important for us to pay tribute to him on the occasion of his death. I was heartened to see many members of this Assembly present at the funeral on Saturday and to hear both the Chief Minister, Ms Follett, and Mr Humphries talk about the Hector they had known and the contribution he had made to self-government in the ACT.
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