Parliament Honours the late Hon Elaine Nile

Wednesday, 9th November 2011

The Upper House of the NSW Parliament halted proceedings on Tuesday 8th November to honour the life and public service of the Hon Elaine Nile who lost her battle with cancer on the 17th October 2011. The Public gallery was filled with friends and CDP supporters who knew and loved her.

In what became a stirring tribute to a life dedicated to others, all sides of politics gave moving accounts of her contribution as a former member of the Legislative Council. Husband, the Rev Hon Fred Nile MLC, gave the following address in reply:

"I sincerely thank the House and the Minister, the Hon. Michael Gallacher, who moved this condolence motion for my wife, the Hon. Elaine Blanche Nile. It has been very moving to hear the 16 members of the House who have spoken about their knowledge of Elaine either face to face or from what they have read, and I thank each one for participating today. It far exceeds anything I could have expected. Elaine and I always keep underestimating the response of the public as occurred with her thanksgiving service. She suggested a small church and I said, 'I don't think it will be big enough.' She said, 'I don't think anyone will go to my funeral.' We had nearly 800 people filling the Calvary Chapel auditorium.

I also thank all Elaine's friends and colleagues as well as my son and daughter-in-law and granddaughter for being here today. Thank you for being here through the afternoon. You are very encouraging to me. It helps when you have a political party and various organisations that operate more or less with a family spirit than simply as an organisation. I thank God that we have been able to develop that spirit in our party and affiliated organisations. Elaine played a very big part in helping to create that family attitude where everybody counted and everybody mattered. She treated everyone with importance no matter who they were and regardless of their age, background or ethnic background. They were all treated in exactly the same way.

Today is a difficult one for me in concluding this condolence motion. The Minister asked me whether I would do that. Usually the Minister who moves the motion speaks in reply, but I acknowledge that this is a special occasion and I am happy to do it. However, it is still difficult as I think of those nearly 60 years of our loving relationship, first with Elaine as my teenage girlfriend from 1952 and our courtship from the time I first saw the girls on the Revesby church tennis court, one of whom was Elaine, never realising that she would become my wife. We were engaged in 1955 and finally married on 6 December 1958. Elaine always had a strong faith from the time she became a committed Christian, as I did at the same time at that Revesby Evangelical Congregational Church. We both came from non-Christian backgrounds. They were not bad families; they just were not involved in any way with church life or Christian activity, so it was a completely new experience for both of us to move into that church family. As members have heard, after about six months we both warmly and genuinely responded and said we would like to be committed Christians and accept Jesus Christ as our personal saviour, to trust him, that he died on the cross of Calvary for our sins, and that through that faith in Jesus Christ we inherit eternal life. The message of eternal life is what Elaine was anxious would come through that thanksgiving service. I know that it did in the way in which she planned it.

Every time Elaine had the opportunity to speak in this place and in church services and meetings all around Australia and overseas, she would always testify to her faith, was never ashamed of her faith. For example, in her maiden speech on 8 June 1988, so that all members of the House would know exactly where she stood she said:

I am a Christian and I do not have any doubts about my faith as it is in the living word of God, Jesus Christ, and the written word of God, the Holy Scriptures, the Bible. The way I live and what I believe is based on that. At the age of 16 I accepted Christ into my life. I did not grow up in a religious family. ... During the past 30 years we have had some traumatic experiences, that is in our family, but I can testify that Jesus Christ himself, and a personal faith in him and prayer, has taken us through.

Elaine included those sentiments whenever she could in her speeches as well as in meetings that she addressed. Our relationship is very much described in the earliest words of the Bible, in Genesis Chapter 2.24. Elaine often quoted these words, as I have also. It states, 'A man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and they shall became one flesh. They shall become one.' That certainly has happened in our relationship. We became one, in many ways became, as people have said, mates, like a brother and sister, a husband and wife. Our relationship became so intertwined. Elaine's most often criticism of me would be that she would say, 'I was going to say something, Fred, and I was saying it and you finished it off. Let me finish off what I wanted to say.' So we both were always thinking on the same track.

The final five weeks that Elaine spent in hospital, particularly in a private room at the Calvary Hospital palliative care ward, I was able to visit Elaine every day, usually at night, and spent time with her and talking with her. Before I left I always would do something that I wanted to do, and she wanted me to do it as well, read from the Bible her favourite passages, particularly from the Psalms, and then pray with and for Elaine. That became a precious time for both of us. I did not expect Elaine to die. In fact I had booked another appointment with the cancer specialist for the very day in which the thanksgiving service was held, but it was not to be. So it was a privilege for me on the night of 17 October to be praying with Elaine. The doctors had said, 'We feel she is moving into the final stages of her life. We hope that something can be done, but we just want to warn you.' I was hoping it would not happen but I sensed that she was coming to the end of her life.

As I prayed with her I committed her to the Lord in prayer and said when she would open her eyes she would see Jesus Christ. As I prayed with her she was sort of dozing. She opened her eyes and in the twinkling of an eye, as it says in the Bible, one twinkle she was with me and the next twinkle she was gone. I still could not believe that she had passed away and I rushed out to get the nurse. I said, 'Elaine, I cannot discern her breath but she is breathing.' She has been breathing deeply. Sometimes in the three years at home, when she was sleeping the breathing was so slight. I would lean over to make sure she was alive and breathing because I could not sense her chest going up and down. That happened on that night. On this occasion when the nurse came in, 'We are sorry, yes. Elaine has passed away.'

