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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (28 June) . . Page.. 2109 ..
MR MOORE
(continuing):Our bodies are old as winter and would remain in winter.
So the old trees plead, clinging to the edge of darkness.
But round their roots the mintbush makes its buds ready
and the snake in hiding feels the sunlight's finger.
The snake, the fang of summer, beauty's double meaning,
shifts his slow coils and feels his springtime hunger.
Mr Speaker, I think, as with her poem, Judith Wright McKinney will be reborn and reborn for many of us in many ways.
MS TUCKER
: I join with other members in extending sympathy to the family and friends of Judith Wright in this condolence motion. As members have already explained, Judith Wright was born and brought up on a sheep station near Armidale in New England, New South Wales, and her memories of seeing land cleared for grazing were an early seed for her passionate defence of the environment that lasted right up until her death.In 1967 she wrote A Coral Battleground and she remained a staunch supporter of the Great Barrier Reef. She was patron of the Canberra and South East Region Environment Centre, which is where I first met her. Her views on the environment are summed up in her foreword to Going on Talking, written in November 1990:
...our environment is not only the source and support of all things natural and human, but of language itself. We are not separate from it and it is the base of all our speech and all our science.
Her other deep concern was with justice. This is a quote:
...justice for the people we have so deeply and so unforgivably wronged from the very beginning of our arrival here.
Judith was actively involved in Aboriginal issues. She worked tirelessly on many committees, including one chaired by Dr Nugget Coombs from 1979 to 1983, which led her to write We Call for a Treaty. Her fierce determination to be present at the March for Reconciliation-Corroboree 2000 was an example of her deep commitment to the Aboriginal cause. As Mrs Carnell has said, it was a very strong statement of commitment to see her there on that day because it was absolutely freezing and she was very pale. For me to see her there was such a symbol of courage, and I felt very proud to have someone as noble as she in our midst.
Judith will be warmly remembered and sorely missed by all who knew her, and many more who know and love her extraordinary poetry which has inspired and given pride to Australians for more than 50 years. It is through her own words that we can best appreciate this remarkable woman. In delivering the Sir John Morris Memorial Lecture on 17 November 1975 in Hobart, she said:
Our problems and limits are not ours alone, and our needs and requirements are only a small part of what the wider world demands that this country should provide. But we are at the point of decision where we can no longer afford to go on without a clear view of what our natural resources really are, how they should be managed and how we should plan to do this.
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