Page 2995 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 17 October 2007
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representing the seat of Fraser. Like the Chief Minister—although he would have had many more—I certainly had a number of dealings with Ken over the years and got to know him well.
He was the youngest of seven children and he grew up during the Depression. He was born in Inverell in 1920. He came from a family with an agricultural background dating back to his grandfather, who emigrated with his family to Australia in the 1880s, and they farmed an orchard near Bathurst. That served him well because Ken ultimately got a diploma from Hawkesbury Agricultural College in 1938.
But his life and values were dominated by service in World War II, where Army life embodied the ideal form of Australian mateship, a theme that he later explored as a mature student in Manning Clark’s ANU history department. He completed a BA at the Australian National University in 1973 and a bachelor of letters in 1981.
He served with the 2nd AIF (Infantry) from 1939 to 1945, which included overseas service in New Guinea, Borneo and South-East Asia. The Japanese war left him with a very strong sympathy for the peoples generally to the north of Australia and that would make him a campaigner for the cause of East Timor. Of course the East Timorese assisted for quite some time—for many, many months, over a year, one commando company—in harassing the Japanese, and they paid dearly for that. Indeed it was a debt we owed them and which was not repaid until 1999. I think that would have made Ken very happy.
He married Audrey Clibbens in 1946 and pursued business and rural interests in the Bathurst district, farming poultry until 1967. That venture eventually failed and it came about at the time of a state by-election, which first brought him into conflict with the New South Wales Labor machine. In 1968 Ken Fry moved to the public service in Canberra, serving as an agricultural officer, and within two years he was a member of the fledgling ACT Advisory Council. In 1973 he served as a member of the Hughes panel reporting on governance of schools in the ACT, as a member of the Interim Schools Authority for the ACT from 1973 to 1974 and as a member of the Consumer Affairs Council of the ACT over the same period.
As has been stated, in 1973 he was also elected the inaugural president of the ACT branch of the ALP and in 1974 he became the city’s second member of the House of Representatives, serving 10 years as the member for Fraser. He served on a number of parliamentary committees, including the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the ACT from 1974, including as acting chairman in 1981 and chairman in 1983, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Expenditure and the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence from 1974 to 1977 and from 1980 to 1984. He was also a member of several parliamentary delegations overseas.
As a parliamentarian he was struck by the fact that the ALP’s ex-servicemen were almost all in the left faction of caucus, although their radicalism was definitely not shared by the RSL at large, and he became an organiser and conscience of the left and, as the Chief Minister has noted, a dedicated socialist of the old school, a man who certainly would not be moved in his principles. I must say on occasions I had a number of very spirited but always friendly arguments with him. Unfortunately, the
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