But I remember the words that Elaine said to me regularly, 'Remember, Fred, absent from the body present with the Lord.' So it is a great loss to me; also to our four children, Stephen, Sharon, Mark and David, and our eight grandchildren who loved their grandmother, nanna-Joshua, Jessica, Montana, Jack, Matilda, Lily, Elijah and Briarna. Elaine fought the good fight of faith from the time of her conversion and especially over these last three years. Three years ago she was diagnosed with cancer of the liver by her general practitioner, Dr Mary Cormack. I was pleased Mary was at the thanksgiving service with other doctors from the Medical Benchmark practice. It used to be the Women's Medical Centre in Macquarie Street. She diagnosed that there was something seriously wrong with Elaine. We did not know. We thought she might have pulled a muscle or something that caused the pain. But she diagnosed it. We thank her for her professionalism. She ordered me to take Elaine straight to the emergency department at St Vincents Hospital.

Following scans at the hospital we were advised that Elaine had a very serious cancer of the liver. Elaine is a very realistic Christian and straight away she asked the specialist, "How long do I have to live?" He replied, "Six days, perhaps longer with treatment." This was a great shock to both of us. However, Elaine underwent a course of chemotherapy which as an initial treatment they thought was successful and said the cancer had gone into remission. We later found out even though you have positron emission tomography scans and so on-as one specialist said-you can have a microcell that is so microscopic that it does not show up in any tests so the cancer is still there. That happened with Elaine, so to our great disappointment the cancer returned again to her liver.

Elaine went through another course of chemotherapy which on this occasion was unsuccessful. Then the doctor at St Vincents Hospital suggested a new radiation treatment. Instead of having the radiation from outside your body, you have one called SIRS, selective internal radiation spheres, where the isotopes are injected directly into the patient's bloodstream. We agreed to that treatment. Elaine went through a fairly complicated procedure and injections of radiation into the bloodstream which did have a lot of side effects. She was not in hospital. She would come home from St Vincents and her whole body was just soaking wet. At night I would have to lay towels on the bed before she went to bed and the towels would be wet in the morning as well as her nightgown. It was all working inside of her body and it was very distressful. But we were hoping it would work and it would destroy the cancer cells.

However, in February this year the specialist said sadly it was a failure. It may have even caused a reaction in the liver and weakened Elaine's body. Still, we would not give up and Elaine had heard one of the Sisters of Mary had had a successful operation by a specialist at St George Hospital who had removed cancer tumours. We met him and he agreed-I must admit reluctantly because he thought it had gone too far-to operate on Elaine to remove the cancer tumours from her liver. But he said she is too weak and she had to go through a course of rehabilitation at Calvary Hospital's rehabilitation program, which Elaine did. For nearly two weeks she was riding exercise bikes and climbing up and down stairs-everything to build up her strength so she could undergo a major surgical operation, which Elaine did. The specialist told me after the operation, 'I'm sorry. It was a failure.' When Elaine came out of the anaesthetic her first question was, 'Fred, was it successful?' After all that she had suffered, the dramatic operation on her body, she was very, very disappointed when I had to say, 'I'm sorry Elaine, it was unsuccessful.'

Elaine underwent further chemotherapy at St George Hospital but, again, this was not successful. Nothing more could be done and she was transferred to a private room in the palliative care ward. Finally she passed away on 17 October at 8.15 p.m. She certainly fought the good fight, as have many other people diagnosed with cancer. It is a terrible disease. We have to pray that our medical specialists will find a cure. I again give thanks to God for the nearly 60 years that I have known Elaine and for our 53 years of married life. Elaine would say to me constantly, 'Fred, I love you' and I would respond, 'Yes, I love you too.' Even in her last days at the hospital her last words would be, 'Fred, I love you.'

It has been a privilege for Elaine and I to serve in this House together. It is very unusual for a husband and wife to be members of the one Chamber and to work as a team. That is why, as other members have said, the Duke of Edinburgh was quite amused that two members were married and in the one Chamber. With Elaine's Irish humour she had to add that little bit extra that we were the only two members, as far as she knew, who slept together. I am sure she had nothing in mind by that remark. The Bible has a verse that was important to Elaine and me. Proverbs 3:5 states:

In all your ways acknowledge the Lord and he will direct your paths.

It might surprise members to learn that with the multitude of positions I held, Elaine and I never applied for any. Invitations came to serve in Christian Endeavour in the Congregational Board of Evangelism, the Billy Graham Crusade, with Reverend Alan Walker at the Wesley Central Methodist Mission, the Festival of Light and finally, of course, when I was elected by the people to Parliament. Every position was disruptive to Elaine as a mother and wife because we had to pack up and move to a new home each time. Every invitation came out of the blue and was never sought by us. Elaine and I would pray deeply to learn whether it was God's will for us to accept the invitation. I would never budge until Elaine was sure that it was God's will that we were one in the spirit being called to serve, not just me, whether it was in church ministry positions or in this Parliament.

Chapter 31 in Proverbs has a description called 'The Wife of Noble Character' and the expressions are so reflective of Elaine. I ask members to read and meditate upon them and think of Elaine as, in my humble opinion, many of the expressions apply to her. I could say much more but I want to conclude with a quote from Elaine in her valedictory speech, which is applicable to the House tonight. I shall conclude with Elaine's words so that she will be the last person to speak on this condolence motion. I like Elaine to have the last word. She said:

It is part of the job of parliamentarians in this State to make good laws for parents, families and marriages so that young people will grow up knowing what is right and what is wrong and have respect-something that is lacking in a lot of children today. I ask God to bless you and keep you, to make his face shine upon you, and-something that every person, especially every member of Parliament, needs-to give you peace of mind, that you know what you have done is right according to your conscience and according to Almighty God. I thank you for allowing me to speak to you.

Tributes were provided by the following members of the NSW Legislative Council: