Norman Lacy - Liberal Parliamentarian (1973-1982)

Liberal Parliamentarian (1973-1982)

Norman Lacy was a member of the Liberal Party of Australia from 1972 until 1984. He was Member for the electoral district of Ringwood in the Legislative Assembly of the Parliament of Victoria from May 1973 until February 1976, and for Warrandyte from March 1976 until April 1982 when he was defeated at the general election that saw the demise of the Thompson Liberal Government and the election of the Cain Labor Government. He was Secretary of the Parliamentary Liberal Party from 1976 to 1979.

Lacy was on the Victorian Parliament's Qualifications Committee in 1973 and 1974. It was on this committee that Lacy got to work with the Opposition Leader Clyde Holding who often reminded Lacy that for a building trade apprentice from Richmond (the electorate Holding represented) he was in the wrong party. Lacy returned the banter in numerous parliamentary debates in which he took on Holding and his party over the growing level unemployment that was emerging in the Australian economy under the Whitlam government.

From the time that he joined the party in 1972, Lacy was an active and vocal 'small l' Liberal and a strong supporter of the leadership of Rupert Hamer. He publicly supported Hamer and many of his causes. In particular, he was active in his support for Hamer's private member's Bill for the abolition of capital punishment in Victoria. Lacy made what many regarded as the finest parliamentary speech of his career on the Bill in which he made much use of his theological training. As a result, he made a number of friends amongst the Labor opposition including fellow Anglican and Education spokesman Robert Fordham and Barry Jones who for many years had led the abolitionist campaign on this issue. He also became the unofficial 'numbers man' on the Government side of the Legislative Assembly where support for the Bill was hard to come by.

In this he was assisted by his close friend Peter Block who undertook a similar role in the Legislative Council where he was a Member for Boronia Province covering Lacy's lower house seat. Curiously, Lacy made no use in his campaign on this issue of two highly relevant experiences. Firstly, he stood silently together with around three thousand other protesters outside Pentridge prison at 8.00 am on Friday 3 February 1967 while Ronald Ryan was hanged in 'D' Division by the Bolte Government and secondly, that Ryan's children had been parishioners at St Stephen's Church of England in Richmond where he was the Curate from 1966 to 1968 with special responsibility for youth and children's programs. Lacy did not join the Liberal Party until after Bolte had resigned from Parliament. He felt no affinity for the Liberal Party legend who be believed represented everything to which he did not aspire.

1976 was one of the most fulfiling years in Lacy's life. After his re-election to the Parliament for the seat of Warrandyte in March 1976, he was elected by the party room to the position of Secretary of the Parliamentary Liberal Party. During his first parliamentary term, he had completed his Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Sociology part-time at Monash University. His honours dissertation was entitled "A Social Network Approach to the Origination and Quality of Male Neighbour Relationships on Middle Class Housing Estates."

Soon after the 1976 election, Lacy was appointed Chairman of the Parliamentary Party Committee on Social Welfare by the new Minister for Social Welfare Brian Dixon. Lacy was a strong supporter of the politically moderate former Australian rules footballer and Melbourne champion. He admired the career sacrificing position Dixon had adopted on the hanging of Ronald Ryan, his thorough knowledge of economics, his parliamentary debating skills and the value of his many enlightened and reformist policies - particularly the Life Be In It campaign. He long held the view that Dixon was the best prospect the Liberal Party had for a future leader. He thought it incompetent that the Party hadn't arranged for Dixon to be pre-selected for a safe seat and as a result he was defeated along with Bill Borthwick, Glynn Jenkins, Lacy and many others in the 1982 change of government. He believed that the long term consequence of this was that the Party had not prepared for a future in the highly successful Hamer mould and thereafter lacked any capacity for enlightened leadership and progressive policy development. Lacy resigned from the Liberal Party soon after the appointment of Jeffrey Kennett as Leader of the Liberal Opposition in 1982. He regarded Kennett as being in the Bolte mould, erratic, untrustworthy and lacking policy substance.

Recognising Lacy's interest in and commitment to education issues, Deputy Premier and Education Minister Lindsay Thompson invited Lacy to Chair his Parliamentary Party Committee on Education. This brought the two men closer together and Thompson performed a generous mentoring role with the young parliamentarian. It was a relationship over which Lacy agonised a few years later due to the criticism of Thompson that was implied from the substantial reforms in the administration of education in Victoria that Lacy was convinced he must pursue while in Cabinet.(Detail here: and here:) He became increasingly convinced and vocal that the government must restructure the administration of primary and secondary education in Victoria to a devolved school management system which empowered school communities, councils and principals who would obtain specialist support services from regional directorates. He tried, largely without success, to convince Thompson to have his ideas for educational reform, incorporated into the 1979 election policy, but otherwise he remained a great admirer of his mentor. After Rupert Hamer's resignation in 1981, he voted in the party room ballot for Thompson to be Premier - a ballot that Thompson won by one vote from Bill Borthwick. For ever after, Lacy was left to wonder what his career might have been had he not voted out of loyalty and the more electorally appealing Borthwick (for whom he also had great admiration) had led the Liberal Party to the 1982 election.

Lacy was prominent in defending Hamer's integrity and reputation in the Parliament against the attacks of the two renegade right wing Liberal MLAs, Charles Francis (Caulfield) and Doug Jennings (Westernport) and in September 1977 he successfully moved in the party room for their expulsion. He attacked the two members for their disloyalty to the Premier and their party colleagues by abstaining in a vote on an opposition no-confidence motion over Housing Commission of Victoria land deals. He argued that for an elected representative to abstain from voting was an abrogation of their principle responsibility upon which parliamentary democracy was based. He believed that MPs were primarily paid to vote, the record of which was democratically critical information for voters at subsequent elections. To abstain was a cowardly and devious means of keeping the electorate uninformed. His speech brought together the key tenents of his political and personal philosophy about which he was passionate - loyalty, transparency and accountability. He was strongly supported by the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly Sir Kenneth Wheeler and Community Welfare Services Minister Walter Jona

Lacy represented the Victorian Parliament as a member of the Victorian Institute of Secondary Education Council from 1977 to 1979. In 1977 he attended the 8 week Advanced Management Program at the Australian Administrative Staff College Mount Eliza on a scholarship he was awarded by the Parliament of Victoria. It was here that Lacy conceived and developed the general thrust of the decentralised regional and school based reforms that, with Education Minister Alan Hunt, he later introduced into the Victorian education system.