Page 3772 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 8 November 1994
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MR STEVENSON: Gus was a remarkable individual. As we all know, he campaigned long and hard for many issues. Many a time I have been at the restaurant talking to him about what he was doing and about what was happening in Canberra. One of the issues in which he believed fervently was that people should be able to decide what drugs they want to take. He was opposed to compulsory fluoridation. It is a mark of the man that he spent so much of his own money getting a message across in advertisements in the Canberra Times - things that he felt needed to be said, but could not be said in another way. As we know, he stood for this Assembly. Had he been elected, his courage, his compassion and his humour would have been valuable for the people of Canberra. He did a lot to make the heart of Canberra - Garema Place and its surrounds - more vital. I trust that his passing, while it may be sad, will inspire others to work for what he worked for: Enterprise that is truly free, and rights that are genuine.
MR STEFANIAK: The Liberal Party joins with the Government and all members in paying tribute to Gus Petersilka, a most remarkable individual. On 23 October 1994 Gus died of cancer, which had been diagnosed only some four months previously. He was born in 1918 in Vienna, Austria. His mother was Catholic; his father was Jewish. He would often say to both my legal colleague Bernard Collaery and me, as he used our firm as his solicitors, "It is the Jewish in me which tells me to be a landlord, and the Catholic which tells me to be a tenant". Gus would say that the Catholic won out. He certainly became a champion of tenants' rights and a pioneer in terms of outdoor entertainment in Canberra.
As the Chief Minister has indicated, he was in Austria during the war. He and his family were involved with the Austrian Socialist Party. He narrowly avoided being killed when he was shot at in 1934, when he was taking bread to that party during the 1934 putsch. He spent World War II in a Nazi labour camp, from which he escaped disguised as a French prisoner of war. He managed to live in the countryside until the end of the war. He migrated to Australia. He came to Canberra in 1962. After the jobs that the Chief Minister mentioned, he started his first experiment in the Viennese-style coffee house and shop at Thetis Court. That was where I first met him, when I was a student at Narrabundah High School. In that experiment, he challenged the Australian milk bar tradition that had been the only type of entertainment that one had in Canberra until then.
Gus went through various jobs and businesses until he went to his famous Cafe Gus's on Bunda Street. He had a lot of fights with bureaucrats there. One morning he found that his tables and chairs had been taken away on the back of a Department of the Interior truck. As a result of the public outcry, those tables and chairs were returned. Gus had a sign there which I can recall, being a frequent visitor to his cafe: "Do it now; tomorrow there may be a law against it". Gus had a number of battles with bureaucrats. Whilst he was from Europe, he was no eurocentric at all. The only people that he seemed to have problems with were bureaucrats and lawyers.
In 1974 he had further problems with the department in relation to some awnings and some poles which did not have the correct approval. Again, the department did a raid; this time, I understand, a pre-dawn raid. Again, there was an outcry; and those goods were returned. It is interesting that in 1978 Gus was duly rewarded for his great efforts
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