The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 4

Thursday, August 3, 1995 4 The Sydney Morning Herald Fred's last laugh echoes through politics P- '4 i Cathay Pacific I i mi i i 4. If a I J3.St 3.,. 5- -f 1 II tralian brand of humour which led millions of Australians "far beyond the Labor Party" to love him and laugh with him. Mr Kim Beazley, snr, said: "He found humour in the grimmest political situations." Of his education, Mr Daly used to say: "At Waverley College, I got 10 out of 100 for Latin and they kept the class in to see who I had copied from." A Dunedoo convent teacher had told him and a classmate: "You have no brains. You will both end up in politics." As for politics, he said: "Politics is the art of the possible.

Almost anything can happen and nearly everything does, but in the end it is the numbers that count." Mr Daly had the numbers to hold the inner-Sydney seats of Martin, then Grayndler, from 1943 until he retired in 1975. "Whoever had the books had the numbers," he said, "and I kept the books under my arm." As Minister for Administrative Services in the Whitlam Government, Mr Daly was responsible for accommodating the new ministers many of whom complained. He said: "After 23 years in Opposition, at the salary they're now paying me as a Minister, I'll stand up in my office for the duration." Apart from his three years as a Minister, what were his best achievements, I asked last month. "To last." PAGE 13: A wry wit and an astute politician 6There have been few in history who have been able to turn humour into a political weapon.9 minister and close friend of Mr Daly, Sir James Killen, said: "An exceptional human being has left this world." Sir James described Mr Daly as a tough, skilful and completely honourable political opponent, adding: "There have been few in history who have been able to turn humour into a political weapon." The Governor-General, Mr Hayden, said: "Fred Daly was a Labor man of the old school. "He was toughened by the Great Depression but was compassionate and caring by nature.

His goodwill and ever-ready humour will be sorely missed by all who knew him." The Prime Minister, Mr Keating, said Mr Daly was an outstanding parliamentarian who had humanised the political process and brought it closer to the people. A Cabinet colleague and opponent in Labor's Left-Right faction struggles, Mr Tom Uren, said Mr Daly's work with Mr Whitlam to bring about major electoral reforms in the 1970s had left an important legacy for Australians. The NSW Premier, Mr Carr, said Mr Daly possessed an irrepressible and uniquely Aus Mr Daly, "old schooP Labor man 'Whoever had the books had the numbers, and I kept the books under my arm. for A courtly jester who spent too long in the wings trial were By TONY STEPHENS "If you want to be an expert," Fred Daly said recently, "you don't need to have gone to school. You just need to outlive everybody." It was one of those self-depre catory remarks that raised a laugh in the often humourless world of politics and helped make him a likable character.

The last survivor of the wartime Curtin Government died yesterday, aged 83, having outlived nearly everybody. He had just changed a light bulb in the kitchen of his daughter's home at Bondi Junction. Mr Daly was best-known in recent times for his wit, lunch-time talks, books, his Political Discovery Tour of Canberra, his support of the Canberra Raiders and his roving ambassadorship for the Banana Republic, with the slogan "Life wasn't meant to be Yet he offered more than jokes. He loved the institution of politics, respected its history and contributed to the history of the times. The former Prime Minister Mr Gough Whitlam emphasised yesterday that, as Leader of the House, Mr Daly had introduced votes for 18-year-olds and regular distribution of electorates on a one-vote, one-value basis.

He had secured Senate votes for the ACT and the Northern Territory, and had promoted the idea that MHRs should declare their financial interests. The former Federal Liberal The police Royal commission By MALCOLM BROWN Two' more acquaintances of -the alleged drug dealer Mr Bill Bayeh told the Police Royal Commission yesterday that character, references, they. vided on behalf of Mr Bayeh at his sentence hearing on a drug offence in the District Court last year were not authentic. Mr Con Kalis, a company director who once had the licence for the Illusions night club at Kings Cross, and knew Mr Bayeh as a customer, said that although one of the character references bore a signature similar to his he had no recollection of having anything to do with it There were untrue statements in it, and there were even mistakes, such as the spelling of his name as "Kallis" and a reference to a company he ran as "Total Cleaning and Laundry Services" instead of "Total Laundry Mr Rod Barakat, managing director of Barakat Taxation Services, said he recalled a character reference with his signature on it. It had been based on a draft given to him by Ms Roula Macras, public officer for a shoe shop run by Mr Bayeh and his wife.

