Nearly a decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, Michael Danby was maintaining the rage. In his maiden speech to Federal Parliament in 1998, the Labor member for Melbourne Ports noted the “welcome destruction of communism”.
To be still fighting the Cold War as the new century approached, when many others were more worried about the Y2K bug or the Sydney Olympics, marked Danby as a rare beast in the Federal Parliament.
The 63-year-old, who announced his retirement on Thursday, was a foreign policy ideologue and his positions were not without contradiction.
He hated Communism, which made him deeply sceptical about Australia’s embrace of China, while at the same time having an unwavering support for Israel.
Read the article by Angus Grigg in the Australian Financial Review.