Kenneth James Aldred (1 August 194517 April 2016) was an Australian politician who represented the

Liberal Party The Liberal Party is any of many political parties around the world. The meaning of ''liberal'' varies around the world, ranging from liberal conservatism on the right to social liberalism on the left. For example, while the political systems ...

in the

Australian House of Representatives The House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameralism, bicameral Parliament of Australia, the upper house being the Australian Senate, Senate. Its composition and powers are set out in Chapter I of the Constitution of Australia. ...

between 1975 and 1980 and again from 1983 to 1996.

Early life

Aldred was born in

East Melbourne East Melbourne is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Melbourne local government area. East Melbourne recorded a population of 4,896 at the 2021 ce ...

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Queen Victoria (1819–1901), Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India * Victoria (state), a state of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, a provincial capital * Victoria, Seychelles, the capi ...

, on 1 August 1945. He was educated at

Melbourne High School Melbourne High School is a Education in Australia#Government schools, government-funded Single-sex education, single-sex Selective school, academically selective secondary school, secondary day school for boys, located in the Melbourne suburb ...

and

Monash University Monash University () is a public university, public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria (state), Victoria, Australia. Named after World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the ...

, and held the degrees of Bachelor of Economics and Master of Administration from

. During 1970–71 he was Special Projects Officer in the Commonwealth Public Service Board in Melbourne. This was followed by two years in the period 1971–73, as Management Training Officer at the Administrative College of

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

. Though principally based in Port Moresby, Aldred also had responsibility for running management courses in several of PNG's major regional centres. In June 1973 Aldred returned to the Commonwealth Public Service Board in Melbourne as Industrial Information Officer. Later that year he was appointed Senior Industry Survey Officer in the Commonwealth Industries Assistance Commission, also in Melbourne. He remained there until elected to Federal Parliament in December 1975 as the Member for Henty.

Military service

From 1965 to 1971, Aldred served in the

Australian Army Reserve The Australian Army Reserve is a collective name given to the military reserve force, reserve units of the Australian Army. Since the Federation of Australia in 1901, the reserve military force has been known by many names, including the Citize ...

. His first four years were in the

Melbourne University Regiment The Melbourne University Regiment (MUR) is an officer training unit in the Australian Army Reserve (ARes). It has a depot at Grattan Street, Carlton, Melbourne, Australia. History MUR traces its origins to 1884 as D Company, 4th Battalion of ...

(MUR) and the last two years as a

lieutenant A lieutenant ( , ; abbreviated Lt., Lt, LT, Lieut and similar) is a Junior officer, junior commissioned officer rank in the armed forces of many nations, as well as fire services, emergency medical services, Security agency, security services ...

and platoon commander in the newly formed

Regiment (Mon UR). He was also Assistant Adjutant of Mon UR, and founded and edited the joint regimental publication, ''The Military Review''. Aldred had a three-month attachment to the Australian Regular Army over the summer of 1968–69, as a sergeant instructor in 1 Recruit Training Battalion (1RTB) at Kapooka in New South Wales.

Political career

Federal election

Upon election as federal member for Henty in the

in the Liberal landslide of 13 December 1975, Aldred assumed a very active role in Coalition and Parliamentary Committees. He chaired the Government Members' Small Business Committee, working closely with the Industry Minister,

Phillip Lynch Sir Phillip Reginald Lynch Order of St Michael and St George, KCMG (27 July 1933 – 19 June 1984) was an Australian politician who served in the Australian House of Representatives, House of Representatives from 1966 to 1982. He was deputy lea ...

, on small business policy formulation. As Chairman of the Government Members' Worker Participation Committee, Aldred produced the first definitive set of proposals for a Coalition worker participation policy, to then prime minister,

Malcolm Fraser John Malcolm Fraser (; 21 May 1930 – 20 March 2015) was an Australian politician who served as the 22nd prime minister of Australia from 1975 to 1983. He held office as the leader of the Liberal Party of Australia, and is the fourth List of ...

