Mr GRAY (Brand) (14:05): Thank you, Bill, and thank you, Prime Minister. Peter left school at 14. His achievements in this place, in this community, are quite remarkable. He was a farmer, a finance minister and a father, and when he died he was surrounded and supported by his loving and understanding family. In his younger days, Pete and Rose, his brother, John, and Margaret had farmed wheat and sheep at Doodlakine, in Western Australia, in the grain belt. In a family of outstanding farmers, Peter was a good farmer, but he was also a very good left-handed shearer. Harry Perkins told me that. Harry was beaten by Peter in a junior farmers regional shearing zone final in the early 1950s. Peter was very pleased because Harry was Country Party! Although it was thought radical in the 1960s, Peter built contour banks on the farm to contain and direct heavy rainfall. He was very proud of his contour banks. They remain today in full working order, saving soil and water and controlling erosion. Shortly after the change of government in 2008, the new minister for agriculture and I went up to the farm to have a look, and Peter and Burkie spent a lot of time contemplating the value of the work of contour banks while Peter described how they had been built using a Chamberlain tractor in the 1960s. In the 1950s Peter did his national service, but Peter was not an enthusiastic soldier of the Queen. Peter was an enthusiastic soldier in the battle for a stronger economy, and he was a general in the fight for a better, fairer budget. Peter was outstanding at that. As resources minister Peter introduced Australia's petroleum resource rent tax and, like his contour banks, that tax remains in place today working for future generations. Bob Hawke reflected that it was as finance minister for six years that Peter had made his mark, bringing an unprecedented level of discipline and rigour in public finance. Significant expenditure cuts were required from 1986 in order to weather collapsing terms of trade. The government adopted a simple trilogy: not to raise taxes as a share of GDP, not to raise outlays as a share of GDP, and to reduce outlays in real terms. For four years, using IMF expenditure definitions, Peter fulfilled that trilogy. He produced four budgets which reduced outlays in real terms—something no other government or finance minister has done more than once. So Peter remains the gold standard. Cutting spending in real terms while increasing fairness, the old child endowment universal payment was abolished and the family allowance was introduced. It was means tested to provide an income boost for the less well-off. Peter worked with Bob, Paul and his cabinet colleagues to pursue a philosophy of restraint with equity, ensuring that the most vulnerable in our society were protected. Fairness was increased as a consequence of the cuts. Labor's primary vote rose and its two-party preferred vote rose too. At the 1987 double dissolution on 11 July—Gough Whitlam's birthday—with declining outlays, Labor's vote increased and its majority increased. Peter was proud of that and we are proud of Peter—proud of him as a West Australian and proud of his role as a senator and as a minister. My family are proud of him as a father. He was not always easy to live with or work with and, Madam Speaker, you know that—you shared the chamber with him. He was a bloke who enjoyed a laugh, a joke, a drink and a good party. Members, senators and public servants would seek out Peter's corridor parties in the company of Gareth Evans, John Button, Ralph Willis, John Dawkins, John Howard, John Hewson and another great son of the West Australian wheat belt, John Stone—I could keep on going but you get the picture. Peter enjoyed a party and he was not going to let hard work get in the way of a good party. He enjoyed any game of football that the Eagles won, and he enjoyed his children. Australia was made stronger and fairer for Peter's public service. No Australian can aspire to better than that. I thank the whole Walsh family for letting Peter perform that service: John, for holding things together on the farm and Rose, for holding things together at home. Peter is survived by Rosalie; his daughters Karen, Shelley, Anne, Deborah and 11 grandchildren. Thank you and thank you, Peter.