"But also a brilliantly innovative journalist and editor, shrewdly pragmatic political professional, highly disciplined grassroots political campaigner, hugely capable publishing and music industry administrator, effective and respected trade union official, loving partner, father, and grandfather and – perhaps most implausible of all to those who only knew him at a distance (but I’ll explain), sweet-natured gentleman."
During those university years ,he said Steedman had been the heart and soul of protest against long neglected social issues – including censorship, abortion, capital punishment, Indigenous disadvantage and White Australia racism , apartheid and opposition to the Vietnam War .
He recalled an episode in a Vietnam War debate in which fanatically anti-communist Dr Frank Knopfelmacher said : " My only objection to you ,Steedman, is that you exist .The gas chamber is too good for you. You are filth and vermin."
The following is not from the Gareth Evans speech but is inspired by the above abuse hurled at Steedman by Dr Knopfelmacher .
Pete Steedman once told the writer of this post that he only had one hero - Simon Wiesenthal - a survivor of the Nazi death camps, who set up the Jewish Documentation Centre, Vienna, which documented the crimes of the Holocaust and hunted down nearly 1100 Nazi war criminals.
At the end of World War II, thousands of Nazis who participated in the systematic murder of some 6,000,000 Jews and millions of Gypsies, Poles and other "inferior" peoples, slipped through the Allied net and escaped to countries around the globe, where many lived in freedom.
Near the end of his life , Steedman expressed concern about rising right political parties in Europe and some of the extreme groups and individuals taking part in demonstrations in Australia .