. Many of the proposals were incorporated in a worker participation policy later announced by the productivity minister,

Ian Macphee Ian Malcolm Macphee AO (born 13 July 1938) is an Australian former politician. He held ministerial office in the Fraser government as Minister for Productivity (1976–1979), Immigration and Ethnic Affairs (1979–1982), and Minister for Em ...

Expenditure Committee

Aldred was an active member of the newly established Expenditure Committee of the House of Representatives and as Chairman of the Government Members' Trade Sub-Committee, worked closely with the Deputy Prime Minister and Trade Minister,

Doug Anthony John Douglas Anthony (31 December 192920 December 2020) was an Australian politician. He served as leader of the National Party of Australia from 1971 to 1984 and was the second and longest-serving deputy prime minister, holding the position un ...

Manpower Development Executive

Defeated in October 1980, by the later House Speaker,

Joan Child Joan Child, (3 August 192123 February 2013) was an Australian politician. She was the first woman to be Speaker of the Australian House of Representatives. Up until the election of Anna Burke on 9 October 2012 , she was the only female Speaker ...

, Ken Aldred returned to the training profession. In early 1981 he took up the position of Manpower Development Executive with the Victorian Dairy Processing Industry Training Committee (VDPITC), operating under the auspices of the Australian Dairy Cooperation (ADC). In this capacity he spent over two years setting up training courses and training manuals for Victoria's dairy industry factories. He spent a considerable amount of time visiting factories in the state's three dairying regions, namely

Gippsland Gippsland () is a rural region in the southeastern part of Victoria, Australia, mostly comprising the coastal plains south of the Victorian Alps (the southernmost section of the Great Dividing Range). It covers an elongated area of east of th ...

, the Western District and the Northern Region. Ken Aldred left VDPITC on re-election to the federal parliament in May 1983. He re-entered the House of Representatives through the by-election in Bruce, which followed the resignation of House Speaker, Sir

Billy Snedden Sir Billy Mackie Snedden, (31 December 1926 – 27 June 1987) was an Australian politician who served as the leader of the Liberal Party from 1972 to 1975. He was also a cabinet minister from 1964 to 1972, and Speaker of the House of Repres ...

, after the Coalition defeat in the 1983 federal election.

House of Representatives

During his time as the MHR for Bruce, Aldred took a prominent role on defence and economic issues, as chair of the Opposition Defence Committee and the Opposition Treasury Committee. In 1985, he was elected by the Liberal Party to represent Australia at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, as the Opposition Parliamentary Adviser to the Australian Mission. At the UN, he became involved in committee work on the international drug trade and on Antarctica. Shortly afterwards in 1986–87 he was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the then Leader of the Opposition,

John Howard John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) is an Australian former politician who served as the 25th prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007. He held office as leader of the Liberal Party of Australia. His eleven-year tenure as prime min ...

. Following an electoral re-distribution he was elected to represent Deakin in the 1990 federal election and remained there until the 1996 election, when he lost pre-selection to his successor,

Phil Barresi Phillip Anthony Barresi (; born 8 August 1955) is a former Australian politician. He was a member of the House of Representatives from 1996 to 2007, representing the Victorian seat of Deakin for the Liberal Party. Prior to entering politics he ...

. Throughout his six years as member for Deakin, Aldred was a most active Liberal member on the Joint Parliamentary Committee of Public Accounts, spearheading the inquiries into business migration and the

Australian Taxation Office The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is an Australian statutory agency and the principal revenue collection body for the Australian Government. The ATO has responsibility for administering the Taxation in Australia, Australian federal taxation ...

. The Charter of Taxpayers' Rights and other reforms to Tax Office administration were largely attributed to him. As a result of these inquiries, abuses of the Business Migration Programme were eliminated and significant reforms were made to Tax Office administration, including the introduction of the Charter of Taxpayers' Rights. At this time he was also Chairman of the Opposition Immigration and Ethnic Affairs Committee. During the 1980s, Aldred successfully advocated for the immigration to Australia of a large group of Jewish

refuseniks Refusenik (, ; alternatively spelled refusnik) was an unofficial term for individuals—typically, but not exclusively, Soviet Jews—who were denied permission to emigrate, primarily to Israel, by the authorities of the Soviet Union and othe ...

from the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, when they had been refused admission by the federal Labor government.

