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“My bucket list is no longer important to me … it’s more important to me now to see smiles on the faces of those I love.”
Those were some of state Greens MP Dr Tim Read’s last words in parliament, after he announced his intention to retire at November’s election due to a cancer diagnosis, for which he’d run out of treatment options.
Read died on Saturday, aged 64, surrounded by loved ones, from metastatic cancer.
“At this time of incredible pain and sadness, we offer our deepest love to his wife Angela, his children Louisa and Martin, and all of Tim’s family and friends,” a statement from Victorian Greens leader Ellen Sandell said.
Read revealed his diagnosis in January, writing later in this masthead that a small melanoma that was removed from his leg six years earlier had spread.
Read was elected to the inner-north Melbourne electorate of Brunswick in 2018, ending a more than 100-year reign of Labor since the seat was created in 1904.
Born in Melbourne in 1962, Read became a general practitioner before specialising in sexual health. He completed a doctorate and published more than 60 articles – mostly focused on human papillomavirus and HIV treatment and prevention.
“Tim was a brilliant local MP, doctor and scientist – but to those who knew him, he was also the kindest, funniest and most fundamentally decent of people,” Sandell said in the statement.
Once elected to state parliament, Read quit his job as a doctor and researcher and became a prominent campaigner for a range of issues such as climate change, over-incarceration, deaths in custody of Indigenous Victorians and bike safety.
“His early advocacy led to major public health reforms that ended up becoming reality: pill-testing, tobacco licensing, abolishing public drunkenness laws, a statewide plan to eradicate congenital syphilis and HIV transmission, allowing gay men to donate blood, and a statutory ban on solitary confinement in prisons,” Sandell said.
A rent freeze, updates to the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission’s powers to make it a “standing royal commission at half the price”, integrity reforms, better bike lanes and pedestrian crossings, and an independent, funded Health Promotion Foundation to fight against preventable chronic diseases that “threaten to overwhelm our excellent but expensive healthcare system” were among his final recommendations to parliament.
“Tim’s contribution to Victoria’s anti-corruption and integrity laws was perhaps his biggest achievement,” Sandell said.
“He introduced laws, later picked up by the government, to: force ministers to make their diaries public, end ‘preference whispering’ and dodgy group voting tickets, and create an independent parliamentary integrity commissioner.”
In March 2023, Read was elected as the chair of the integrity and oversight committee, after the Andrews government decided it should have a non-government chair.
“As the first ever non-government chair of the integrity and oversight committee, he led the landmark inquiry that helped strengthen Victoria’s anti-corruption watchdog IBAC,” Sandell said.
“Victoria is a better and fairer place, and politics in the future will be much more accountable and transparent, because of Tim.”
Premier Ben Carroll remembered Read as a “man of principle and compassion” who made “intelligent and humane contributions to the public debate”.
“He knew his values,” Carroll said in a statement. “He lived them.”
“Countless times doorknocking I’ve heard from community members, ‘I’ve met Tim, Tim helped me!’” Adam Pulford, a Merri-bek councillor and the Greens candidate for Brunswick, said in a post on social media.
“I hope there’s a good bike lane wherever you are now – and if not, I know there soon will be!” Pulford wrote about his friend and mentor.
Liberal leader Jess Wilson offered her condolences, saying that Read’s commitment to integrity in public life was “unwavering”.
“He was an honest broker, someone who listened, engaged in good faith and approached every discussion with respect and integrity,” Wilson said in a statement.
“Politics is hope in motion,” Read said in his final speech.
Read and his family asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to Friends of the Earth and the Inner North Community Foundation.
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