Tuesday, 17 March 2020

Douglas Thompson Walpole

Mr McGHIE (Melton) (14:15): On 15 March the Melton community and the Labor Party lost a great champion. Douglas Thompson Walpole was born in 1942 in Leeds and migrated to Australia in 1955. Doug was truly a Labor man in the Labor Party and a true westie, having studied at Sunshine Technical School and Footscray Technical College and then started his career as an A-grade electrician. In 1969 he joined the Labor Party. He was an organiser with the Electrical Trades Union and president of the Bacchus Marsh branch of the Labor Party, as well as an executive member of the Ballarat federal electorate committee.

In 1992 Doug Walpole was elected to the other place as a Labor member for Melbourne Province. In his inaugural speech Doug commented about his previous run when he contested the then East Yarra Province in 1982, a very safe Liberal area until recently. The Labor Party was desperate for a candidate to run. He asked his Labor Party colleagues, ‘Can you guarantee me that I will not win?’. Things changed and Doug found himself elected to the other place in 1992. His inaugural speech highlighted many issues that would not be out of place today: industrial relations, unsafe work practices, workers affected when working in bushfire emergencies and even the need for recycling practices and the concern of supermarket packaging.

After Parliament, Doug moved to Tasmania with his partner, Jo, and ran a small business. They returned to Victoria and Melton in 2014. In 2011 Doug was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, which over the years robbed him of his memory and personality. He will be greatly missed by us all.