Ken Fry

Ken Fry , actually Kenneth Lionel Fry (born November 8, 1920 in Inverell , New South Wales , Australia , † October 10, 2007 in Broulee , New South Wales, Australia) was an Australian politician of the Australian Labor Party (ALP).

Career

Ken Fry was the youngest of seven children. His father Bill Fry had immigrated from England , a declared enemy of the class system, which he passed on to his son. Bill worked for the NSW Department of Agriculture . The mother Marguerite Longford was a music teacher and sister of the film pioneer Raymond Longford . He spent his early years in the Bathurst area . In 1938, Fry graduated from Hawkesbury Agricultural College and joined the Australian Army at the beginning of World War II in 1940. He was a member of an intelligence department. In Darwin , Fry befriended Tom Uren on his 21st birthday . A lifelong friendship. The army boxing champion later also became a leading politician on the left wing of the ALP. Fry was sent to Ambon with the 2/21 Battalion , where he suffered a knee wound. Nevertheless, he continued to serve in Tarakan and what is now Papua New Guinea . After the war ended, Fry was sent back to Ambon to collect evidence of war crimes committed by the Japanese. Of the Japanese prisoners of war, 71 percent were killed.

During the war, Fry met Audrey Clibbens, who was also in the army, and married her in 1946. Fry began raising chickens and built a poultry factory, which collapsed as a result of competition from the large Inghams poultry company . Fry worked as a land inspector and was a member of the Australian Capital Territory Advisory Council from 1970 to 1974 . He was arrested during an anti- apartheid campaign , supported the election of the Whitlam government in 1972 and defended the Aboriginal tent message in the old parliament building. In 1973 Fry was elected founding president of the ALP in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and in 1974 the first MP for the constituency of Fraser in the Australian House of Representatives . Fry held the seat until 1984. For eight years he was the chairman of the ALP parliamentary group. Fry was also a board member of the Australian War Memorial .

In March 1975 the Portuguese administration invited an Australian delegation to Portuguese Timor , which was being prepared for independence. The delegation included parliamentarians, students, trade unionists and representatives of the Aborigines. Among them was Fry, who has since campaigned for what would later become East Timor , especially when Indonesia occupied East Timor a few months later . Fry spoke for East Timor and against the Indonesian occupation in various bodies, for example in April 1976 before the United Nations Security Council , at the International Conference on East Timor in Lisbon in May 1979 and at the Permanent People's Court in Lisbon. In May 1977, Fry took part in an illegal radio broadcast from Darwin that contacted FRETILIN leaders via Radio Ma Brille in occupied East Timor .

Fry and his wife traveled a lot. She went to Africa and also to Nicaragua , where her son Warwick worked as a volunteer. Ken Fry received a retired PhD in political history. The doctoral thesis “Beyond the Barrier, Class Formation in a Pastoral Society, Bathurst 1818-1848” was published in 1993. In 2002 he published his memoir "A Humble Backbencher".

Others

Ken and Audrey Fry had three children, Warwick, Kerry and Paula.

On August 27, 2014, Fry was posthumously awarded the Medal des Ordem de Timor-Leste by President Taur Matan Ruak . His wife Audrey Fry and daughter Kerry received the medal.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} ACT Legislative Assembly Hansard: Wednesday, October 17, 2007, p. 2993 , accessed on November 21, 2019.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Robert Wesley-Smith : Politician on a mission for Timor , In: Sydney Morning Herald, October 16, 2007 , accessed November 21, 2019.
3. ^ Jill Jolliffe: Run for Your Life. 2014, limited preview in Google Book Search
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Tempo Semanal Sabadu: Estado TL condecorados Membros da Solidaridade no dia 30 de Agosto de 2014 , August 30, 2014 , accessed on August 30, 2014 on TIMOR CONDECORA .
5. ↑ Decreto do Presidente da República n ° 25/2014 de 27 de Agosto , accessed on September 18, 2019.