Neville Bonner: A man of position and principle

Brendan Nelson hangs a photo of Neville Bonner in every office that he works. In remarks to a Menzies Research Centre gala dinner honouring the former Queensland Senator, he explains why.

Thank you very, very much Julian. Very generous remarks, and thank you also for saying what I was about to say. I appreciate that.

I also say to my wife, Lady Nelson, when I go, can you get Amanda Stoker to oversee my funeral? So, great job. To Peter Dutton, the leader of the Liberal Party, Sussan Ley, the Deputy Leader, the parliamentarians and former parliamentarians that are here, Indigenous Australians, and those of you who have come under the leadership of Nick Cater and the Menzies Research Centre to celebrate and reflect upon the life of Neville Bonner.

It's a somewhat emotional privilege for me to be able to do this. And Julian just reminded me that on the 31st of May in the year 2000, we had 340 people in this room to celebrate Neville Bonner's life. That's the maximum number that it could accommodate. Warren Entsch, my dear friend, was here. We had Slim Dusty and his band at one end. A third of the audience were Indigenous Australians.

I raised money to subsidise the costs for them that they would still need to pay, but there were generous donors who helped us with the event. We had the Jarram Indigenous dancers at the other end of the room. As you heard, John Howard spoke eloquently and emotionally about Neville Bonner. Stan Grant emceed the evening, and some of it was broadcast live onto Channel 7's Today Tonight. Flo Grant, another Indigenous Australian, spoke of this extraordinary man. It was an immense privilege.

I arrived in Brussels early in 2010, Australia's Ambassador to NATO and the European Union in Belgium. And the then US Ambassador to the European Union was a man called William E. Kennard Jr., an African American bearing an uncanny resemblance to his then President, Barack Obama.

Kennard had chaired the Carlisle Group for the decade prior to his appointment. He'd come to our embassy to see me about an issue of common concern to our two countries. And as I always do, I walked out of my office into the waiting room to greet him. We were walking into my office talking, and he literally stopped dead in his tracks - stopped mid-sentence, and said, "A Black man." And I said, "Yes, Bill. An Aboriginal Australian. His name is Neville Bonner, the first Aboriginal Australian elected to the parliament in my country." And I told him, as I have told others over the years, of Neville Bonner's life and why that photograph, about which Julian referred, goes everywhere with me.

And as I speak to you, it's hanging on the wall opposite my office in the Sydney Stock Exchange building, my Boeing office. And it'll go to London with me in early January when I take over leadership of Boeing's entire international operations.

And I said to Bill, he was born in my country under a palm tree on a tiny little island in the mouth of the Tweed River in northern New South Wales in 1922. He was born there because in my country in those days, Aboriginal people weren't allowed to be in town after the sun had gone down. His parents were married. His father, Henry Bonner, was an Englishman who absconded before Neville's birth. His mother, Julia Rebecca Bell, was a Jagera woman. And even though they were married, his birth certificate was marked "illegitimate". He grew up on the banks of the Richmond River in a hollow carved under lantana bushes by his Indigenous grandfather, Roger Bell.

When he was nine years old, the year before his mother's death, she sent him to a school in a little place called Lismore in northern New South Wales. He lasted two days before the non-Aboriginal parents forced him from the school. It was to his Indigenous grandmother, Ida Bell, Ida Sandy, to whom he attributed his ultimate success in life. Neville said that when he was 13, she had insisted that he had to go to school. In Neville resisting this, she had said to him, "Neville, if you learn to read and write, express yourself well, and treat people with decency and courtesy, it'll take you a long way." And as you heard earlier this evening, he did one calendar year of schooling at Beaudesert State School. He actually did two years of education in a calendar year, and then a lifetime as a cane cutter, a ringer, a stockman and clearing scrub.

Then 16 years on the infamous Palm Island off the coast of Townsville, which in those days was essentially a penal colony for Aboriginal people. And then finally in 1967, working as a bridge carpenter in Ipswich, his interest in politics was piqued by the referendum that would seek to change the Constitution, to allow the Commonwealth government to pass laws in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. And to count them in the census.

He described how he was standing outside a school handing out the Yes case, the Yes vote, for the Liberal Party. He said a very big black car arrived and two men got out of it and approached him, and one of them said to him, "What are you standing here with these Liberal cards?" He said, "We do more for your lot than them." And Neville said, "Well, who are you?"

“I'm Bill Hayden. I'm the Member for Oxley”, and Neville retorted, "Well, I'd look pretty stupid handing out with them, with the Labor Party, given I'm a member of the Liberal Party." He went and joined the Liberal Party the next day.

