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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 2 Hansard (25 February) . . Page.. 357 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

There are very few individuals that come from the beginning that Norm did and are then as able to be as bending, as adaptable and as embracing of change as Norm was. We have to remember where Norm came from. I have met plenty of men his age - and plenty of women, to be fair - who were simply unable, in their late forties, to deal with the sorts of changes that Norm was confronted with. EEO was one of them. He was incredibly enthusiastic and supportive and strong about the need to bring in women, to bring in people with disabilities, to bring in people of diverse backgrounds. He understood. He did not do it just because the law required him to. He understood that need for adaptability, and embraced it and made sure that it happened at every level of his responsibilities.

It was that transference of professional requirements through an adaptation that came from his heart that made all the difference to his manner of leadership from that of a lot of others. EEO was one of them, but commercialism was another. It is totally against the grain for people from his background that I have met in other quarters; but Norm was able to see that you could not fight the commercialism of TAFE, that you had to embrace the market, that you had to go out and sell. And he did. He did it, against enormous resistance, fear and concern. He turned people's hearts and heads around until, eventually, they are now boldly facing the future, able to sell their services, able to be proud of who they are, and not reliant on being told what to do. That came through his capacity to adapt, to learn from life and to change, and to change others with him.

He also embraced cost-cutting. I lived through those years when the community sector, the community, everyone, suffered from the changes that the Commonwealth had insisted happen. Self-government did come at a price. We all knew that it came at a price. It came at the price of Canberra managing itself. That required leaders like Norm to look at those implications and put them into effect, and he did. He embraced it with honesty, with thoroughness, with all the professional qualities that I have talked about, and eventually made people understand that it was not some dark satanic plot that was imposing cost-cutting on people, but it was a necessary measure of contemporary life, and it came at a price. Costs went up, fees had to be imposed, courses were dropped. There were a lot of unpopular decisions that Norm, through his board and with his staff, had to make. But Norm understood. It was this quality of adaptability that he brought to those decisions - which is a remarkable quality in a person - along with his professionalism, but, most of all, his enthusiasm. As I have said, to me, that enthusiasm came from a deep honesty in Norm. His honesty was that he understood exactly where he had come from and what remarkable experiences life had offered him. He enjoyed every minute of them. It was this legacy most of all - the combination of this enthusiasm and the other two qualities - that made him a remarkable human being.

He never apologised for who he was or who he had been; he proudly took on every one of his achievements. He was able to share those achievements with others, but he never walked away from who he had been. There are very few people who come from his background, who rise to his heights, who do not, at some point, turn their back on who they once were. I believe that it was this honesty and sheer delight in what life had to offer that transfused everything that he did and made us aware, collectively - all who worked and dealt with him - of what remarkable things life does offer and how often we close doors by not being awake to what is there in front of us.

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