Page 13 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 16 February 1993
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DEATH OF PROFESSOR F.C. HOLLOWS
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer): Madam Speaker, I move:
That the Assembly expresses its deep regret at the death of Professor Fred Hollows, AC, who made a significant contribution to the welfare of many Australians and others and tenders its profound sympathy to his widow and family in their bereavement.
Professor Hollows was a distinctive self-styled individual who captured the attention of people across many nations. He was a man who was never afraid to speak out for what he believed in and what he cared about. He was well known for his outspoken views on a range of topics, especially in recent times about homosexuals, about AIDS, and about the protection of Aboriginal peoples from epidemics.
Professor Hollows was an egalitarian and a self-named anarcho-syndicalist who wanted to see an end to the economic disparity which exists between the First and Third Worlds and who believed in no power higher than the best expressions of the human spirit found in personal and social relationships. He said that his Christianity was surgically removed after a stint studying arts and divinity at Otago University and working in a mental hospital during his holidays, and he returned to his home town of Dunedin as an agnostic. He changed his course to straight arts and veered towards left-wing politics and later entered medical school at the University of Otago.
From this time he developed his great interest in eye surgery, eventually moving to Britain to study to become a fellow of the Royal College of Ophthalmology. He is now well recognised for his pioneering work in eye care in outback Australia and also for his humanitarian work in Third World countries. Professor Hollows arrived in Sydney in 1965 to take up the post of Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of New South Wales. Several years later he played a leading role in establishing the path-breaking Australia-wide Aboriginal trachoma program, after registering his horror and indignation at the suffering and loss of quality of life caused by eye diseases amongst Aboriginal people.
Official recognition for his work came in 1990, when he was named Australian of the Year, and in 1991, when he was made a companion in the Order of Australia. However, his real contribution to humanity will live on in the improved quality of life of all those who benefited from his life's work and who will benefit from the Fred Hollows Foundation. The foundation aims to continue his dream to train surgeons and build factories to produce the intra-ocular lenses that will restore people's sight in the Third World countries. In Eritrea each year 7,000 people are blinded by cataracts, 35,000 in Nepal, 150,000 in Vietnam, and about one million throughout Africa. The foundation is currently managing projects in Eritrea, Nepal and Vietnam, which will be implemented over the next four years at a cost of about $6m.
Professor Hollows has been called an icon, an inspiration to all Australians, a friend, brother and teacher to thousands of poor and disadvantaged people, a contradiction between saint and sinner, a saint canonised by the common people, a hero and a national treasure, a larrikin and a gift from God, a model of individuality, and an absolutely ordinary rainbow. The posthumous Nobel Prize nomination currently being prepared is well deserved and is appropriate.
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