Michael Organ
The following is an edited version of remarks made in the House of Representatives by Greens MP Michael Organ on August 12.
I rise today to speak in memory of my dear friend Bill Whiley, who passed away last Thursday evening, August 5, at the age of 76, as a result of the onset of asbestos-related mesothelioma.
I came to know Bill on the Sandon Point community picket, set up in March 2001. Bill was an active supporter of the picket, and it remains in place as we speak due in large part to his efforts.
Sandon Point was just one of the many union and community pickets he supported during his long life. Bill's philosophy could best be summed up in the words: "If you don't fight, you lose." He was a fighter for the ordinary Australian: a fighter to the death.
Bill was born at Millthorpe, near Orange. He began his working life in 1947 as a shunter on the NSW railways, based in Broken Hill and working throughout the western districts of NSW.
Bill was radicalised by the 1949 coal strike. The following year, he got a job in the Broken Hill mines and joined the Communist Party because he was "fed up" with the Labor Party after it supported the jailing of Miners Federation leaders.
Along with his good mate and mentor Bill Flynn, Bill Whiley fought the entrenched power of the ALP's right wing on the Barrier Industrial Council and was the last Communist Party of Australia councillor elected in Broken Hill. Bill was a long-term member of the Broken Hill Field Naturalists Society and an early and strong advocate for conservation issues.
In 1975, Bill moved to the Illawarra and began his life as a coalminer at Coalcliff, north of Wollongong. He quickly became involved with the local union, and I understand that the manager was sacked because he hired him. Bill went on to become lodge president and was elected to the southern district board of management. In 1982 he was at the head of the hundreds of miners and steelworkers from the Illawarra who stormed Old Parliament House in Canberra.
His retirement from the coal industry in August 1987 only meant one thing for Bill: more time to spend on industrial and community campaigns.
In 1988 he stood on an Independent/Greens ticket with well-known unionist and environmentalist Jack Mundey for the NSW upper house.
For the past few years, Bill was secretary of the NSW Retired Mineworkers Association and at the time of his death he was secretary of the NSW Combined Pensioners and Superannuants Association, in which he played a leading role in the campaign to protect Medicare.
Bill joined the Greens around the time of my election to this place in October 2002, and the Cunningham result and rise of the Greens throughout Australia in recent years had given him hope, he told me.
Towards the end of July, Bill joined a unique band of activists to be awarded life membership by the South Coast Labor Council in recognition of his long involvement in significant industrial and political campaigns in the Illawarra.
Bill was a rare individual who cared deeply about the lives of ordinary Australians and worked tirelessly to improve them. He was against unfairness, exploitation and inequality wherever it was found. Bill's ideals of openness, inclusion and tolerance were the antithesis of modern "wedge" politics, and stand as an example to us all.
From Green Left Weekly, September 29, 2004.
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