Acts of a man of honour

AFTER 31 years in the Senate, Ron Boswell is stepping out of the ring.

Job ID. PD302531. Senator Ron Boswell delivering his valedictory speech in the Senate Chamber, received a standing ovation at Parliament House in Canberra. Pic by Gary Ramage

AFTER 31 years in the Senate, Ron Boswell is stepping out of the ring. The Queensland Nationals senator has been in the middle of some of the most spectacular ­bare-knuckled political fights of his ­generation. Bloodied he has been, but, at 73, he leaves unbowed.

With his departure, so goes one of the last links to an era when Joh Bjelke-Petersen reigned supreme in Queensland and federal politicians strolled the carpets of Old Parliament House.

In a valedictory speech last week he told parliament he was leaving “undefeated, at a time of my choosing, the sixth longest serving member of this Senate’’.

Boswell is famous for a campaign slogan that declared: “He’s not pretty, but he’s pretty effective’’, and his departure deprives conservative politics of one of its great political brawlers.

His colleague, NSW Nationals senator John Williams, praises Boswell’s tenacity.

“He is like a bull terrier when he sees a problem. He takes it in his teeth and he will not let it go until that problem has disappeared,’’ Williams told the Senate.

For a man who left school at 15 and sold paintbrushes for a living before entering politics, Boswell claimed some of the biggest political scalps of his generation.

He stood against and defeated Pauline Hanson when she tried to run for the Senate in 2001.

He was the first conservative politician to speak out publicly against Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme, starting a trickle that eventually became the political torrent that swept away Labor on a wave of public anger about the carbon tax.

Boswell says he opposed the ETS because it was an “absolute impossibility’’ to get the rest of the world to sign on.

“There would have been a riot, and rightly so, if the Indonesians were told they had to bring their standard of living down,’’ he says.

Australia has always had a cheap source of power and it is ­essential for the manufacturing ­industry.

“Destroy the cheap source of power and you destroy the manufacturing industry,’’ he says. “If you want a manufacturing industry in Australia you can have neither a carbon tax nor a renewable energy target.’’

As the question of whether to support the ETS split the Liberal Party, Boswell, on a Tuesday in December 2009, walked across Parliament House to Tony ­Abbott’s office and urged him to challenge Malcolm Turnbull for the party leadership.

“I said to him, if you don’t stand, Tony, there won’t be a Liberal Party. I knew the National Party couldn’t fill the gap so I asked him to run.’’ He says he can’t remember what Abbott said to him, but he ran and is now the Prime Minister.

Boswell’s political career began after he married his wife Leita and went to a National Party meeting to watch his father-in-law receive a life membership of the party. He joined up.

In 1974, with Labor on the nose in Queensland and Bjelke-Petersen stirring opposition to Gough Whitlam’s government in Canberra, he convinced a friend, Bill ­Lamond, to run for the ultra-safe Labor seat of Wynnum in state parliament.

The Nationals, helped by the sitting Labor member, who swore at then federal Nationals leader Doug Anthony in front of a group of lady bowlers in the electorate during the campaign, won the seat by 39 votes.

Soon, with his stocks boosted by the unlikely victory, Boswell ­became a confidant of Bjelke-Petersen.

After he convinced the Christian premier that deregulated trading hours would deprive small business people of the chance to go to church on Sundays — prompting Bjelke-Petersen to describe it as a “desecration of Sunday’’ and declare it would never happen while he ran Queensland — ­Boswell became something of a go-to guy for small business people with political problems.

“Eventually everyone was coming to see me,’’ Boswell tells The Australian. But it was taking up his time and his business was suffering. “Eventually I told Joh I was either going to have to get into politics or get out.’’

Bjelke-Petersen suggested the Senate and Boswell was swept to Canberra in 1983 on a ticket headed by Sir Joh’s wife, Lady Flo.

By the mid-1980s, Boswell was confronting his first big fight. An ultra-right anti-Semitic group called the League of Rights was infiltrating the charismatic churches in Queensland and Boswell started a running battle with it as it attempted to influence the more conservative support base of the Nationals.

“They would deny Jesus was a Jew,’’ Boswell says. “They would tell people what they wanted to hear. But Jesus Christ was a Jew.’’

The skirmish would be a prelude to the battle against Hanson, who arrived on the Australian political scene in 1996 attacking Asians and Aborigines and again stirring the far Right.

