Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Prime Minister) (14:00): on indulgence—I wish to acknowledge and pay tribute to Mikhail Gorbachev on his death. Striding warmly into the chill of the Cold War, Mikhail Gorbachev helped set history on what was, for a while at least, such a hopeful new course. Behind his fresh face was a radically open mind, one brimming with ideas that extended far beyond simply maintaining what was an increasingly sclerotic status quo. He was a communist that even Margaret Thatcher was able to take a shine to. Bob Hawke described his own 2.5-hour one-on-one meeting with Gorbachev in the Kremlin as one of the most compelling of his prime ministership. It was an extraordinary time. As the leader of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev brought openness to a closed society with his policy of glasnost. Dissidents were freed, as were many banned books and films. As some of the darker truths of Soviet history were confronted, journalists began to report more honestly on the present. With perestroika he tried to restructure a system deeply resistant to any such attempts. The nations of eastern Europe had their sovereignty restored and were freed from Soviet hegemony. Working together with President Ronald Reagan he achieved breakthroughs in arms control, including for some nuclear weapons. But, while he was a man of great vision, his foresight was patchier. He did not always predict the seismic consequences of his reforms, nor did he imagine that they would precipitate the very end of the USSR. As he dryly noted in his resignation speech, 'Events went a different way.' Tragically, the demise of the Soviet Union was not bloodless. On Gorbachev's watch, the military was used to crush dissent, including in Lithuania and Georgia. It is a cruel paradox that, during a time of exhilarating new freedoms, people were killed fighting for theirs. But it should also be noted that Gorbachev regularly resisted the urgings from hardline colleagues and the KGB to uphold the Soviet tradition of power through fear and through force. He was a man of principle, hope, resolve and enormous courage, and he did change the world. In a world profoundly divided, he was driven by an instinct for cooperation and unity. Ultimately, he lifted a great shadow that lay over humanity. And he strove to lift other shadows. Indeed, I spent time with him in Brisbane in 2006, when he co-chaired Earth Dialogues, the significant international energy and security conference. He was still very much a towering global figure, but I will always count it as a privilege to have had the chance to engage with such a world figure. Late in life when Gorbachev was asked what his epitaph should be he answered, 'We tried.' A true giant of the 20th century, he changed the world for the better. May he rest in peace.