Page 3769 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 8 November 1994
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MRS CARNELL (Leader of the Opposition): The Liberal Party shares and very much supports the comments made by the Chief Minister and passes on our condolences to the family of a really great Australian, Peter Wilenski. The Chief Minister has well outlined already what was a truly unbelievable career. One of the issues that possibly need to be raised again is Peter Wilenski's absolute passion for change and for looking at ways to do things better in the public service. Before his couple of years with the Whitlam Government, he regularly met with other people of like mind to think of and look at ways to improve the public service, particularly ways in which the public service could be managed better. At that stage he was looking at ways of devolution of management, of management by results, a long time before that sort of philosophy was terribly well looked at.
In his report, Directions For Change - absolutely essential reading for everybody in government, I am sure - he made some very important comments about less bureaucracy, less government secrecy, merit based employment, and community participation in government, which is something that I am sure that certainly this side of the house would share. He talked about taking services to where people need them most - decentralising. He talked about external scrutiny of how efficiently public servants do their jobs. Again, those are issues that are very important to every parliament today.
Certainly, there were times when Peter Wilenski was not the favourite son of Liberal governments, but I think everybody shares a huge amount of respect for somebody who was a great Australian. Everybody in public life should share a number of the views that he put forward in some of the very great papers that he wrote. I got to know Peter Wilenski in a more professional role only very late in his life, but he was always a very polite and very interesting man to speak to. He was very interested in the ACT and in the directions that we were taking with our fledgling self-government. The Liberal Party very firmly supports the motion before the Assembly today.
MS SZUTY: It is with regret that I rise to speak briefly to this motion of condolence on behalf of my colleague Mr Moore and on my own behalf. Peter Wilenski was a distinguished Australian, a true intellectual who had a profound impact on public administration and who made major contributions in the academic arena. His untimely death leaves me wondering what more he may have achieved if his life had not been cut short at the age of 55. Peter Wilenski was a man about whom much has been and will be said. His obituaries in the major daily newspapers last Friday, and his major entry in Who's Who, are testimony to his achievements.
It is not possible, in the brief time at my disposal, to do justice to Dr Wilenski's life; so, I shall touch on just a few key points. Peter Wilenski was born in Poland in 1939 and arrived in Australia in 1943 after his family fled Poland during World War II. He excelled at school and went on to study medicine at the University of Sydney. While studying, he developed a keen interest in student politics, being a member and eventually president of the Students Representative Council. He was deeply involved in the issues of the day and took a leading role in opposing the apartheid policies of South Africa. His commitment to student participation at the University of Sydney saw him advocating student representation on the University Senate and eventually becoming, I believe, the first student representative on that body. He continued to contribute on the Sydney University Senate from 1975 to 1989, and again from 1993 until his death.
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