Page 1518 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 April 2011
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Although a conservative by nature, Mr Fitzgerald experienced warm relations with both sides of politics, including prime ministers Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser and John Howard, as well as former Deputy Prime Minister, Doug Anthony. He was a passionate monarchist, something perhaps unusual considering his Irish heritage
Mr Fitzgerald was a founding member of the Canberra Press Club. He served as president from 1969 to 1971. He was a real thinker. Both he and his wife, Maria, were intellectuals, always discussing current issues and events. Both Alan and Maria Fitzgerald studied at the ANU as mature students. In the last weeks of his life, family friends recall his being as sharp as ever.
He was an avid reader and an author of many works, thousands of press articles, both satirical and serious. He also published historical texts, including Fitzgerald’s Canberra and Life in Canberra. A work he was particularly proud of was an exploration of Italian prisoners of war in Australia titled Italian Farming Soldiers, an account of Italian prisoners of war in Australia between 1941 and 1947. He was still writing at the time of his death, nearing completion of another historical account, this time of Irish families in Australia.
His son Julian has followed in his footsteps, working in the federal press gallery and publishing books, firstly on lobbyists in Australia and a work nearing completion on Australian prime ministers.
Mr Fitzgerald’s satire was only a thin disguise of his love of Canberra and his participation and service for close to 50 years. He penned an autobiography in 2001. In an obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday, written by his sons, they quote Alan as saying:
… my life had been shaped by living in the national capital in ways that I could not have imagined possible had I lived elsewhere.
Alan Fitzgerald, a resident of Isaacs, died from cancer on 31 March. He is survived by his wife, Maria; and sons, Dominic, a paediatrician in Sydney who is married to Karina, and their sons, Nicholas, Timothy, Samuel and Hugh, and Julian, a federal parliamentary press gallery journalist in Canberra, married to Jacqueline, and their sons, Patrick and Daniel. And I do acknowledge the family in the gallery today.
On behalf of the ACT Greens, we express our condolences on the loss of this wonderful Canberran.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Minister for Energy and Minister for Police and Emergency Services): I rise to join the Chief Minister and other members in expressing this chamber’s sincere condolences on the passing of Mr Alan Fitzgerald. As members have heard, Mr Speaker, Alan had a great interest and passion for politics that eventually extended to his involvement in the local political scene in the early 1960s. Around this time he publicly lampooned the elected ACT Advisory Council, the forerunner to this Assembly. He was especially critical of the lack of
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