Fred Daly (Australian politician)

The Honourable Fred Daly AO
Member of the Australian Parliament for Martin
In office 21 August 1943 – 10 December 1949
Preceded by	William McCall
Succeeded by	William O'Connor
Member of the Australian Parliament for Grayndler
In office 10 December 1949 – 11 November 1975
Preceded by	New seat
Succeeded by	Tony Whitlam
Personal details
Born	(1912-06-13)13 June 1912 Curabubulla, New South Wales
Died	2 August 1995(1995-08-02) (aged 83)
Nationality	Australian
Political party	Australian Labor Party
Occupation	Clerk

Frederick Michael Daly, AO (13 June 1912 – 2 August 1995) was a long-serving Australian Labor Party politician, a member of the Australian House of Representatives for 32 years from 1943 to 1975, and Minister for Administrative Services in the government of Gough Whitlam (1972–75).

Daly was born in Currabubula, a small town in northern New South Wales, and was educated at Catholic schools, becoming a clerk in the Department of the Navy and an official of the Federated Clerks' Union, a stronghold of the Catholic right wing of the Labour movement. At the 1943 election he was endorsed by the Labor Party for the seat of Martin in the Inner West of Sydney. This was considered a safe United Australia Party seat but Daly unexpectedly won. He rapidly established himself as a skilled and witty debater, and became a protégé of Ben Chifley, Labor Prime Minister from 1945.

Labor was defeated at the 1949 election, at which Daly shifted to the safe Labor seat of Grayndler. Daly spent the next 23 years as an opposition frontbencher – one of a generation of Labor politicians whose career opportunities were greatly reduced by the splits and internal conflicts of the 1950s and 1960s. As a right-wing Catholic, Daly had many sympathies with the right-wing group which left the Labor Party in 1955 and later formed the Democratic Labor Party, but he remained loyal to the party and defeated several attempts by the left to challenge his party endorsement.

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