I'VE always believed there are good people on both sides of politics, and Tim Fischer proved this to me personally.
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In 2011, Tim launched my text book on agricultural extension (titled Shaping Change: Natural Resource Management, Agriculture and the Role of Extension) at a fancy lunch overlooking Port Phillip Bay high above Melbourne's CBD, and he generously wrote the forward to it too. An excerpt reads:
"We will all be rooned, said Hanrahan, before the year is out."
Since the days of Hanrahan penned by priestly poet Father Patrick Hartigan and well before, there has been a degree of dreaming attached to farming and agricultural pursuits in Australia, as well as that sardonic wit and the tendency to look at the glass as too often being 'half full'.
Perhaps, it could be argued that with Australia's unpredictable and harsh climate, some of this is essential to help the mind cope through the effects of savage droughts, raging floods and bushfires.
But in a gentle but firm way this book reminds all that romance is nice for the poetry recitals around a campfire, but essentially successful agriculture today requires a scientific bent, with a commitment to ongoing education, cutting edge technology and the exchange of latest information ...
Never was a truer word spoken, but it was as a first-time federal Labor candidate in 2013 when Tim's trademark goodwill to all shone through.
Post-book launch we exchanged occasional emails, and at one point I asked if he would allow me to publicly use a photo of us together launching the book.
OTHER RECENT LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:
Tim's response was spot on, and his supportive good cheer towards me touched a nerve of friendship above politics in the spirit of how Ben Chifley is remembered as having time for everyone.
Although Tim was personally happy for me to publicly use the photo and was nothing but encouraging of me entering politics despite being of the opposite colour, he was also conscious the image could cause internal party tensions and so he gracefully declined while still acknowledging I'd earned a few worthy stripes in producing a leading professional industry publication designed to help Australian farmers by advancing on-farm innovation.
Tim Fischer was already becoming an icon of Australian politics before he passed last week, and I for one will certainly remember him that way even more so in future.
