Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Leader of the Opposition) (14:05): With green eyes that smiled and a beard that looked like an heirloom from Abraham Lincoln, Moss Cass was a rare combination: a politician who could capture hearts figuratively and mend them literally. He helped develop open-heart surgery techniques. He built our first heart-lung machine. It was a fitting trajectory for a man who, as a boy, had sat on his father's shoulders, watching as he performed surgery.

Moss's parents, Ben and Esther, met and married in Perth but were from families that had fled anti-Jewish pogroms in what is now Poland but was then still part of the Russian empire. Somewhere along the way, a Polish fortune teller promised Esther three angels. She got three sons. Moss, or Moses Henry Cass, was the first cab off the rank, born in Narrogin in the Western Australian Wheatbelt. He would eventually marry artist and writer Shirley Shulman. It was love at first sight, and, for Moss, an entree into a world of artists, filmmakers and bohemians. As their son, Dan, wrote recently in the Saturday Paper:

Mum and Dad were dreamers and rebels. They had powerful imaginations working in different registers. Moss would carefully sneak up on a difficult truth; Shirley would ambush it with a joke.

After a stint in London, Moss was recruited to head the Trade Union Clinic and Research Centre, a community health facility set up by the Meatworkers Union in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray. Its aim was simple but noble: providing workers with free treatment and promoting preventative care.

When political life beckoned, Moss aimed high. His first attempt to get into parliament saw him running for Kooyong, where the incumbent was Robert Menzies. This might have struck some as being like trying to remove a mountain, but Moss did well enough to be emboldened. His tilt at another Liberal held seat proved more fruitful. In preparation for the battle for Maribyrnong, he enlisted Phillip Adams as his campaign manager. Phillip suggested the slogan 'I don't mind who you vote for as long as you think about it.' Maribyrnong has never been Liberal since.

Moss used his first speech to parliament to argue for the decriminalisation of abortion. His words were powerful and sometimes harrowing, all borne from his own experience as a doctor. He introduced Gough Whitlam to the health economist who would design Medibank, the forerunner to Medicare. He worked to decriminalise homosexuality. He showed impeccable taste by loving and protecting Double J, that rogue child of the ABC family. He persuaded Australia's media barons to sign up to a press council. As Australia's first ever environment and conservation minister, he laid the groundwork that protected the Great Barrier Reef, saved Fraser Island from sand mining and curtailed uranium mining in Kakadu.

In August 1975, the Bulletin gave a gleefully forensic account of the time that Moss, as media minister, encouraged the ABC to be more radical. ABC general manager Talbot Duckmanton sat in on the meeting but remained silent throughout. A producer at the meeting said he started off sitting in a chair with his hand to his mouth. Gradually, he sunk lower in the chair, and his hand moved across until it seemed he was holding his head in his hand. The journalists themselves were a lot keener. Surely that was the mark of the right person in the job.

His life after parliament was long and rich, and he was many things along the way: gardener, photographer, music lover, conservationist and progressive. An atheist who never lost sight of his Jewish cultural identity. A source of entertainment, guidance and love for his grandchildren and great-grandchild. A man who knew loss when his daughter, Deborah, died. A man who knew love. Now that Moss's long, rich life has drawn to a close, our hearts are with his family, especially with his wife, Shirley, and his children, Dan and Naomi. May he rest in peace.

The SPEAKER: As a mark of respect to the memory of the Hon. Dr Moses Henry Cass, I ask all present to rise in their places.

Honourable members having stood in their places—

The SPEAKER: I thank the House.

Debate adjourned.