Senate’s standing ovation for a plain-speaking farmer John ‘Wacka’ Williams
“Better late than never,” Senator John “Wacka” Williams said yesterday of the banking royal commission for which he had pushed so hard, as he gave his farewell speech to the Senate.
“Better late than never,” Senator John “Wacka” Williams said yesterday of the banking royal commission for which he had pushed so hard.
The plain-speaking farmer from
Inverell, who turned his own financial ruin at the hands of the Commonwealth Bank into a lifelong crusade, was giving his final speech to a Senate packed with friends and admirers from all sides of politics.
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Even the press gallery joined in the standing ovation to honour his 11-year career as Nationals Senator, retirement at 64 hastened by the onset of as-yet symptomless Parkinson’s disease. It was a rare moment of universal camaraderie in Canberra.
Having lost his family farm in the 1980s, Wacka had a ready ear for other victims of financial industry skulduggery. But it was a sign of his genial nature that he had invited Commonwealth Bank chief executive officer Matt Comyn to be in the public gallery yesterday. “People might think I’m the banks’ enemy. No, I’m not … I thank them for working with us. We worked problems out behind the scenes,” he said.
The 64-year-old was widely admired for his personal integrity.
One colleague reminisced yesterday of the time Wacka was standing with a group of middle-aged men boasting about their extramarital sexual exploits.
One of the group asked: “What about you Wacka?” and his emphatic reply silenced the braggarts: “I would never cheat on my wife”.
Yesterday he paid tribute to wife Nancy, who had driven from their farm with a carload of homemade mini quiches for a party in the courtyard afterwards.
“Nancy, I look forward to getting home and spending every minute with you for the rest of my life.”
With trademark wry humour he listed his life’s three greatest honours: life membership of the Inverell Apex Club, his 2007 preselection for the National Party and having a cricket ground in Perth named after him, the WACA. Boom boom.
Wacka’s nickname does not reflect a penchant for fistfights but rather was bestowed in childhood by his father who used to call “Wacko!” every time his spirited son used to run around the house nude at bath time.
His grandfather served on the battlefields of France in WWI.
In WWII his father Reg was rear gunner in a Lancaster bomber.
This morning Wacka will be honoured by former colleague Brendan Nelson, director of the Australian War Memorial, with the chance to sit in an original 1942 Lancaster in tribute to his father.
“I was from the generation too young to go to war,” he said yesterday.
“The only wars I’ve fought have been in this building.”
For that, we are all grateful.
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