Tuesday, 10 May 2022
Condolences
Hon. Thomas Carter Reynolds
Condolences
Hon. Thomas Carter Reynolds
That this house expresses its sincere sorrow at the death, on 26 March 2022, of the Honourable Thomas Carter Reynolds and places on record its acknowledgement of the valuable services rendered by him to the Parliament and the people of Victoria as a member of the Legislative Assembly for the electoral district of Gisborne from 1979 to 1999 and as Minister for Sport, Recreation and Racing from 1992 to 1996 and Minister for Rural Development and Minister for Sport from 1996 to 1999.
In doing so I have some brief remarks on behalf of the government. It is an honour to acknowledge this gentleman and acknowledge that he has contributed a lot to this state and has unfortunately passed. As a former Minister for Agriculture, it is always pleasing for me to read about people that have come before me. Those that were farmers, particularly, I find interesting, and this gentleman no less was a former shearer.
Mr Reynolds was elected in 1979, representing the electorate of Gisborne. He was clearly passionate about his community, advocating both from within government and opposition for investment in his electorate. It is notable the considerable change and growth the electorate experienced during his time as a local member, including the increased growth of the region’s tourism market.
Mr Reynolds was clearly also a big fan of sport, following it both at the local and international levels, and the role that it can play in showcasing Victoria. As Minister for Sport for the entire Kennett government, he gave strong support to continue to promote Victorian sporting products.
Of course I would also like to acknowledge his role as Minister for Rural Development, as I have no doubt that he was energised, as many of us are in this place, by passionate country Victorians, who continue to punch well above their weight and come up with creative solutions to often very challenging problems.
I would like to acknowledge his considerable commitment to the service of the Victorian community, including in his role as a director of the Brisbane Lions. On behalf the government I extend my condolences to his family, particularly his wife, Helen, his children, Thomas and Grant, and of course his grandchildren.
Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (11:37): On behalf the coalition I am very pleased to rise and record our great appreciation and respect for Tom Reynolds. He was somebody that many of us knew and knew very well indeed. He was a very lively person and had a great sense of humour and great engagement across not just the Parliament but the broad community. I do want to put on record our condolences, particularly to Helen, who many of us also know, and to his family. They were a team, the two of them, and his love of sports and his commitment to so many sports were remarkable.
I was very happy to attend the funeral, to talk to people at the funeral and to hear very much about Tom’s engagement with the whole community in Macedon, Gisborne and through that region of the state. He had lived there most of his life, attending Bolinda State School, Kyneton High School and RMIT.
He had been, as the Leader of the Government has said, a successful farmer and later secretary of the local mechanics institute. He got a traineeship to GJ Coles and learned, I think, a lot about the management of larger firms through that process. He went shearing, as again the leader pointed out, and later with his great friends founded the Romsey hardware store, and indeed that was very much his life beyond that.
He was active in his local school council and was incredibly active as president of the Romsey Football Club. He was a prominent country cricketer as well, and that I think is very much his epitaph. He really engaged with local sport from the grassroots up. He was also of course a great supporter of the Brisbane Lions Football Club.
Tom more recently moved back to Victoria. He had lived for a while in Queensland and more recently moved back to Victoria and lived in Malcolm Street in South Yarra. He would often come into my office in South Yarra for a chat. He always had points of wisdom, points of good sense. He had just been around a long time and seen a lot of things, and I must say I greatly enjoyed his regular visits to my office to give me advice and to give the party advice.
But his genuine feeling for the state and his genuine commitment to sport cannot be doubted. As minister for sport and racing, all of which he just loved, he made a very big impact. He strengthened sport in this state—country sport, city sport and indeed higher level sport as well as the grassroots.
He was just a fine person. I really liked him and admired him very much indeed, and my recent dealings with him, as I said, I enjoyed immensely. So it is with sadness but also with affection that I pay tribute to a great person, a great Victorian and a huge exponent for not just the Liberal Party but community sport and strengthening that community sport involvement.
Ms LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (11:41): I also join this condolence debate with a great degree of sadness. Tom was a great friend of mine and somebody who I was very pleased to be able to call a friend. He was also a branch member of mine, having remained a member of the branches in what was originally his electorate of Gisborne his entire life. Tom was first elected to the seat of Gisborne on 5 May 1979. And he was preceded by Athol Guy, so he had big shoes to fill. He followed one of Australia’s most loved pop stars, but as an incredibly hardworking local member Tom filled those shoes very well. He actually pioneered the caravans for local members of Parliament. People would say, ‘You see him here, you see him there, you see that Reynolds bloke everywhere’, and that was because he towed his caravan around.
Prior to going into Parliament, as Mr Davis said, Mr Reynolds had a career in small business; he was a hardware merchant. That is probably where he learned his work ethic, and that is why he was so highly regarded—because as we all know, small business people work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He also started his career in GJ Coles, and he worked in the Williamstown store from 1957 to 1959. It was there that he met the love of his life, Helen. I was very interested to hear that story from their son Grant at the funeral service that was held for Tom.
