Chris Whelan introduced a very special guest, the Hon. Brian Burke, to our first meeting of the Rotary year.
Mr Brian Burke was the Premier of Western Australia between 1983-1988. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly at the age of 26 and became Premier of WA when he was 36. He stepped away from politics in 1988 after serving for five years.
The reason he entered politics was for the love of his father. His father was also very involved with the Labor Party until he clashed with the powerful unionist Joe Chamberlain and was then expelled from the party. Brian’s Dad was re-admitted to the party but never contested electorate or parliamentary positions again.
The motto he lived his political life by and one which Brian followed was to keep the Labor Party in the middle of the spectrum and to live a life of public service.
Six months after his father died in January, 1973, Brian won his first by election by 30 votes. And the person he wanted to be the most proud of that moment, had gone; but by then he had met Sue. Brian and Sue married at 18 and have been together for 61 years. They have six children and 20 grandchildren.
In all the time Brian served in politics, Sue never once queried why or what he was doing; but always gave him her full support. Brian told us he was a most fortunate man, who had the love, affection and backing of his family.
The pace of life, which included politics, was slower and gentler in the 1980s. There was no internet or email, and twitter was the sound birds made.
Brian stepped down from the premiership at the age of 41, when he and the Labor Party still had 80 per cent of the vote. He and Sue had decided that he would leave after five years, before party or the electorate’s support for him had changed.
Prime Minister Bob Hawke pleaded with him not to go, but when Brian stuck fast to his decision, asked him what he wanted. Brian said he would like to be Ambassador to Ireland and the Holy See, and the PM made it happen.
Three of Brian and Sue’s sons married Irish girls and two branches of their family now live in Ireland, so Brian and Sue visit often.
Politics in the 1980s was a rollercoaster ride, with plenty of ups and downs. There were politicians of great intellect and charisma, such as Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard, even Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
Nowadays, by comparison, leaders such as Roger Cook and Anthony Albanese, are mediocre. But Labor will win the next election, because Brian likened the public’s mindset to taking your car to a car dealer and asking for a worse car.
1980’s politics was described as being too close to business. But to Brian’s knowledge, he nor any other politician of the time was offered a dollar or bribe, with most of pollies hardly having two bob to rub together. But they were honest.
During the Royal Commission, investigators found Deputy Premier Peter Dowding had $10,000 in cash for a travelling allowance and Brian was found to have made five overseas trips on the pollies’ imprest system; thereby double dipping. When Brian found out about the misunderstanding, he paid the money back immediately but was sent to gaol.
He spent a month at Canning Vale and then the rest of his sentence at Woorooloo, where everything was a green mad world with no fences or walls. Other detainees were aware of him with one young man asking him to help get a licence to catch and endanger native birds – he was in gaol because he hand painted two green parrots’ feathers a cinnamon colour and sold them not once but twice for thousands of dollars.
Brian said his conscience is clear and he is proud of what he achieved as State Labor leader. The party abolished capital punishment in 1984, introduced the first Quit Smoking Campaign in the world, re-opened the Perth to Fremantle line and extended north of Perth as far as Yanchep and south to Mandurah; established a marine national park and equal opportunity legislation.
Brian is comfortable with who he is and although he is not ambitious at age 78, he is happy that all his children are happily married and his grandchildren are good people and making their way in the world.
If he had his time over again, at the age of 26 when he was working in television, he would not go into politics now, although there were many rewards – he and Sue spent half-an-hour on their own with the Queen and they have met several Popes.
Brian has raised a very high bar for our guest speakers to follow, and as Chris said when thanking him for coming along, we could have listened to his life story all day.
David Barton who will guide the Membership Portfolio through the next phase of the Regionalisation Pilot in Zone 8 from 1 January 2026.
