Death
Alan Missen suffered a second heart attack and died at home on 30 March 1986. His death was recorded in The Age on 31 March 1986, including a tribute from the Prime Minister, Bob Hawke. When the Senate met for the first time after Missen's death on 8 April 1986 a white rose was placed on his vacant desk by his close friend Senator Chris Puplick. Tributes flowed from all sides of the Senate, including heartfelt words from the Labor Attorney-General, Senator Gareth Evans: "He was absolutely, unequivocally and uncompromisingly an idealist – right over at the far, idealistic end of the political spectrum ... There have not been very many like him in Australian politics, and there will not be again". Alan Missen was survived by his wife Mollie, who died 12 October 2008.
Richard Alston was appointed by the Liberal Party to fill the casual vacancy following Alan Missen's death. Justice Michael Kirby delivered the inaugural Alan Missen Memorial Lecture on 10 November 1986 in Melbourne.
Read more about this topic: Alan Missen
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“What I call middle-class society is any society that becomes rigidified in predetermined forms, forbidding all evolution, all gains, all progress, all discovery. I call middle-class a closed society in which life has no taste, in which the air is tainted, in which ideas and men are corrupt. And I think that a man who takes a stand against this death is in a sense a revolutionary.”
—Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)
“The techniques of opening conversation are universal. I knew long ago and rediscovered that the best way to attract attention, help, and conversation is to be lost. A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time giving wrong directions to a total stranger who claims to be lost.”
—John Steinbeck (1902–1968)