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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (20 November) . . Page.. 3836 ..

MR HIRD (continuing):

seeing action in New Guinea and the Philippines. He returned to Australia in 1946. The family settled in Canberra, where Bill joined the Commonwealth Public Service, from which he retired in 1972. Most of his Public Service career was with the Department of External Affairs.

T.W.W. (Bill) Pye was a great Canberran, a great Australian, a great family man, a wonderful father and grandfather, and a compassionate human being. He will be remembered with admiration, respect and affection. Canberra is worse off for his going. Therefore, I have moved that this parliament place on record his outstanding contribution to our community and offer its condolences to his wife, Betty, and his family, to which he was so devoted.

MS FOLLETT: The Opposition joins with Mr Hird in this motion of condolence. Mr Pye was an outstanding Canberran and an absolute adornment to our community. He had a very long and very productive life and served his community extraordinarily well. Like many public servants in this town and others, Mr Pye took Canberra to his heart and never ever missed an opportunity to contribute in a voluntary capacity to the wellbeing of his community. I think many of the organisations that Mr Pye was involved in owe their success, their very being, to his work. He had an extraordinary breadth of interests. I know that he was involved in parents and citizens councils for local schools and a number of charitable organisations and church organisations. He was also - and this was very significant in Canberra - heavily involved in assisting migrants when they first came to this community. That was a job that needed doing very much when Mr Pye was active in it; and it still needs doing. I think the fact that he was able to recognise that need and throw his talents and his energies into meeting the need is very much to his credit and made a great contribution to the wellbeing of his community.

Mr Pye served in the pre-self-government Assembly and the House of Assembly. I am sorry to say that his service and mine did not coincide. Nevertheless, even though he was not a member of the Assembly at the time that I was, he was a very frequent visitor and an absolutely committed follower of the business of that Assembly. The reason was his vital interest in his own community, his willingness to help and his ability to right wrongs that he saw occurring around him and to take a full and active part not just in the political life but also in the social life of his community and in all kinds of human rights activities within the ACT.

Mr Speaker, I knew Mr Pye because of his closeness to the pre-self-government Assembly and because we discussed issues relating to Canberra - whether it was heritage issues, migrant settlement issues or other social justice issues. We discussed those frequently. Mr Pye was never backward in coming forward, as they say. He had an opinion on everything and it was always worth listening to. Many members will also know that he was an inveterate writer to the Canberra Times. He used that tool, I thought, to great effect and wrote a very good letter indeed. Just as his opinions were always worth listening to, his letters were always worth reading. What is even more extraordinary is that he got them published. I find that an exceptional achievement.

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