If Robert Nestdale were alive today, he would still be youthful at 45 years of age; he would probably have achieved even greater international recognition for his advocacy for children in war torn regions and third world nations; and he certainly would have had a very busy week contacting Liberal parliamentarians to discuss the 20th Anniversary of the murder of five Australian journalists in Timor.
If he wasn't in Rwanda or Bosnia or Jerusalem or Bougainville, he would surely have telephone you too, Jason, ostensibly to find out what the Young Liberals are thinking and doing about new claims that the Whitlam Government was informed of the murders 12 hours after they took place.
I say ostensibly, because Robert's real motive for calling would have been to brief you fully on the issue and forcefully suggest that you start raising merry hell about Labor's shameful mishandling of the East Timor issue.
I know that he would have said, because during my term as Young Liberal President, I had several such phone calls myself.
One issue Robert continuously raised with me was Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. The year was 1986 — some two years before the Royal Commission. Robert also contacted me about the need for the Liberals to reach out for green preferences. He also raised the issues of child protection and the status of women.
On most political issues Robert was ahead of his time, and I would like to let you in on his secret in the course of my remarks tonight.
In 431 BC, the brilliant Athenian Statesman, Pericles, was entrusted with the responsibility of honouring the first Athenian soldiers killed in action against the Spartans in the first Peloponnesian War.
Pericles funeral oration was delivered in accordance with the law, which required a special ceremony be held to mark the virtue of those who died in the service of their country.
Pericles began his address by questioning the veracity of the law, saying:
"The virtues of many ought not be endangered by the management of any one person when their credit must precariously depend on his oration, which may be good and may be bad".
Of course Pericles need not have worried as to the quality of his oration. Rather than supplying me with inspiration, his words simply piled more pressure on to the sense of honour and responsibility I feel in being asked to speak tonight!
If feeling of humility were some sort of guarantee for a great speech, then I would be off to a flying start in my remarks to you tonight.
Unfortunately for me, the power of Pericles' oration, like Abraham Lincoln's address at Gettysburg; and Robert Kennedy's address at his brother's funeral does not lie in successfully fulfilling a solemn duty to the dead.
In fact, these great orators fulfilled an even greater duty to the living. Their eloquence ennobled and empowered their respective communities.
Robert Nestdale's story is, for the Young Liberal Movement, a key chapter in our unwritten history.
My responsibility tonight is in part, to convey some of the facts of that history, but more importantly to persuade you of the meaning and continuing relevance of Robert's political legacy.
For the broad membership of the Young Liberal Movement who have been deprived of the opportunity of knowing Robert, it is not so much Robert the memory, as it is Robert the idea that has power and relevance.
As a friend of Robert's I am gratified by this occasion. However, as an event, the Oration must be underpinned by something more than private friendship. It must examine Robert's substantial public contribution to Australian liberalism.
To do this, there can be no better starting point than the 1981 Young Liberal Convention held in Hobart at the end of Robert's term as Federal Young Liberal President.
The fact that this Convention was held "before my time" in the Young Liberal is a euphemism for saying I was not actually in attendance. I was still at school during Robert's final year in the Young Liberals.
But in the true Young Liberal spirit of improvisation, I won't let that deter me from speaking authoritatively about what took place!
My account has been carefully researched and featured a number of oral history sessions, conducted with people I shall refer to as the "Elders" of the Young Liberal Movement — people who actually did attend the Convention.
These briefings were scheduled in the best tradition of the Young Liberal Movement - by that I mean they were in the early hours of the morning, and preceded by copious quantities of alcohol.
In addition, I felt it wise to find additional corroborative evidence of what happened at the Hobart Convention. I have done this with media clippings that verify even the most macho accounts of what took place.
Now to understand the Hobart Convention, you need to appreciate the world was quite a difference place in 1981. For one thing, we were in Government a Federal level.
In fact, Malcolm Fraser had just been re-elected for his third term. But there was considerable fall-out in the Liberal Party over Fraser's handling of the 1980 Election Campaign — particularly in Queensland where the Liberals had split from the Joh Bjelke-Peterson-led Nationals and run a separate Senate ticket.