Mr John Edwin Montgom- witnesses 7 55M immnM OTP "l) 8 5 Con Kails says names were -misspelt in testimonial. ery, a financial consultant said on Tuesday that a character reference with what appeared to be his signature on it had a series of untrue statements, all favourable to Mr Bayeh. Mr Kalis, in answer to Mr Gary Crooke, senior counsel assisting the royal commission, said he had done character references before but they were virtually all on company letterheads where, the one presented to the court was on plain paper. The signature purported to be his had been written on something that had been whited out He had not known Mr Bayeh for seven years, only three. Mr Bayeh had not worked for him and he was not in a position to be able to assess Mr Bayeh's qualities as a worker.

he had long considered his inheritance the roles of Minister for Services and Property (now Administrative Services) and Leader of the House. He made headlines when, in London in 1973, he refused to wear formal morning dress at the opening by the Queen of a Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference. And he relished every moment of his time as a minister. On his retirement after the dismissal of the Whitlam Government by Sir John Kerr, he remarked: "I had three glorious years in government after waiting more than 29 years." It had been a long parliamentary innings for the boy from the bush who stamped his image on the ALP and Sydney's inner-west seat of Grayndler. Fred Daly was born on a farm at Currabubula, near Tam-worth, on June 13, 1912.

On his father's death the family moved tor Sydney and young Fred attended Waverley Christian Brothers School. At 14 he left school to find a job. Later he entered the Department of the Navy as a clerk. It was not long before he was an active member of the Clerks Union and later the Labor Party. He won the Sydney federal seat of Martin for Labor in 1943, retained it three years later and, in 1949, after a redistribution of boundaries, went back to Canberra as member for the new seat of Grayndler.

His political stance was on the far Right of the ALP and some observers expected, after the great Labor split of 1955, that he might join others in the breakaway Democratic Labor Party (DLP). However, as Daly's NSW branch did not divide on the issue of the Industrial Groups, he was not forced to make a public choice. Instead, he remained in the ALP and out of office for 17 more years. Fred Daly possessed in full measure the faults and virtues implicit in his background: an Irish ebullience and tenacity, a long memory for both slights and favours, and the ability to cherish a grudge. "You are doomed if you forget the past," he said.

In a parliamentary career of more than 32 years, Daly was forced to deflect more than a few critical arrows. In 1947, after representing the Chifley Government at an international conference in Geneva, he went on to visit France, Belgium, Britain, Ireland, the United States and Canada. When he returned by ship, after an absence of five months, he found that, in the Caucus room, he had earned the nickname of "Dilly Dally Although so many of his friends had departed into the DLP, Mr Daly later found it difficult to forgive the party he blamed for keeping the ALP out of office for so many years. He referred to himself and his contemporaries as Labor's "lost Much later, he said: "I spent 23 years in Opposition because of the actions of those groupers and their vicious tactics against the Labor Party. They denied the people of Australia a Labor Government a major political crime and unforgivable." Mr Daly is survived by a son, Lawrie, and a daughter, Margaret Obituary FRED DALY 1912-1995 Mr Fred Daly, who entered Federal Parliament in 1943, when Australia was at war, John Curtin was Prime Minister and cows could be seen grazing from nearly every window of Federal Parliament, died in Sydney yesterday.

He was 83. In 1978 he was. awarded the Order of Australia and earlier this year was made a life member of the Australian Labor Party. Much of Mr Daly's reputation in recent years had rested on his quickness of wit, his well-developed sense of the absurd and an ability to puncture pomposity wherever it was encountered. These qualities made him an effective and good-natured Leader of the House during the period of the Whitlam Labor Government, from December 1972 to November 1975.

His mock-serious verbal jousts with Queensland Liberal MP, Mr Jim Killen, were eagerly anticipated by fellow MPs and parliamentary observers. After his retirement from politics in 1975, he turned his verbal skills to good advantage by becoming a highly paid performer on the speaker's circuit on radio, writing for newspapers and as an author. He published four books based on his experiences in politics. He also established a novel commercial bus tour taking visitors to the national capital to sites of political intrigue. Mr Daly settled in Canberra after his retirement and, as a patron of the Canberra Raiders rugby league team, was a familiar sight at Bruce Oval supporting his team.