Controversy

In November 1989, Aldred and Senator Jim Short alleged that Labor MP Lewis Kent was "an agent of a foreign power" and had ties to the

UDBA The State Security Service, also known by its original name as the Directorate for State Security, was the secret police organization of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Communist Yugoslavia. It was at all times best known by the acrony ...

, the Yugoslav secret police. Their allegations were based on a statutory declaration from a member of Melbourne's Yugoslav community. Kent vigorously denied their claims, describing them as a smear campaign. The House of Representatives later voted on party lines to suspend Aldred for two days, following a report from the privileges committee. Aldred was disendorsed by the Liberal Party for Deakin in 1995 for the 1996 federal election and subsequently used

parliamentary privilege Parliamentary privilege is a legal immunity enjoyed by members of certain legislatures, in which legislators are granted protection against civil or criminal liability for actions done or statements made in the course of their legislative duties ...

to make allegations of involvement in espionage and drug trafficking against a prominent Jewish lawyer and a senior foreign affairs official, using documents that were later found to be forged, which had been supplied to him by

LaRouche movement The LaRouche movement is a political and cultural network promoting the late Lyndon LaRouche and his ideas. It has included many organizations and companies around the world, which campaign, gather information and publish books and periodicals. ...

front organisation the

Citizens Electoral Council The Australian Citizens Party (ACP), formerly the Citizens Electoral Council of Australia (CEC), is a minor political party in Australia affiliated with the international LaRouche Movement, founded and originally led American political activist a ...

Publications

Aldred was a regular writer on policy issues for magazines and newspapers. Additionally he was co-editor and contributor to three books. The first, ''The Heart of Liberalism'', was produced in 1994 with fellow Liberal MPs Kevin Andrews and Paul Filing. It presented a pragmatic and centrist philosophy and set of policies for the Liberal Party.

After politics

After leaving federal parliament in 1996, Aldred was President and later Chairman of the Society of Australian Industry and Employment (SAIE) 2001–08, during which he devoted much time and energy to promoting the interests of Australian industry. This included editing and contributing to two books on industry policy, ''Rekindling the Flame'' in 2000, and ''Getting on Track'' in 2004. From December 1996 until his death, Aldred was the proprietor of one of Australia's major

equestrian The word equestrian is a reference to equestrianism, or horseback riding, derived from Latin ' and ', "horse". Horseback riding (or riding in British English) Examples of this are: *Equestrian sports *Equestrian order, one of the upper classes in ...

centres, the Victorian Equestrian Centre (VEC) in Upper Beaconsfield. The VEC offers children's riding clubs, school holiday camps, riding lessons, trail rides, specialised training programs and

agistment Agistment originally referred specifically to the proceeds of pasturage in the king's forests. To agist is, in English law, to take cattle to graze, in exchange for payment (derived, via Anglo-Norman ''agister'', from the Old French ''gîte">g ...

. The VEC also founded the concept of Interschool Equestrian Challenges, with four of them being run each year. Aldred died unexpectedly on 17 April 2016 and is survived by his four children. One of these four children,

Mary Aldred Mary Aldred is an Australian politician from the Liberal Party. She is a member of the Australian Parliament for the Division of Monash after winning the seat in the 2025 Australian federal election. On 12 November 2023, Aldred beat Russell Bro ...

, was preselected as the Liberal candidate for the seat of Monash in 2023 for the 2025 federal election. The preselection saw Mary Aldred defeat sitting MP

Russell Broadbent Russell Evan Broadbent (born 25 December 1950) is an Australian politician who was a member of the House of Representatives. He is one of the longest-serving recent members of parliament, having served for a total of over 25 years, from 1990 to ...

who was a parliamentary colleague of her late father.