Fraser refused to give endorsement and support to these Queensland Liberals — a move which sent him on a collision course with the Young Liberals — a move which set him on a collision course with the Young Liberals and their brash Federal President, Robert Nestdale.
The 1980 Federal Election also marked the beginning of a collapse in the Liberal Party's Youth Vote, which defected to Don Chip's Democrats enabling them to take control of the Senate for the first time.
Fraser was also under siege on the industrial front; youth unemployment was soaring; and after just 5 years in office his Government appeared to be lacking a coherent political vision or direction.
Having said that, the Federal Liberal Party was, by degrees, ceding policy territory to the National Country Party and thus drifting to the Right. The Young Liberal Movement under Robert's leadership were increasingly provoked by what they saw as mounting evidence of a betrayal of the Party's philosophic beliefs.
So 1980 was a year of brewing discontent within the Young Liberals. However, in deference to the federal election campaign, Robert had restrained the organisation and himself from publicly criticising the Federal Parliamentary Party.
This restraint was either misinterpreted or disregarded by the Federal Liberal Party, who appear to have underestimated the depth of feeling that was developing in the Movement.
As a result, they were unprepared for what happened at YLM National Convention in 1981, when the flower of Australian political youth gathered in Hobart.
The tone for Hobart was set in a lead story in the Australian which ran a week before the convention had even begun:
Australia has been standing still for the past five years and it is the Government's fault, according to the Federal President of the Young Liberal Movement of Australia, Mr Robert Nestdale.
Mr Nestdale, in a speech he will deliver at the opening of the Convention on Wednesday, says that after five years the unemployment position in Australia has not improved. It has become worse. He claims that interest rates are no better, taxation takes a bigger bite than it did before, and the national wage bill has remained fairly steady in real terms...
Mr Nestdale says the economic crises of the 70s should have given some clear message to the Government.
"The time is now for the politics of inaction and boredom to give way to the politics of purposes," he says.
"The time is now for the Parliament to reassert its authority and responsibility and to upgrade the function and efficiency of Government operations — without the indecency of half baked, superficial, sword waving razor ganging..."
Mr Nestdale accuses the Government of being in office without a properly identified set of policy goals... His speech, which ranks as one of the most hard hitting even delivered by a Federal President at a national Young Liberal Convention, says accusations that the Government and the Liberal Party are insensitive to the poor, the young, the black, the ethnic, the sick, the jobless, the disabled, and the homeless would not have been made as regularly or as strongly if there weren't some truth in the charges.
Last month the President of Queensland Young Liberals, Mr Don Markwell demanded that the Prime Minister Mr Fraser should be sacked because of disloyalty to the Queensland Party during the election".
Robert's leaking of his speech to the Australian lit a fuse which led to a spectacular week long show-down with the Federal Parliamentary Party on a range of policies.
Some of the radical, outrageous policy motions adopted by the Hobart Convention included:
Other delegates moved resolutions calling for:
...and so on it went.
It is also worth noting a motion was successfully moved by Saul Eslake calling on the Federal Government to block the proposed the Franklin Blow Gordon River Dam. Saul's resolution was passed three times by the 1981; 1982 and 1983 National Conventions.
And so, every day of the Convention week the Young Liberals grabbed national media attention. The Federal Government was repeatedly censured; and in the words of one delegate, you could actually feel the events begin to slide out of control.
By the time Robert delivered his official speech there were cartoons in all the major newspapers, such as the one which pictured a little young Liberal standing on a big pile of books, delivering a canning to Malcolm Fraser who had bent over double to take his punishment.
In another place, at another time, this publicity may have been cause for sober reflection on the part of the Young Liberals. In fact the reverse occurred, and a swag of delegates were incited to start moving urgency for yet more censure motions.
The reaction in Canberra was one of fury. The proverbial "powers that be" were livid with Robert and the Young Liberals.
There was unexpected news that the Federal Treasurer, John Howard would make an unscheduled visit to Hobart.
