Mr PERRETT (Gympie—LNP) (11.25 am): I rise to speak in the condolence motion for Queen
Elizabeth II. The Queen was an extraordinary woman who never put a foot wrong. With her death the
world has lost a tower of strength and dignity. We have lost a living link with history, a proudly committed
Christian, a constitutional monarch and someone who lived a life of old-fashioned virtues and followed
traditional values.
The Queen’s remarkable life was one of unselfish service. Her dedication was the hallmark of an
historic seven-decade reign. As society changed over that 70 years, her personal virtues were the
antithesis of what our modern culture has become. The descriptions of calm, decent, stoic, thrifty, fun,
disarming, steadfast, duty, continuity and commitment contrast with the modern world of celebrity
defined by insolence, indulgence and vapid self-obsession.
Much of modern culture is an artificial environment, riddled with incessant messaging of acting
out, self-promotion, self-centeredness and fickleness where any level of behaviour is accepted.
Influencers and celebrities are praised as role models and virtue is earned by tokenistic gestures and
public commitments to acceptable causes. Yet, last month we witnessed a worldwide outpouring of
praise for the Queen’s traditional virtues of responsibility, prudence, fortitude, self-containment, reserve,
modesty and civility.
She was an openly committed Christian who saw Christ as ‘an inspiration and an anchor in my
life’. She was serious about being the defender of the faith. When commemorating the 2,000th
anniversary of Christ’s birth she said—
For me the teachings of Christ and my own personal accountability before God provide a framework in which I try to lead my life.
It seems the Queen represented what many people still value and what many yearn for. When
she made the commitment on her 21st birthday that ‘my whole life be it long or short shall be devoted
to your service’ she meant it. She kept her oath before God to serve for life and set out to earn respect
through simple duty. Queen Elizabeth represented the continuous thread we have with centuries of
history, traditions, culture and values which has influenced our type of government, our laws, our
democracy, our way of life and our institutions.
When I was 11 my mother took me and my sister to England to visit my grandparents. As a child
from the bush, the back of nowhere, I recall the wonder from visits to places and seeing symbols and
regalia which define that history—seeing the Crown Jewels, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey,
Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and watching the Changing of the Guard. Queen Elizabeth was
formed in that epic age of 1939 to 1945 during the fight for civilisation. She was not only the last great
living link with that period she knew those who reshaped the world afterwards. She knew leaders from
Churchill, de Gaulle, Menzies, Nehru, Konrad, Eisenhower and Kennedy to Reagan, Thatcher,
Gorbachev, and Deng.
Distance and isolation are part of Australia and are pivotal forces which have influenced our
history, national identity and future. Australia may have been shaped and guided by ‘the tyranny of
distance’, yet Queen Elizabeth never let that overshadow her knowledge and deep interest in our
country and in Australians. She never took her role for granted and was well aware of the fate of her
relatives and forebears.
As a ceremonial head of state, she was non-partisan, non-committal, rose above the political fray
and imparted wisdom. As the very model of a constitutional monarch, she was able to achieve her
enduring legacy of turning what was once a multiracial empire into a voluntary Commonwealth of free
nations. She was not seduced by the obsession with silly navel-gazing, short-term fame, grandstanding,
shallow virtue signalling, narcissistic politics from the personal offence industry and shrill activism which
requires token gestures to make people feel righteous and pure.
Her enduring legacy is the reinforced strength she gave to our constitutional monarchy and
representative democracy where parliament, elected by the people, does the governing. There is not a
political system which is better. It provides unity over political partisanship. The alternative would be a
hollow creation of elections or appointments subject to slick PR image management and popularity,
which transfers unfettered power to the political class, apparatchiks, hangers-on and elites.
Queen Elizabeth gave us so much better, and her warning in 1957 that ‘trouble is caused by
unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery’
is just as important today. Vale, Queen Elizabeth II.