2015-09-01
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — The Greens members would like to associate ourselves with this motion. As relatively new members representing a relatively new movement, there is not a great deal for us to add to what earlier speakers have said about the role Mr Scully played both in this Parliament and in politics in Victoria. But as someone who lived all the way to the age of 95, he would certainly have been someone who could have given all of us a perspective on the 20th century.
As the Leader of the Government said, this was a time of great combativeness within the labour movement, but that was simply an effect of the worldwide battle that was going on known as the Cold War. As someone who saw the tail end of it, it seems to have been an era in world politics when two ideologies were quite simply committed to each other's destruction. In many different forums, not just in the Holmesglen workshops, it was the nature of this conflict that one was forced to pick a side. According to these two forces there was no room in the middle to be neutral to either approach. It is for this reason that Mr Scully had an enormous impact, one that we will no doubt hear a little bit more of from other speakers joining this motion.
We join with all members of Parliament in sending our condolences to Mr Scully's family, his loved ones, his friends, his colleagues and others whom he touched during his life.