In response, one very brave Queenslander (who is now a highly respected Anglican Priest) sent a message to Canberra saying that if Mr Howard tried to give a speech ticking off the Young Libs he would move a motion that he no longer be heard.
Mr Howard arrived on the Wednesday, but did not attempt to address the Convention. He sat quietly at the head table for a full afternoon session, and there can be no doubt that his presence had some pacifying effect on proceedings.
As a result, the Young Liberals stopped short of considering an extraordinary motion calling Malcolm Fraser to step aside as Party Leader and Australian Prime Minister. A watered down motion calling on the Federal Leader to support all endorsed Liberal candidates was passed instead.
However, the spirited policy debate continued.
Robert's parting shot as Young Liberal Federal President was reported in the media during the week after national Convention.
It was a nine-point plan calling on the Party hierarchy to be more accountable to rank and file members. (Does any of this sound familiar?) They wanted a broader based election campaign committee; and demanded that the Director of the Party Secretariat produce a detailed written report at Federal Liberal Party Executive meetings.
To some people in 1995 these events might sound like the result of a feral element in the Young Liberal Movement seizing control of the organisation, and behaving in a brazen, disloyal and destructive fashion.
In fact nothing could be further from the truth.
First, the "ring-leaders" at Convention included some of the most exciting political talent ever to come out of the Young Liberal Movement. This group included the likes of:
Jeff Kennett, Phillip Ruddock, Fred Chaney and Michael Hodgeman headed a list of senior Liberal Parliamentarians who also made the pilgrimage to Hobart.
These were clever, articulate, thinking successful people. And they displayed an astonishing unity of purpose in taking on the Fraser Government.
In the aftermath of the Convention, exhausted delegates returned home from a once-in-a-lifetime experience. One Victorian is reported to have fallen asleep on the Sunday, and not woken up until the Tuesday.
Saul Eslake took over the Federal Presidency and had, in his words a lot of "fence mending" to do in Canberra.
Robert Nestdale, had retired from the Presidency, but was now the subject of a number of personal profiles pieces in the media. In one interview he described his foremost political quality as being is "velvet glove approach" - which according to Robert meant a quiet persistent persuasiveness.
Unfortunately, this tame self assessment had little credibility in the eyes of an angry and unforgiving Liberal Party who regarded the Hobart Convention as a political fiasco. Robert found he had acquired the most powerful enemies imaginable, and he had furnished them with ammunition that effectively ruined this immediate prospects of a political career.
I always had the impression that this didn't bother Robert in the slightest.
You see, for Robert, the fear of making a mistake was almost inconsequential compared with his fear of missing an opportunity — any opportunity — to make a difference.
He seemed to relish the act of nailing his colours to the mast. And invariably, his colours were the highest and brightest of them all.
Robert disliked those who achieved high political office only to become, the strong words of Bernard Shaw "smirched with compromise, rotted with opportunism, mildewed by expedience, stretched out of shape with wire pulling and putrefied with permeation".
I recall he once quoted President John F Kennedy, saying that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, at the time of crises or great national need refused to take sides and sat instead on the proverbial political fence.
One journalist who interviewed Robert commented that young political lions often became:
"...tame malleable political pussies once they are given a career to hold at risk... (but) with Mr Nestdale, the process of mellowing seems to have been reversed".
And Robert said of himself:
"I started out as a very conservative young person, and it seems that as I grow older, I grow more and more convinced of the need for more and more liberalism".
So if the Liberal Party was unforgiving, Robert was conspicuously unrepentant of his leadership at Hobart. Robert would and did walk to the ends of the earth in the name of a just cause. And I suspect he believed that time would ultimately heal all.
Looking back at the Convention, it is hard to argue with anything Robert and the other delegates were saying in 1981. Virtually every one of their foolish, radical policy positions have been implemented or are being implemented, with the belated support of the Federal Opposition.
Robert's criticism of the Party administration and Fraser's leadership style have also turned out to be correct.