But for more than three earlier decades Frederick Michael Daly had starred as a supremely talented parliamentarian, trading barbs, banter and the occasional full-blooded insult across the floor of the House of Representatives. Although delighting in his role as a long-time ALP jester chubby, jocular and irrepressible Mr Daly could also be a tough and formidable politician. But underneath all the fun and repartee which sustained him as a celebrity, there lingered for many years a sense of disenchantment with the pragmatism which has characterised the direction of the Hawke and Keating Labor Governments. "If I were in the Government now I'd have big fights on privatisation and lots of other things," Mr Daly said last year. "Sadly, I think I'd probably lose them all." In 1971 he was sacked as Labor's spokesman on immigration by the then Leader of the Opposition, Mr Whitlam.

Mr Daly had opposed Whitlam's proposals for a more relaxed policy towards Asian immigration. Moreover, earlier that year the Victorian Young Labor Association had called for his removal for what they described as his "racist Mr Daly said afterwards: "I'm one who changes slowly I think after a lifetime of conviction you don't change rapidly." Nonetheless, when Labor won government in 1972 Fred Daly entered into what, clearly, He was unaware of the circumstances in which Mr Bayeh had been arrested and was unable to comment on them, although that was what he was purported to be doing in the reference. It followed that he could not haVe been "shocked" to hear of the arrest Mr Barakat said he had set up the RTB shoe shop at Banks-town for the Bayehs but he had hardly known Mr Bayeh. He agreed there were a series of untrue statements about Mr Bayeh in the letter. He said Ms Macras had approached him saying that Mr Bayeh had been set up and that he was innocent Mr Barakat said that because he considered himself a community-minded person who worked with the Lebanese community, he would try to help Mr Bayeh.

Statements in his reference, that Mr Bayeh's alleged offences were "very much out of and something he "still" found hard to believe, and that "this is not something I believe Bill is personally capable had all been put to him by Ms Macras. Nor were the statements that Mr Bayeh was "a very simple, honest, hard-working person" who had been "misled by the company he was keeping" of his own composition. The statements that the allegations had cast "a dark cloud" over Mr Bayeh's life and that he was "extremely sorry for being so silly and naive" had not come from him. The hearing resumes today. Bayeh had invested $75,000 in "Ampol Investments" and had made a $55,000 profit in the first year.

Justice Wood pointed out that surely this was "a world record in Sadly, this miraculous; performance seemed to have escaped Mr Barakat's attention as he told the commission he did not rush out to buy the stock in question. This was the third of Bayeh's character references presented to the District Court that the royal commission has examined. The first two were forgeries. Mr Barakat's was untrue. (Bayeh received 300 hours community service after being convicted of "knowingly taking part in the supply of a prohibited His hard work and charitable acts, emphasised in his references, appear to have been mislaid as he is facing resentencing for the drug charges after ignoring his community service order.) Evidence before the commission alleges that Bayeh was a major dealer of drugs at Kings Cross.

Yesterday Bayeh lost his application to have his evidence heard in private and transcripts of yesterday's application, which was heard in secret, will be released on Monday. The collapse of a testimonial glowin 'fli. tt Mr Barakat leaves the commission yesterday. town shoe shop. And since he'd only seen him in the shoe shop he agreed he couldn't say that "he'd never met anyone so motivated and During one -shoe shop visit Mr Barakat had drawn up an assets and liability statement for Bayeh, to enable Bayeh to obtain a loan from a bank.

Part of this statement showed that KATE MCCLYMONT "Ah personally I don't know him," said Rod Barakat, pushing his dark glasses back up his nose. After taking the Holy Koran from its blue silk wrapping and swearing to tell the truth, Mr Barakat, a 45-year-old assistant accountant, was looking at a glowing character reference he had provided for Bill Bayeh for use in the District Court in March last year when Bayeh was facing drug charges. After much repositioning of the sunglasses and perusing of the document, Mr Barakat was able to establish that the only accurate statements in the document were the spelling of his own name and his own company. He hadn't known his "good friend" Bill for seven years at all. They'd only ever met two or three times in Bayeh's Banks- Stay one jump ahead of the competition with the airline that offers the most non-stop flights to Hdng Kong.

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