Page 1358 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 27 March 2012
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Remembrance Day services at the memorial, with her close friend, Alison Aitken.
Mrs Howse was born in Melbourne in 1918. She was born not long after her mother, Doris, returned from Cairo, where she had visited her husband, who was serving as a doctor with the Australian Army in the Middle East. On the return voyage to Australia, the boat on which Doris was travelling hit a German mine. Doris, pregnant with Valerie, took to a lifeboat and was rescued by a Portuguese tramp steamer. So right from the beginning Valerie’s life was to be rather eventful.
In 1939 she married John Brooke Howse, a marriage that lasted until John’s death in 2002. John was one of the contingent of returned servicemen who entered parliament after the Second World War; he served as the federal Liberal member for Calare from 1946 until 1960. Over her long life, Valerie met, and in some cases became close friends with, many of Australia’s great political leaders, including Stanley Bruce, Robert Menzies, Ben Chifley and Harold Holt. Our First World War Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, was godfather to her eldest son.
Valerie was a long-serving member of the Liberal Party and a loyal branch member and tireless worker on its behalf. Without fail, at every federal and ACT election, Valerie ran a Liberal Party booth at the Deakin polling station. It was through the Liberal Party that Valerie and Gary Kent, former President of the ACT Liberal Party, who is in the gallery today, became close friends. Gary shared Valerie’s interest in Australia’s military heritage and her own family’s history, and this cemented their friendship. I would like to thank Gary Kent for his assistance and personal insights with this adjournment debate tribute to Mrs Howse.
Valerie Howse was a woman of single-minded purpose who, once she had made up her mind, would brook no opposition. She was a very passionate supporter of Australia’s constitutional monarchy, and in her memoirs reflected on the occasion in 1939 when she was presented to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace. On the same visit to London, she and her family had afternoon tea with Prime Minister Neville and Mrs Chamberlain at 10 Downing Street. Valerie met the Queen on a number of occasions, including having a private audience at Government House during the royal visit in 1954. Valerie retained her passion for the royal family right up until the end, hosting a dinner party in honour of last year’s royal wedding at which she watched the television, transfixed, as the ceremony at Westminster Abbey unfolded.
Another of Valerie’s passions was roses. Every year until recently she held a morning tea to commemorate the blooming of the Doris Downes rose that she so carefully tended in her garden in Manuka. This rose variety was named after her mother, and she arranged for it to be planted on the battlefields of the Western Front and at Gallipoli.
Valerie was also committed to supporting good causes. Over 50 years, many charities benefited from her untiring efforts, typified by her legendary parties and balls, which will be remembered fondly by many Canberrans. In 1985, she was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for her service to international relations through the
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