Page 3000 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 17 October 2007
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
management skills over a period of many years. Jim also chaired Calvary Hospital’s audit committee for almost a decade, again providing his services without financial reward.
As an honorary auditor, he dedicated yet more of his time to the Royal Life Saving Society of Australia, the ACT Organ Donation Awareness Foundation, the Catholic Women’s League, Swim Safe, the retired priests fund and St Christopher’s parish. His expert advice and practical assistance helped all of these organisations conduct their affairs on the basis of sound financial and administrative guidance, freeing them to focus on their missions of charity, care and community service. Demonstrating a seemingly limitless capacity for selfless support of others, Jim somehow found time to volunteer at the ACT hospice, where his charisma and spirit of fellowship and friendliness provided tremendous comfort to the terminally ill and their families.
In 2006, Jim O’Neill was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for service to the community of Canberra as an honorary auditor and financial adviser—a thoroughly deserved and appropriate recognition of his extraordinary work. We have lost a passionate and committed Canberran whose unstinting and altruistic contribution to community service and public service was truly remarkable. He is remembered as a person of great learning, humility and humanity.
On behalf of the government, I offer my heartfelt condolences to Jim’s wife, Elaine, his children, John, Mark and Haydn, and his extended family and friends.
MR STEFANIAK (Ginninderra—Leader of the Opposition): Jim O’Neill was born in 1931 in Sydney and he grew up in Sydney. I think he went to St Pat’s in Fairfield, where he graduated in 1947. In those times nearly everyone just left school and went on to work. Jim was one of the best students in the school—an exemplary student there. He excelled even in those early days with mathematics, with figures. It was also going to serve him in good stead not only as an auditor but in one of his other great passions, which was having a flutter on the horses and a bit of a gamble.
Jim got top marks when he left school and his school report card reflected what a great student he was. He was a great participant in other things, so it was interesting to note that his principal recorded that he participated in all sports but did not excel in any. He was to find his niche, of course, through his love of figures, his appetite for numbers, and he went off and worked initially, I think, with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
In 1951, at 20 years of age, Jim decided on a career change. He wanted to be a pilot and he joined the Royal Australian Air Force and served for some 20 years in the Royal Australian Air Force, finally retiring with the rank of squadron leader. Jim met his wife, Elaine, and had a unique way of impressing her, which led to Elaine accepting his hand in marriage: Jim borrowed a plane from the airfield and buzzed Elaine’s parents’ property—fairly low actually. It certainly impressed his wife to be. It did not particularly impress his father-in-law, and the cows were dry for a couple of days after that. So it was not perhaps the best start with the in-laws, but certainly it was quite impressive and Elaine and Jim married. They celebrated many, many happy years of marriage, and of course the children followed.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .