Gerry Hand kept a low profile as he helped change the country

Gerry Hand was so respected that the Hawke supporter was included in Paul Keating’s first ministry, despite not voting for him.

Former ALP Member for Wills Gerry Hand.

OBITUARY

Gerry Hand

Former politician. Born Melbourne, June 30, 1942; died November 15, aged 81.

It is tempting to believe Bob Hawke’s prime ministerial destiny was almost predetermined. Once in the federal parliament, he would seamlessly cruise to the Labor frontbench and sail on to leadership of the party and ultimately the Lodge. And that’s how it played out. But the smooth ascendancy of Hawke happened only after a fierce preselection battle in 1980 for the seat of Wills based in Melbourne’s north.

The widely popular, nationally known Hawke was never going to be beaten, but the Socialist Left’s Gerry Hand forced the Hawke camp to work hard. Hawke won by fewer than 10 votes.

Like the man after whom Wills is named – William John Wills, with whom Robert O’Hara Burke walked across Australia – Hand drew strength from the setback, challenged for the adjacent seat of Melbourne in 1982 and defeated the longstanding incumbent, Ted Innes, 42 votes to 28. He easily won the seat in the 1983 Hawke landslide – Labor biggest win since John Curtin 40 years earlier.

Hand had worked in Portland for Victoria’s South-West Trades and Labour Council and was later research officer for Warrnambool-based Victorian Socialist Left senator Cyril Primmer.

This would have been a time of steep learning for Hand – Primmer was a veteran of the 1955 Labor Split and is reported to have once attended a branch meeting with a shotgun on his desk.

Keen on a parliamentary career, Hand moved to Melbourne as an ALP organiser in the years when it was rebuilding after the Whitlam government was dismissed and the party routed at the 1975 election.

The Hawke years were mostly sweet. Hand worked diligently for his electorate, sometimes skipping factional meetings to help local pensioners, and also unceasingly but mostly unnoticed to keep the still divided Labor ranks as the well-oiled machine that would win a record four elections. Hawke was a practical man; Hand a man of unbending principle.

When Hawke gave the green light for uranium sales to France, in defiance of ALP policy, Hand was bitterly and publicly opposed.

Nonetheless, Hawke, acknowledging Hand’s competence and integrity, promoted him to the ministry the following year at a time when Hand was also president of the Victorian branch of the party.

During the 13 years of the Hawke-Keating government there were three ministers for Aboriginal affairs. Hand served the shortest term, by a considerable margin, but made the most memorable impact. Over those same years there were seven ministers for immigration, a job of prickly, manifold pressures, especially for Labor, and Hand served longest, again leaving an indelible mark.

Then federal aboriginal affairs minister Gerry Hand left an indelible mark in a short time, including presenting the title to Katherine Gorge to its traditional owners, the Jawoyn people, including Ray Fordimail, at a ceremony near Katherine River in 1989.

Hand clashed with the secretary of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, the legendary rights crusader Charles Perkins, the first Aboriginal person to head a federal department. Claiming maladministration, Hand forced Perkins to resign, but the real problem might have been that Hand did not see it as a position for an activist.

Hand drew up plans for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and life was breathed into it in 1990. Its role was contentious from the start and life was sucked from it 14 years later as it sunk under the weight of serious claims against chairman Geoff Clark.

Retiring senator Pat Dodson said this week that Hand had been “driven by conviction and purpose”. “Above all, he was a passionate advocate of the interests of First Nations people and a great supporter of Northern Territory land councils,” he said.

Dodson credited Hand with putting pressure on Hawke to ban mining at Coronation Hill in 1991. The local Jawoyn people believed the area was “sickness country” and hosted the spirit Bula. Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson referred to this as “Bula-shit”. It split Labor, and Hawke was dethroned in months. An incoming Paul Keating kept Hawke supporter Hand in the ministry.

Perhaps Gerry Hand’s lasting legacy is, as immigration minister, winning bipartisan support for the policy of mandatory detention of unlawful arrivals. Picture: Chris Pavlich

Perhaps Hand’s lasting legacy is, as immigration minister, winning bipartisan support for the policy of mandatory detention of unlawful arrivals. He had been to enough refugee camps and held the babies of those desperate parents hoping patiently for the right to move to Australia in search of better lives. He had no time for anyone who would pay a criminal to jump the queue.

The Australian’s editor-at-large Paul Kelly observed Hand’s Canberra years: “Gerry Hand was a faithful servant of the Labor Party and was an astute organiser of the left-wing before and after he entered the parliament.”

Kelly added that Hand maintained the respect of both sides of Labor’s factional divide.

“He was an old-fashioned left-winger and he was a champion of strong border controls and powerful deterrence to stop asylum seekers entering Australia by boat.”