[1] Courtice stood for the newly created Division of Hinkler at the 1984 federal election, narrowly losing to National Party candidate Bryan Conquest.
[2] In 1990, as chair of the ALP caucus primary industries and resources committee, he delivered a report which concluded that the government "had been conned by green groups and would risk future electoral success if it continued to 'appease' them".
[4] In 1992, he was a member of the Caucus Joint Working Group on Homosexual Policy in the Australian Defence Force, where he opposed allowing gay people to serve in the military.
In response, shadow education minister Stephen Smith described him as "someone who we've known for a long time has been disillusioned, disaffected, distressed and disappointed at his own exit from parliament and public life, and probably bitter".
[2] Courtice's family property Sunnyside Sugar Plantation outside of Bundaberg contains the unmarked graves of 29 South Sea Islanders, who were buried there in the 19th century after being blackbirded.
[13] He has collected a "large brief of evidence on South Sea Islander slavery, including verbal testimony taken during the 1990s from an elderly Bundaberg resident whose relatives had direct experience with the slave trade".