Mr DUTTON (Dickson—Leader of the Opposition) (14:03): on indulgence—I join with the Prime Minister's fine words and honour the life of Mikhail Gorbachev. Unlike other leaders in the Soviet party who were born before the Russian Revolution, Gorbachev was a child of the Soviet system. His family were peasants and experienced the horrors of the 1930s and 1940s: agricultural collectivisation, Stalin's purges, Nazi invasion and occupation, and, of course, famine. Like so many during Stalin's great terror, Gorbachev's grandfathers were arrested on fabricated charges. One was exiled and the other imprisoned for 14 months. Those early experiences naturally shaped the man. Despite these hardships, Gorbachev was a star student and a prolific reader. Testimony to his early leadership potential, he organised sport and social activities and was liked and trusted by his classmates. In his late teens he spent several summers farming the land with his father, working 20-hour days and operating a mammoth combine harvester. For helping to produce a record harvest in 1948, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. That decoration, combined with his intelligence, saw the unlikely boy rise from a peasant background and walk through the doors of Moscow State University in 1950 to study law. One year later at a dance he would meet his future wife, Raisa Titarenko, whose family also suffered under Stalin's cruelty. In 1952, motivated by patriotism, future promise and the pressure to conform, Gorbachev joined the Communist Party, as many others had done. Upon graduating from university in 1955 he returned to his native region in the city of Stavropol. He took up his first political job in the Communist Party's youth organisation. His career would see him rise through the party's ranks from first secretary of the Stavropol regional committee in 1970 to secretary of the central committee in 1978 to appointment to the politburo in 1980 and finally to general secretary in 1985, the last leader of the Soviet Union. By the time Gorbachev was in the top job the horrors, oppression and demoralisation of the Soviet system were of course known beyond the Iron Curtain, with the publishing of The Gulag Archipelago. Then in 1986 those realities were amplified as news spread of the Chernobyl disaster. With the corrupt Soviet system already cracking, Gorbachev set out to reform it through the policies of restructuring and openness—particularly, through perestroika and glasnost. Indeed it was Gorbachev's openness which saw him cultivate warm relations with President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher to tear down the wall and to do business. Gorbachev wanted the socialist system to live up to its original ideals. Historian Archie Brown described him as: … a pragmatist … with an extraordinary capacity for learning and adjustment … the vanguard of reform and the guarantor of its continuity. Gorbachev's endeavours to democratise Soviet socialism, to weaken the state and to strengthen the individual inevitably saw the system collapse, and biographer William Taubman said: Gorbachev made it to the top by seeming to be an ideal product of the Soviet system— but masterfully consolidated power to transform it. He went on to say: He dismantled an empire (or acquiesced in its dismemberment) without the orgy of blood and violence that has accompanied the breakup of so many others. For that achievement Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. Twenty-four years after he resigned as the leader of the Soviet Union and after the dissolution of the USSR, Gorbachev wrote: An optimist is someone dissatisfied with the existing state of affairs who is not resigned to it and constantly looks… for opportunities to make the world a better place… I declare myself an optimist. Today the world remains optimistic that Russia's future will have more Gorbachevs and fewer Putins. On behalf of the opposition and on behalf of the coalition I offer my heartfelt condolences to Mr Gorbachev's daughter, Irina, and his family. May he rest in peace. The SPEAKER: As a mark of respect I invite all present to rise in their places. Honourable members having stood in their places— The SPEAKER: I thank the House.