Robert Nestdale Memorial Service, St Stephen's Church, Macquarie Street, 11 December 1989
A Tribute to Robert Nestdale
Robert Nestdale Memorial Service, St Stephen's Church, Macquarie Street, Monday 11 December 1989
Many in this gathering had more continuous and closer organisational links than I had with Robert Nestdale. I did, however, enjoy many and long opportunities to share his increasing interests and influence. Perhaps I may give some illustrations.
I became aware of him in 1974 when he joined Peter Rae's staff. He soon became pretty visible in the corridors of the old Parliament House and indeed audible. He was never a faceless minder. Peter Rae developed a penchant for persistent questions. One theme concerned my second reading of the National Gallery Bill. Once I gave him an answer "Gallery directors, whatever their professional art skills, have not always been highly qualified in matters of general management". That led to further questions. Again, I was asked whether legislation would be introduced for a National Museum in the Budget session of 1975. I answered that we first had to receive and consider the Pigott Report. As late as this year Robert Nestdale was relishing the prospect that some senator would be found to embarrass governments by bringing the questions up to date. I had already concluded 14 years ago that he was a man to be watched.
In the later seventies I saw him regularly as a member of the International Commission of Jurists, in whose Australian Section I alternated with John Dowd as President. The organisation was particularly concerned with human rights in our own country and the countries of South East Asia and the Pacific. Robert was one of the few of us who could be depended on to attend seminars and conferences overseas. All this time he was prominent as State President of the Young Liberals and then as Federal President. I thought he must be a man of independent means. Then I realised he was a public relations officer for a company which in my time has had a succession of notably patriotic and public-spirited citizens as its chief executives. I could not help noticing that, like Peter Rae's questions, Gordon Jackson's speeches were getting better and better.
After the 1980 Federal elections Robert gave a remarkable address as Federal President of the Young Liberals. He had clearly set his sights on horizons and objectives which were unlikely to be soon reached within the confines of Australian politics. In July 1982 I was accompanying two representatives of the National Aboriginal Conference on a visit to Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Tanzania to acquaint the authorities with the case for Aboriginal Land Rights. The World Council of Churches had recently sent a mission to Australia and published its highly critical report. Robert's and my paths met in Harare. We were both lobbying Prime Minister Mugabe. We arranged to meet in Geneva when my group was to call on the World Council of Churches. We spent a morning also at a session of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. I took him to the cathedral, where Calvin had pontificated. The irony was not lost on him. As my father, a Presbyterian elder, - these days he would have been Uniting, - used to admit with shame, Servetus had been burned at the stake under Calvin. We went on to London, indeed to Oxford, to Jesus, where we heard Harold Wilson, an alumnus, reminisce after dinner, as such people do.
After the 1983 elections he twice stayed with us in Paris. By 1985 he was more ebullient than ever over his new work with Unicef and his new recreation in ballooning. He pursued both activities in Paris. He was soon to prove his practical idealism as National Director of Unicef Australia. In an aberrant moment the Department of Foreign Affairs withdrew from Unido and contemplated ending its contributions to Unicef. Robert's contacts across the whole political spectrum and in most non-governmental organisations soon put a stop to that nonsense. One of his legacies is the Parliamentary Association for Unicef. Many of its members spoke in memory and in honour of him in the Senate last Thursday night.
Unicef became the focus for all his talents and energies. The last six months of his life were incomparably fruitful. We had dinner together last June in the Eiffel Tower. The Unesco Executive Board was concluding a session in which it had endorsed arrangements for the same close consultations with Unicef as the World Health Organisation had already enjoyed for ten years and for the joint financing with Unicef, UNDP and the World Bank of the World Conference on Education for All next March in Bangkok for ILY. Robert was about to deliver a speech and paper at the Human Rights and Rights of the Child Congress convened by the French Government in the new Opera de la Bastille to commemorate the bicentenary of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. His first words to the conference were no mere formality: "President Francois Mitterand, Madame Danielle Mitterand, Madame Hortensia Allende...". His conclusion shows his passion and compassion:
Might not 1989 and the decade of the 1990s see new possibilities for children? It is with real pride and joy that Australians can applaud their leaders, Prime Minister Hawke and Opposition Leader Peacock, for warmly endorsing a Global Summit for Children. How do we make the needless and preventable slaughter of children as unconscionable as slavery, racism and colonialism and how do we make disability and malnutrition totally unacceptable because each day they take a toll greater than Armenia and each week a toll greater than Hiroshima? The creativity and imagination and pragmatic determination which we apply to this challenge may well change the face of the world for children. It is a fitting task in this 200th year of the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
I never saw Robert again. I had been warned of his precarious health but I was encouraged by his undiminished zest and zeal. He was to throw himself wholeheartedly into the tour by Audrey Hepburn, one of Unicef's international ambassadors. She was moved to exclaim that until she met Robert Nestdale she had thought all Australians were like Paul Hogan. His last overseas trip was to Kuala Lumpur to lobby the Commonwealth Heads of Government. The new Secretary-General was an old friend of his. Seven weeks ago the CHOGM communiqué called for the adoption of a United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and welcomed the proposal for a World Summit for Children.
In his speech in Paris Robert had candidly admitted the precarious protection for human rights under the common law which Australia had inherited.
An attitude, once widely held, that Australia has nothing to learn from other countries has given way to a recognition of the great and increasing importance of international instruments. In our country the most important developments in human rights protection have been based squarely on the United Nations instruments which have given teeth to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.
Three weeks ago, to mark the 30th anniversary of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child and the 10th anniversary of the International Year of the Child, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This consummation demonstrates three important things: the importance of individuals, the important of Unicef and the role that we in Australia can play.
At the beginning of last year, the drafting of the Convention was almost complete. But, in the long process of dealing with very many complex issues, a number of problems with the text had been left unresolved. There were problems of style, problems of internal consistency, and problems of consistency with other human rights instruments. If these problems had not been addressed, there would have been serious problems for Australia and for many other countries in ratifying the convention.
So, on the initiative of the Australian delegation, a "technical review" was conducted, followed by a "second reading" round of the negotiations so that the problems could be identified and removed. The core of that technical review was produced by Unicef and the draft convention was altered to reflect almost all of its recommendations. Robert Nestdale's work in Australia and his visits to Paris and Kuala Lumpur were crucial parts of that process. The result is a convention which, although inevitably a compromise in some respects, I believe we can all strongly support.
We in this gathering all believe that our lives have been more useful and joyful through our association with Robert Nestdale. We can take comfort that in many continents and islands there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of children who through his activities will enjoy a longer life than he had and have as full a life as he had