Page 742 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 5 July 1989
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Young Liberals
MR HUMPHRIES (4.48): Mr Speaker, I rise on an entirely different matter. I want to pay tribute today to an organisation of which I am a member at the moment but of which I will no longer be a member as of tomorrow. Today is - - -
Mr Moore: The Liberals sacked you, did they, Gary?
Mr Kaine: He is joining the Rally.
MR HUMPHRIES: I am not anxious to join the Residents Rally party. The organisation to which I refer is the Young Liberal movement. I have been a member of this organisation for some 10 years and, because the organisation imposes age limits and I encounter an important milestone tomorrow, I unfortunately have to resign. But I thought it was appropriate at this stage to pay tribute to that organisation and to indicate that I feel it has played in my life, as indeed in the life of Australian society, a very important role.
Mr Duby: Is tomorrow your birthday?
MR HUMPHRIES: That might be a reasonable assumption to make, Mr Duby. But that role has been, in my case, not a very active one. I cannot claim to have been an important cog in the Young Liberal wheel, but I have certainly appreciated the role that others have played, and I have valued my membership of it.
It has been an important force, I think, in the ACT. It has provided younger and keener members who have sometimes been there when required to take on the baton when the older members have become a little tired. I am not referring to any members of this chamber, of course. I have read a book called Liberals Face the Future about the Liberal Party, in which - - -
A member: Science fiction, is it?
MR HUMPHRIES: I do not think there would be any publication out yet about the Residents Rally, but if there were it would be a very, very slim volume indeed. An article by Mr Bruce Edwards in this learned publication says - and I respectfully adopt these remarks - that Young Liberals ought to be a fertile source of fresh thinking, particularly in reflecting the priorities and concerns of young people in the community. I hope that that is one of the roles that I have been able to play as part of that movement.
I think, Mr Speaker, that the Young Liberal movement is almost as old as the Liberal Party - I am not sure about that - but certainly it is in excess of 40 years old and has maintained an important role in the activities of the Liberal Party because it has been respected and
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