By 2001, Hanson was running for the Senate and Boswell put his career on the line by demanding the Nationals put Hanson last on their how-to-vote cards. He says many in the party, seeing Labor as the bigger enemy, resisted him.

At a marathon preselection meeting that lasted more than 12 hours, Boswell said he would not stand unless Hanson was placed last. He prevailed.

Boswell says Hanson would have destroyed Australia in its overseas markets, “because a lot of the Asian people couldn’t understand how she could get into ­parliament. They thought because she gets into parliament, the ­government’s got to be supporting her.

“I thought if she gets in, Australia will never be the same again,’’ Boswell says.

In the 2001 campaign, backed by the slogan “he’s not pretty, but he’s pretty effective’’, Boswell headed the Nationals ticket, which was separate to the Liberals.

With Hanson and Boswell essentially competing for the same supporters, they became direct rivals. Boswell says Liberal and Labor supporters were putting him in the first spot on the ballot to ensure Hanson lost. His polling booths were staffed by members of the Vietnamese community.

In the end he got 9.2 per cent and Hanson got 10 per cent of the vote. Boswell prevailed on preferences.

He rates Hanson as his biggest political battle. But he rates John Howard’s decision to impose tough national gun laws as the bravest political decision he has seen in politics.

He says he opposed it at the time but, as US school shootings have become commonplace, he now thinks Howard was right.

When then Nationals leader Tim Fischer came into the partyroom and told members 70 per cent of people supported the gun laws, Boswell quipped, “Yeah, but the other 30 per cent are our customers.’’ The laws were hard for the Nationals, “but we got through it’’.

If small business concerns over trading hours got him involved in politics, Boswell says it also ­provided the basis for his political career.

He says 20 years running a small business selling Oldfields paintbrushes — “the Rolls-Royce’’ of the trade — gave him the understanding to know what was affecting his constituents.

He describes small business as the “heart and soul of Australia’s have-a-go, egalitarian society’’.

He says people need university degrees these days. But practical experience is also necessary.

“Going into university, then into a political office and into parliament, is just totally unproductive,’’ Boswell says. “They don’t understand how anything works out there.’’

Boswell committed in his maiden speech in 1983 to be a voice for small business, primary industry and family values.

Since entering parliament he has fought to maintain pharmacies and newsagents as stand-alone businesses.

Working with Labor senator Chris Schacht, he worked on amendments to the Trade Practices Act that prohibited the substantial lessening of competition in a substantial market.

Boswell thinks the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission’s powers need to be further strengthened.

He believes it should be given the power to take court action against the abuse of market power under section 46 of the Trade Practices Act. And there should be a test based on the effect of anti-competitive behaviour.

“I wish I was going to be here to push this debate,’’ he says.

He also fought the imposition of marine parks that substantially limit access by commercial fishermen, a campaign that the Coalition believes damaged Labor in coastal areas in the 2010 and 2013 elections.

With retirement approaching, Boswell hasn’t stopped fighting.

In the past few months he has attacked the World Wildlife Fund over its plans for a sustainable beef round table that would certify the environmental credentials of beef.

He has been publicly critical of the Prime Minister’s paid parental leave scheme, saying it is unfair to mothers who stay at home and look after their children, and also unfair to rural women who earn substantially less than their city counterparts.

In his farewell speech he attacked big environmental groups as making their living “frightening” people.

Of all the politicians he has seen, Boswell rates Howard as the best. “He had a very common touch,’’ he says.

But Doug Anthony was also a “terrific leader’’ Boswell says. “You never took him on.’’

He remains a staunch supporter of Bjelke-Petersen.

“I think he was one of the loveliest, most sincere, genuine people,’’ Boswell says. “To me he was never corrupt. If he was he made an absolute botch of it because he didn’t have any money. If he trusted you, he trusted you ... a lot of people abused that trust.’’

In retirement Boswell hopes to set up a business exporting kangaroo meat to China. He will also get to spend some more time with his wife, daughter Cathy and three grandchildren. His son Stephen died suddenly in 1999.

Giving his valedictory speech, he tried to sum up his career.

“I have always been a voice for traditional family values and a defender of the unborn.

“I have stood up for these values on issues such as abortion, RU-486, stem-cell research, pornography and euthanasia.

“Politics is an honourable calling, but will remain so only if politicians have the courage of their convictions.’’