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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (20 November) . . Page.. 3835 ..
MR HIRD: I move:
That the Assembly expresses its deep regret at the death of former ACT Legislative Assembly and House of Assembly Member, Mr T.W.W. (Bill) Pye, MBE, and tenders its profound sympathy to his wife and his family in their bereavement.
Mr Speaker, I draw the Assembly's attention to the recent passing of a leading member of our community, Mr T.W.W. (Bill) Pye. I served, as did a number of other members in this place, with Bill Pye on the original ACT Legislative Assembly and later the ACT House of Assembly, which was the forerunner to this present ACT parliament. He established a unique record in ACT politics and he was a unique politician - unique, as you would know, Mr Speaker, because he always did his own thing. He served three terms as an elected Independent member of the ACT Advisory Council, including one term as deputy chairman. He was appointed to the first Legislative Assembly on 29 December 1977, as a replacement for the late Allan Fraser, also an Independent, and was a member of the first ACT House of Assembly.
T.W.W. "call me Bill" Pye was an outstanding citizen; no doubt, the reason why he was awarded the MBE in 1978 for his services to local government and the Canberra community. He was extensively involved in community and church work, serving on a number of local government and other committees, including the ACT Parole Board and the ACT Health Commission. He was three times president of the Canberra Day Citizens Committee, the forerunner to the Canberra Festival Committee; he was foundation chairman of the ACT Child Welfare Advisory Council; and he was involved with the ACT Kidney Foundation, the Ratepayers Association and the Foundation for Youth, just to name a few. He was a founding member of the Canberra Life Saving Club, the Good Neighbour Council, the Historical Sites and Buildings Committee and the Dickson Community Centre Planning Committee. You name it, and T.W.W. was in it!
He served with the Australian Military Forces from the outbreak of World War II in 1939, as a lieutenant training troops in various military camps throughout Australia. He was in Darwin on special duties in 1942 and was the first to report Japanese war planes heading towards the Top End. He served out the last two years of the war with the Transportation Corps of the United States Army in the South-West Pacific region,
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