It seems impossible, given the scale of the mourning since his death in May, that more tears could be shed for Bob Hawke, but the Australian parliament gathered to honour his legacy on Wednesday. Some of the contributions were colour by numbers. Others were nakedly didactic. Some soared.

Let’s not bother with colour by numbers. “I never met Bob Hawke, but ... ” Notable among the didactic was Bill Shorten, returning to the dispatch box for the first time since the May election loss, telling whomever might need the message – with an income tax package in the balance and Labor shaping up to be pragmatic – that Hawke’s legacy was not about “soft options” or leading “our people down the lazy path of least resistance” or about “compromise at any cost”.

Notable in the soaring category were the reflections of the Labor veteran Warren Snowdon, who began his political career in Canberra in 1987. Snowdon rose on Wednesday to mourn his old friend and colleague. The insights were all from close range rather than from the crib notes.

Parliament House guide Gina Hall shows schoolchildren the Bob Hawke official portrait by artist and cartoonist Bill Leak on Wednesday. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

But lurking among the anecdotes was a homily with a contemporary purpose, with remarks delivered at the opening of a new parliament and in the context of Labor recovering from the blow of losing an election contest it thought it could win.

Snowdon’s ambition was not only to eulogise Hawke, but to stoke the collective memory of the ALP, and to summon the spirit of the parliaments whose core business was changing the country, not prime ministers.

“We have within us,” Snowdon said, as if his point were no longer obvious in the politics of 2019, “the innate capacity to do good things. We just need to have the will to do it”.

Perhaps for the benefit of the youngsters sitting behind him, Labor’s class of 2019 who have just arrived in their new Canberra digs to be hit with headlines about Labor disunity post-election, Snowdon reflected on the atmospherics of the late 1980s versus now. “We’ve got a pretty good caucus – I’ve been a member of a number of them – but this is not a fractious caucus; this is a unified caucus.

Warren Snowdon (left) with Bob Hawke. On Wednesday Snowdon paid homage to his old friend and colleague in parliament.

“The caucuses of bygone days were not so unified; they were very fractious. If you can, contemplate the ideological divide across the Labor movement when we were deregulating the finance industry, reducing tariffs, changing the face of manufacturing in Australia and privatising assets.

“Can you imagine the debates that took place within the Labor family in this house – in the old house in the first instance? They were extensive, they were difficult, they happened and they were encouraged.”

Good governments always argue, Snowdon said, because there is something of substance to argue about. Don’t worry about the contention; worry instead about the talking points, and the eerie frigidly diplomatic silences presaging trouble. The Hawke cabinet “argued virulently amongst themselves” and were mostly better for it, because the leader had the capacity to stitch the competing propositions together.

Hawke pursued land rights, Snowdon said, until the “selfish, and I might say, racist” Western Australian premier Brian Burke blew it up. After that period, Hawke was relentless in opposition to racism and discrimination. He created the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, the prototype voice to parliament. He pursued reconciliation and the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody.

Hawke had opposed mining at Coronation Hill, prompting a bitter feud with his closest friends, and spelling the beginning of the end of his prime ministership. Snowdon was one of the people doing Hawke’s numbers in the second leadership battle with Paul Keating, the battle Hawke lost because the cabinet deserted him.

Bob Hawke receives the Barunga statement from from Galarrwuy Yunupingu in Arnhem Land on 13 June 1988. Photograph: The Age/Fairfax Media via Getty Images

Snowdon referred to his long parliamentary service as a fortunate life. He said he could not leave public life without telling the world Australia once had a great Labor prime minister and he had the honour of serving with him. “We know it because of what was achieved and how this nation has changed as a result of what he did and what he showed us.”

The Labor veteran then turned across the dispatch box to address his comments to Liberals in the chamber. He noted the presence of the minister for Indigenous affairs, Ken Wyatt. Implicit in Snowdon’s plea was a meeting under way separately in the building between Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese addressing, among other things, what can be done in the coming term about Indigenous advancement.

Snowden said this parliament, the 46th, had the potential to deliver on Hawke’s legacy of justice for Australia’s first peoples if it could rise to its collective potential.

“Remove the ideological shackles and the blinkers that prevent you looking across and saying that we can do this together, because we can, and we must,” Snowdon said to Wyatt. “Let’s not be like John Howard those many years ago.

“Let’s make sure we reach across the table and achieve this outcome. It’s a challenge for us, and we can do it”.