Page 700 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 1 May 2007
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husband, Chris; her daughter, Clair; Clair’s father, Andrew; and all of her extended family.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo): It is with great sadness that I rise today to add my words to the tidal wave of grief experienced by the family, friends and colleagues of Audrey Fagan in response to her death just over a week ago. I extend my and the Greens’ deepest sympathy for the difficult time that everyone who knew Audrey must be having. While I am just a distant colleague of Audrey, her death has profoundly affected me, as it has so many in this community.
Let me say first that I was probably one of the last people to take on the notion that Audrey could have died by her own hand. I advised everyone who talked of it as suicide to desist from hasty judgment. This was because suicide was not in character with the person that I saw out and about and the person that I had sat down with earlier this year for a full and frank briefing about some of the Greens’ concerns about ACT Policing. “Wait for the autopsy,” I said, certain that the cause of death must be a sudden health problem.
I did not allow myself to believe that it could be suicide until I read the obituary in last Friday’s Sydney Morning Herald. I admit that this was wilful ignorance of a kind. That says something in itself about my attitude and, possibly, public attitudes to such deaths. It also speaks of the skill with which Audrey Fagan wore her public persona.
This death affected the community on a number of levels. While her death may have been an answer of some kind to Audrey’s concerns, for the rest of us it raised more questions than answers. I hope that this is an appropriate place and time to consider some of these.
First, there is the individual in the context of her friends and family. At the funeral on Friday I learned much about Audrey as a person. Friends and colleagues spoke freely about her competence, her fun-loving nature and her desire to make a positive contribution through her roles as assistant commissioner in the AFP and Chief Police Officer of the ACT. The photographs in the booklet detailing order of service show a mischievous and highly attractive person, most especially when her daughter shares the photo. Few of us knew this Audrey, whose face was always carefully in role, with that wonderful smile lighting it up. Now we have to ask: was that smile always deeply felt?
Secondly, there is the person who operated in the day-to-day hierarchies of the AFP and ACT Policing. I can picture the myriad of people with whom Audrey must deal with in her jobs. Then there was the ACT government, through both the Attorney-General and the minister for policing, only recently embodied in the same person. By all accounts, we are talking about an exemplary police officer. One colleague described Audrey as her own hardest taskmaster and a woman of the utmost personal integrity.
Thirdly, there is the person in politics, for the roles of assistant commissioner and Chief Police Officer in the ACT are inherently political as they involve dealing with people at all levels, making decisions which will satisfy some and disappoint others. At times the responsibility would be awesome, perhaps frightening. People feel free to
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