If one's actions are to be assessed in terms of outcomes, then the Young Liberals in Hobart have been totally, completely and utterly vindicated in the strong stand they took.
On the other hand, those who failed to listen to the Young Liberals were routed in 1983 Federal Election.
But instead of conceding the error of their ways, the drift to the right and "cleansing" of so-called "bleeding heart Liberals" like Chris Puplick; Ian MacPhee, Fred Chaney and Peter Baume continued and characterised more than ten years in the political wilderness.
In 1995 the Party has recognised the political folly of some more extreme policy positions. But that is a long way from saying we have embraced the liberalism that inspired Robert Nestdale.
All too often I have listened to well intentioned policy debates in which the cause of youth, the unemployed, women, and ethnic communities are argued in terms of political imperatives. It is almost as if we have to apologise for taking up these issues which in fact have their roots solidly based in Liberal philosophy.
It seems to be me that new political pragmatism is reaching the right conclusions for the wrong reasons.
And this is not the basis for good policy.
For example if as a Party we address the concerns of women, simply as a vote grabbing exercise, then it is likely we will be ongoing silver-medallists in the policy debate; and our pro-women rhetoric will have a decidedly insincere ring.
Secondly, political pragmatism means that issues where there aren't votes get left off the agenda altogether. Issues like Aboriginal Affairs; Refugee policy; and for that matter Gareth Evans' entire blander than bland foreign policy which once gave Australian an enviable reputation for being at the forefront of innovative diplomatic solutions in the human rights arena.
These are the big issues of our time.
Then there are a raft of issues where we can do much, much better. Young children whose mothers are in prison — there are no votes in that; brain damaged young adults — definitely no votes in that; human rights for the tens of thousands of developmentally disabled Australians — an issue where again there are very few votes.
Yet these are questions where liberalism has so much to offer.
I have no quibble whatsoever with innovative policies to improve public administration and economic management — but these policies are merely a means to a greater end.
My question as a Liberal is: What is that greater purpose?
I do not question the wisdom that says we must win votes to win Government — but I would like to know what it is we want to do when we get there!
Our Parliamentary representatives are necessarily driven by the issues of the day.
But the heart of our Party throbs our ideas. Much of the cut and thrust of daily media debate is junk food that doesn't benefit our heart. It is personality based; it is negative; and invariably the need for a "story" to have a simply angle obscures the complex issues that underpin the debate.
In contrast, it is a healthy diet of thoughtful political idealism that gets us out of bed at 3am to open the Party's stands at polling booths on election day.
Where our Labor opponent are sustained by the vested interest of the organised trade union movement, we are sustained by our ideas. Ours is the harder course — but it is also the morally superior course to take.
If we fail to nurture ideas; if we seek to crush out diversity in our thinking; if we can't cope rationally with a robust examination of our philosophic roots, then we will not survive.
Over the years, the Young Liberal Movement has almost single-handedly taken on the job of renewing Liberal policy debate. In recent years Women's Council has joined the fray — and that is a welcome development.
In all these issues, Robert was ahead of his time. Not because he was experienced; or brilliant; or had some unique insight denied to everyone else. Robert was ahead of conventional wisdom because he as a thinking liberal. He trusted his philosophy — indeed, as Hobart has shown, he was almost intoxicated with the power of liberal ideas.
In closing tonight, I would like to quote the inscription on the Reverend Martin Luther King's gravestone. The inscription is a verse from the Book of Genesis which gives an account of Joseph, his multicolour coat and his envious brothers.
The inscription recalls King's "I have a dream" speech and reads simply:
"Behold, here cometh the dreamer. Let us slay him and see what becomes of his dream".
Robert Nestdale was a man who could truly say that he acted with courage and compassion on the strength of his convictions.
What happens next is up to us.
For this reason, on behalf of those who are "true believers", I congratulate the Young Liberal Movement for instituting this annual Robert Nestdale Oration which is an expression of your commitment to keep the Nestdale dream alive. Not for Robert's sake, but for all our sakes!
In doing so, you not only honour Robert but also bring honour upon yourselves.