Barry Jones (Australian politician)

Infobox MP


honorific-prefix =
name = Barry Jones
honorific-suffix = AO
caption =
office = Minister for Science (and Technology)/
Minister for Science, (Customs)
and Small Business
term_start = 11 March 1983
term_end = 4 April 1990
predecessor = David Thomson
successor = Simon Crean
(Science)
David Beddall
nowrap|(Small Business and Customs)
constituency_MP1 = Lalor
parliament1 = Australian
term_start1 = 10 December 1977
term_end1 = 31 August 1998
predecessor1 = Jim Cairns
successor1 = Julia Gillard
constituency_MP2 = Melbourne
parliament2 = Victorian
term_start2 = June 1972
term_end2 = November 1977
predecessor2 = Arthur Clarey
successor2 = Keith Remington
birth_date = birth date and age|1932|10|11
birth_place = Geelong, Victoria, Australia
death_date =
death_place =
nationality = AUS
party = Australian Labor Party
spouse = nowrap|Rosemary Hanbury
(30 June 1961 – her death June 2006)
children =
profession = teacher, writer, politician
religion =


footnotes =

Barry Owen Jones AO (born 11 October 1932, Geelong, Victoria) is a writer, lawyer, social activist, quiz champion and former politician. He campaigned against the death penalty throughout the 1960s, particularly against the execution of Ronald Ryan, and remains against capital punishment. In 1998 he was named as one of Australia's "Great Minds".Fact|date=June 2008 He is on the National Trust's list of Australian Living Treasures.

Early life

Barry Jones was educated at Melbourne High School and Melbourne University where he studied arts and law. He began his career as a schoolteacher at Dandenong High School, where he taught for nine years, before becoming a as an Australian quiz champion in 1960 on "Bob Dyer's Pick a Box", a radio show from 1948, televised from 1957. He was famous for taking issue with Dyer about certain expected answers, most famously in response to a question about "the first British Governor-General of India", where he pointed out that Warren Hastings was only technically Governor of Bengal. Barry Jones' appearances on "Pick a Box" lasted from 1960 to 1968. [ [http://www.abc.net.au/talkingheads/txt/s1668989.htm Barry Jones on "Talking Heads"] ]

Barry Jones also tried his hand at broadcasting on Melbourne radio, in the mid-1960's. He was one of the pioneers of talkback radio, working at 3DB in Melbourne. [ [http://www.commercialradio.com.au/Enewsletters/CRA_enews_revised/APR_16_07.htm "Commercial radio celebrates 40 years of talkback", "Commercial Radio Australia enewsletter", 2007-04-16] ] His show "Talkback to Barry Jones" and Mike Walsh's show on Sydney's 2SM were Australia's first talkback shows. [http://www.smh.com.au/news/tv--radio/in-so-many-words/2007/04/22/1177180456247.html Javes, Sue (2007) "In so many words", "The Sydney Morning Herald", 2007-04-23] ] Jones believes that modern talkback shows have a much narrower focus than the original shows did. He says "I was trying to convey to people a sense of what they didn't know rather than simply talk about football or pets. My emphasis was on using talkback as an instrument for exposing people to new ideas and challenging them, rather than just reinforcing the ideas they already held." Asked in an interview if he got nervous, Barry responded that he had taught school ... and those kids soon knocked any nervousness of you.Fact|date = June 2008

Political career

A member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) from 1950, Jones was a Federal candidate in 1955, 1958 and 1963, with a strong interest in education and civil liberties. Jones' political career began in the Victorian Parliament where he represented the electorate of Melbourne as a Labor Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from 1972 to 1977, when he resigned to go into federal politics.

In 1977, he was elected to the House of Representatives as the Labor member for the Federal seat of Lalor in Victoria, which he held until his retirement in 1998. He was Minister for Science in the Hawke government from 1983 to 1990, in which role he presided over the growth of organisations such as CSIRO, the creation of the Australia Prize, Questacon and the Commission for the Future. Jones lost his place in the ministry when he failed to gain the backing of his centre-left faction.

In 1992, upon the resignation of Stephen Loosley, to whom he had lost the position in a split vote in 1991, he was elected ALP National President. He served in the position until 2000. He became National President again in 2005-06.

Jones was the chief architect of the ALP's Knowledge Nation education concept, as chair of the Chifley Research Centre's Knowledge Nation Taskforce [ [http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/39154/20040506-0000/www.chifley.org.au/publications/kntf.html Chifley Research Centre Archive] ] . During this time he was also a member of the council for the National Library of Australia.

He was the Vice President of the World Heritage Committee from 1995 to 1996 and a member of the Executive Board of UNESCO from 1991-95.

In 1998 he was Deputy Chair of the fourth Constitutional Convention.

Academic career

Barry Jones attended the selective Melbourne High School in South Yarra before continuing on to and graduating from the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Laws and Master of Arts. Jones holds the honorary degrees of Doctor of Letters from the University of Technology, Sydney and University of Wollongong, Doctor of Science from Macquarie University and Doctor of Laws from the University of Melbourne.

In 1999 he was appointed an Adjunct Professor at Monash University and became a Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Melbourne in 2005.

He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA); a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA); a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (FASSA); and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (FTSE): he was the first person elected Fellow of all four Australian learned academies. In 1999 he was elected a Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge.He is also a Fellow of the [http://www.austcolled.com.au Australian College of Educators] .

Later life

He chairs the Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority and serves on the boards of six medical research institutes. He chaired the Victorian Schools Innovation Commission 2001-05.

He appears regularly as a member of the Brains Trust on "The Einstein Factor". He mentioned on an episode of the show that he likes to watch his Wikipedia page grow. ["The Einstein Factor", Episode screened on 2008-06-22]

Barry Jones Bay in the Australian Antarctic Territory and "Yalkaparidon jonesi", an extinct marsupial, were named after him.

Writings

Jones has been a prolific author of political and sociological books including:
*"Decades of Decision 1860-", 1965
*"The Penalty is Death" (editor), 1968
*"Joseph II", 1968
*"Barry Jones' Guide to Modern History: Age of Apocalypse", 1975
*"Macmillan Dictionary of Biography" (editor), 1981
*"Sleepers, Wake! Technology and the Future of Work", 1982
*"Barry Jones' Dictionary of World Biography", 1994
*"A Thinking Reed" (autobiography), 2006.

He is reputedly the owner of the largest private autograph collection and one of the largest private libraries of recordings in Australia.Fact|date=February 2007

References

External links

* [http://www.brisinst.org.au/people/jones_barry.html Brisbane Institute page on Barry Jones]
* [http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/39154/20040506-0000/www.chifley.org.au/publications/kntf.html Knowledge Nation Taskforce via Pandora]
* [http://aadc-maps.aad.gov.au/aadc/gaz/display_name.cfm?gaz_id=96 Antarctic Gazetteer entry for Barry Jones Bay]

Persondata
NAME = Jones, Barry Owen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
SHORT DESCRIPTION = Australian politician
DATE OF BIRTH = October 11, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH = Geelong, Victoria, Australia
DATE OF DEATH =
PLACE OF DEATH =