Page 359 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 19 February 2019
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Territories. He retired from public life in 1993, after 26 years as the member for Corio, having made a significant contribution to Australia. In further recognition of his contribution, in June of that year he was recognised as an officer of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s birthday honours.
Mr Scholes passed away in December of last year, and he was honoured with a state funeral in Victoria. On behalf of the ACT opposition, I again recognise his significant contribution to Australia, but particularly to the ACT, and I pass on our condolences to his family.
MR RATTENBURY (Kurrajong) (10.09): On behalf of the ACT Greens, I join my Assembly colleagues in expressing my condolences on the death late last year of the Hon Gordon Scholes AO. In the period that I have been in this Assembly, we have had many condolence motions for a wide range of people, and, of course, many politicians. Mr Scholes played a very important role for us as members of the ACT Legislative Assembly, given his work as territories minister in the 1980s in the Hawke government.
As my colleagues have already mentioned, Mr Scholes was a Labor MP based in Geelong, Victoria. He was first elected to the House of Representatives as the member for Corio in 1967 and stayed in federal parliament for 26 years. Over that period he played a number of roles—in opposition, as a government backbencher, as Speaker, and, after another period in opposition, as a minister in the Hawke government.
Mr Scholes’s speakership was throughout the infamous Whitlam-Fraser-Kerr period of 1975—still the most controversial constitutional crisis ever seen in federal parliament and quite a challenge for any Speaker, I would imagine. Mr Scholes is one of only two speakers who later became a government minister. His first ministerial role was as Minister for Defence and, most relevant to us here in the ACT, he went on to become the Minister for Territories from 1984 to 1987.
Members and many ACT residents may not be aware of the key role that Mr Scholes played in the process of the ACT gaining self-government. Following the establishment of Canberra as the national capital and seat of federal parliament, there were various councils and committees established to manage the construction of infrastructure and the affairs of the people here in Canberra. From the early 1970s there had been much discussion about giving Canberra self-government, and about the many complexities of the financial arrangements, especially given that the federal government was getting any funds gained from land sales.
But it was only when the Hawke government came to power in 1983 that there was a clear commitment for the ACT to take charge of its own affairs, although it was still very unclear what that might look like. Once Mr Scholes became territories minister in late 1984, political and bureaucratic momentum for the move finally built up.
It was Mr Scholes who was very clear about and intent on shifting management of the territory from federal cabinet, and on the concept of establishing a municipal government for the ACT which also managed a range of state-level responsibilities
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