Tom was the Minister for Sport, Recreation and Racing from 1992 to 1996. He was the Minister for Rural Development and Minister for Sport from 1996 to 1999 and the Shadow Minister for Sport, Recreation and Racing from 1982 to 1988 and 1991 to 1992. He did love his sport, and even in retirement he still loved his sport.
Tom and Helen retired to the Gold Coast, and Tom joined the board of the Brisbane Lions Football Club. My sister was actually with me at a Richmond function one day when we were playing Brisbane, because she is a Brisbane supporter, and she and Tom immediately hit it off and developed a great rapport. They would later exchange texts and talk about football between themselves. Tom was an incredibly generous man, and when Michael Voss retired he sent my sister Michael Voss’s playing jumper from one of his final games. She has that displayed with pride in her house, and I will always remember that that came from Tom Reynolds.
One of the great things about Tom and Helen was their Christmas cards every year. I would just like to share with you their Christmas card from last Christmas. They always had a little ditty about their year, and it was always set to the tune of a Christmas carol. It was in last year’s Christmas card that I first learned that Tom was not particularly well. Last year’s Christmas card is set to the tune of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. I will not sing it, but I hope you can get the gist of it. It went:
God rest ye merry Melbournites, we’ve joined your well masked throng.
We’ve been here for three lockdowns so we feel we quite belong.
We sure will miss the Gold Coast as here winter’s cold and long.
So sad tidings from us as we’re rather bored, locked up at home,
Looking forward to the day we both can roam!
God bless ye hospitals and staff, we’ve surely had our fill.
Between us let’s just say we’ve run up quite a hefty bill!
The kids said move to Melbourne whilst you both are with us still,
Not glad tidings for Lions and the Swans,
But never fear,
Merry Christmas and a ’rona free New Year!
Tom’s Christmas cards were always a highlight at Christmas at our house, with everybody wanting to sing along to the verse in his Christmas cards. And as you may have got from when he said ‘Not glad tidings for Lions and the Swans’, Tom was a mad Lions supporter. Helen was a mad Sydney supporter, a Swans supporter, and that probably comes from her origins in the western suburbs. She was actually an Altona girl but used to shop in the Williamstown Coles. I know that my dad was also a Swans supporter because it was originally South Melbourne’s recruiting ground.
Tom will be sadly missed by all of us who knew him, but I would like to particularly extend my deepest condolences to his wife, Helen; his sons, Thomas and Grant; his daughters-in-law, Kathy and Amanda; his grandchildren, Joanna, Naomie, Alison, Sam and Abigail; and his great-grandson, Maxwell.
Mr ATKINSON (Eastern Metropolitan) (11:46): I will not go over some of the matters that have been canvassed by the three previous speakers in this particular tribute to Tom Reynolds. I actually had the opportunity of serving with Tom when I was elected in 1992. As part of the Kennett government Tom Reynolds was a minister. What I think really defines this man, apart from anything else, is that it would be hard to find anybody on either side of the house who did not have absolute respect for Tom Reynolds. He was a person who got on very well with people. He was interested in people. He had a great sense of humour. He was a very genuine person.
The roles that he took as a minister for the Liberal government as part of the coalition, and the portfolios have been described today, he tackled with a real enthusiasm and again a genuine desire to make a difference—to make a positive difference—in driving those portfolios to make Victoria a better place, to deliver services for people and to ensure that Victoria was the state within this commonwealth that really stood out. That was after the state had taken a bit of a battering in terms of its reputation around the nation for a number of reasons.
Of course at that time there was a fair bit of angst, or rancour, between the political parties. As I said, in that context Tom Reynolds being able to have friends on both sides of the aisle was a significant thing. He was certainly, as Mr Davis reflected, a person that you could talk to and seek advice from. He was very knowledgeable, and that knowledge came not just from his political relationships and indeed the fact that he was very much across the portfolios that he had but also from that experience that has been reflected by each of the previous speakers in his career prior to coming into Parliament.
He is a person that will be missed by people in the Liberal Party today and certainly by many people in Gisborne who knew of his extraordinary work ethic and his commitment to that electorate and commitment more broadly to the people of Victoria, particularly in the agricultural sector and certainly in sport. He was absolutely a mad Fitzroy supporter, and it was not surprising that he went on to support the Brisbane Lions, having had his heart broken, like so many Fitzroy supporters, when they moved north. But indeed he made that a successful venture as well. His contribution there—I am sure the current people at the Brisbane Lions would recognise that part of the success that they went on to have as a football club was due to his experience and knowledge and again his enthusiasm and his ability to bring people together.
Tom Reynolds will certainly be missed, of course mostly by his friends and family, and we think of them at this time as well.
The PRESIDENT: I ask members to signify their assent by rising in their places for 1 minute.
Motion agreed to in silence, members showing unanimous agreement by standing in their places.