Page 1846 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 17 June 2008
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the task of setting the annual level of rates in consultation with the city manager. As master of revenue, Trevor Kaine had a significant interest in and influence over spending on municipal services. One of his fellow MLAs confessed:
Let’s face it. The department, the Assembly staff, and all Assembly members have benefited considerably from his Kainesian economic lessons that he has tended to give us from time to time.
He was popular with his colleagues on both sides of the political fence, even though he was often a leading voice of fiscal realism.
Near the end of his first parliamentary term, he was seconded to work in Washington DC for the Australian Embassy, where he was a representative of the Royal Australian Air Force. As a champion of self-government of the ACT, it was ironic and very useful that he should have the opportunity to closely observe the operations of another federal capital city which had already received self-government.
Prior to his departure for Washington, his colleagues observed in Hansard that they expected him to return at a later date to seek fresh election back into the Assembly. Despite their expectation that he would not be long gone, they did him the honour of giving him the first parliamentary valedictory at the end of his first term in the Assembly, the first of what was to be a six-term career. One of his non-Liberal colleagues, Ivor Vivian, observed:
When we were elected for three years, a stranger came among us whom some of us viewed as a man of principle … it is the view of all members of this Assembly that that person, Trevor Kaine, is still a man of principle.
Another colleague, Peter Vallee observed:
His research and background work … has added to our debates … When he has disagreed with me he has been completely wrong in his conclusions. He has nevertheless … gone about it by the right method … I have always regarded him as one of the fiercest of members … He … has been generally popular with other members and perhaps more so with us on this side of the table sometimes, than with those closer to him because after all we do not argue with him as often as perhaps they do.
After his return from America he was re-elected to the Assembly in 1982, and after self-government commenced in 1989, Trevor was the natural choice for the first parliamentary leader of the Liberal Party in the new Legislative Assembly.
Trevor Kaine has gone down in the history books as the second Chief Minister after the commencement of self-government. It should be acknowledged in this place that he came close to claiming the accolade of being the first Chief Minister. Gary Humphries recently recounted that story in his eulogy at Trevor’s state funeral, and it is also worth recording that account in the records of this place for posterity.
On 11 May 1989, there was a meeting between Liberal MLAs and other non-Labor MLAs to consider whether there was a viable alternative to a motion to appoint the Labor government at the first sitting of the Legislative Assembly. Dennis Stevenson
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