In 1971, 51 years ago, he stood before the members of the Liberal Party of Queensland seeking their preferment to go to Canberra as a Queensland senator, the first Aboriginal Australian to ever do so. In his selection address to them, he said, in part, "In my experience of this world, there are two things of which we are in greater need. Human compassion and understanding." As we know, he spent 11 years here, serving as you heard, our nation, the State of Queensland, his faith, and through all of it, as he said, the Aboriginal people.

He endured condescension. He was patronised. He faced overt racism. On one occasion at a school in Queensland, the parents would not allow their children to receive their Year 12 awards from the Aboriginal senator.

In 1994, and he received an honorary doctorate from Griffith University. In his address to the audience, his occasional address, he related an anecdote from his life that he said set him on the course of his life.

He said to his audience, "I was living in a humpy just outside Lismore, and the storekeeper gave my grandparents some porridge that was peppered with weevils. As the adults were soaking the porridge in the water to drain out the weevils, I remembered that white people had porridge with milk." So he said, "I ran two miles up to the dairy farm nearby, and I knocked on the door. The farmer answered the door." And Neville said, "I looked up at him and I said, 'Guess what? We're having porridge for breakfast. I came up to ask if we could have some separated milk.'" He said the farmer bellowed at him, screamed, "My pigs will get that milk before some skinny little black kid."

He said to his audience, "I'm not telling you this story as some sort of story of discrimination or cruelty." He said, "I'm telling you because I want you to know how I came to my set goals."

He said, "When I walked those two miles back to the humpy, I resolved that one day I would eat as much porridge with milk that I possibly could." He said, "From that day on, I turned every discomfort, every act of racial cruelty and savagery into a new, determined goal."

Some people lead from position, leader of the party, captain of the team, chairman of the board. Others lead from principle, eschewing position to instead pursue moments and issues of immense principle, arguably William Wilberforce, the greatest historical example of the latter. Neville was a man who led from both position and principle.

In 1992, when Robin Hughes was doing his oral biography, she asked him to nominate his greatest achievement. He said, "It is that I was there. They no longer spoke," he said, "of boongs or blacks." He said, "They spoke instead of Aboriginal people."

I said to Bill Kennard, I've said to my Boeing team and others, when they've asked me why it's there, it's there to remind me every single day of the two things that are most important.

The first is the liberating power of even a small amount of education, which too often the rest of us take for granted. And the second is that transcending everything else in life - rank, power, money, influence, looks, intelligence and talent, is character. Informed by worthwhile intrinsic virtues and values. This is a man who turned adversity into a determination to achieve his goals for others and for his people. A man who, in the face of cruelty unimaginable to us, except for that faced by some Indigenous people in this room, gave us a story of grace and humility.

When the story of reconciliation in this country is finally written, there will be a special place accorded to this man. And I say, if I put on my hat as a former leader of the Liberal Party, so too for those members of the Queensland Division of the Liberal Party in 1971 that chose this man to come to Canberra on behalf of the Liberal Party and of Queensland.

As you know the electorate of Bonner was proclaimed in late 2003, and in 2004 the electorate of Bonner was contested. Ross Vasta was the Liberal Party candidate. Heather Bonner was in hospital dying.

The result could not be declared on the evening of the election. On the Tuesday morning, as soon as the AEC had declared it, I rang Heather and I said, "Heather, the AEC has just declared Bonner as being held by Ross Vasta for the Liberal Party." She said, "Bonner is Liberal. I can go now."

The final thing I'd say to you is I notice that some former leaders of the Liberal Party like to offer a bit of gratuitous free advice through the media. Not always helpful advice. I've steadfastly refrained from doing that and I always will. But Julian Leeser said something in his introductory remarks, which I want to reinforce to you. He said, "We should never forget from where we come”.

He’s right. We should never forget who gave us what we have, and who made us who we are.

As the Liberal Party faces its future, I also noticed some advice from Nigel Farage over the weekend directing the Liberal Party to abandon its traditional seats recently lost.

What's most important is to have a sense of history, because a sense of history is absolutely essential to understanding the future.

When little else makes sense, history is the guiding discipline. The past demolishes prejudice. It reminds us that earlier generations made very difficult decisions, and the consequences of making them. (Pointing to Neville Bonner’s image) Choosing this man in 1971 was one of them.

The picture of Neville Bonner that Brendan Nelson carries with him everywhere.

The past can also inspire, and it can also help guide us to new emerging horizons and to never forget the philosophical foundations of who we are, in what we believe, and who gave us what we have.

Thank you.

This is an edited transcript of the remarks given by Brendan Nelson at the Neville Bonner Gala Dinner on Tuesday. Brendan Nelson is a former federal leader of the Liberal Party.