Even in direction of the top of his life it was unattainable to have a dialog with Gerry with out the dialogue turning to indigenous points and the previous passions flaring up. As minister, he wore himself out travelling round Australia to Indigenous communities – as soon as confiding that he had not slept in the identical mattress two nights in a row for 42 days – and within the course of acquired the nickname “Outdated ‘No Guarantees’” from Indigenous group leaders, such was his dedication to avoiding the entrenched sample of empty guarantees and no supply that had blighted the world for a few years.
Gerry was simply as obsessed with Richmond Soccer Membership, however when the membership invited Kim Hughes to talk at a perform shortly after he led a insurgent cricket tour to South Africa, he boycotted it for an prolonged interval. Happily, time ultimately healed these wounds, and within the final years of his life the partitions of his room we had been coated in big posters celebrating three Richmond premierships.
Gerry had a serious affect on an rising era of Labor figures, certainly one of which was me. His method to politics can finest be summed up by a mid-Nineteen Eighties incident that rapidly grew to become broadly recognized in left-wing circles. He was close to the top of a essential assembly with a strong determine within the broader Left motion who was selling a serious restructuring of the assorted Labor and non-Labor left-wing forces. Gerry was non-committal, and ultimately suggested that he wanted to depart as he had an appointment in his workplace with a pensioner from his voters. His counterpart, fired up with the marginally messianic enthusiasm so attribute of the Left in that period, responded: “Gerry, we’re speaking about reshaping your complete Left right here – pensioners can wait.” Gerry stood up and walked out.
There have been a few different individuals current at that assembly, and I used to be certainly one of them. The expertise helped to form my subsequent method to my position as a commerce union chief and parliamentary consultant. Effectively past the slender confines of his ministerial roles, Gerry Hand performed an important position in shaping and altering Australian Labor politics, and moulding a brand new era that later went on to carve out its personal place within the lengthy and turbulent historical past of the Labor Social gathering. A person of extraordinary dedication and integrity, a holder of grudges able to reconciling with enemies, a fighter for causes who sought to realize change in addition to advocate it, Gerry Hand represented the individuals of Australia, his voters and the Australian Labor Social gathering with nice dedication and distinction.
Gerry Hand’s funeral is at St Ignatius, Church Road, Richmond, at 1pm on November 29.