Australian Dictionary of Biography

Captain Alexander George William ('Bill') Keys, Sydney c.1946

Australian War Memorial, P02207.001

Sir Alexander George William Keys (1923–2000), army officer and president of the Returned Services League of Australia (RSL), was born on 2 February 1923 at Lidcombe, New South Wales, youngest of three sons of John Alexander Binnie Keys, dairy farmer, and his wife Irene Daisy, née Moss, both New South Wales-born. Bill was educated at the one-teacher Ando Public School, with support at home from his mother, a former schoolteacher, before boarding at Hurlstone Agricultural High School from 1935.

In January 1941 Keys enlisted in the 7th Light Horse Regiment, Citizen Military Forces, but after turning nineteen transferred to the Australian Imperial Force, with which he underwent officer training at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, Australian Capital Territory. He served with the 2/3rd Australian Pioneer Battalion in New Guinea during the Huon Peninsula campaign in 1943 and 1944, and in 1945 on Tarakan Island, Borneo, Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia), where he was wounded. In late 1945 he was promoted to temporary captain and became battalion adjutant, with responsibilities that included overseeing Japanese prisoners of war. Returning to Australia in January 1946, he transferred to the Reserve of Officers in May, and returned to help run the family farm in the Bombala region where he grew up.

Keys’s parents had instilled in him a commitment to community service. He took a particular interest in the RSL, which gave him ‘an outlet into community life’ (Keys 1999), and joined the local sub-branch of what was then the Returned Sailors’, Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Imperial League of Australia in 1944 while on home leave, later becoming a member of the New South Wales State Council (1947–49). In 1949 when sailing to England in the Orion to help select ex-British servicemen and women as migrants he met Dulcie Beryl Stinton, a secretary from Moonee Ponds, Victoria. They were soon engaged, and on 12 September 1950 married at St Phillip’s Church, Auburn, Sydney. Two days later Keys departed for Korea as a lieutenant on full-time duty in the Australian Regular Army, fulfilling his keenly felt obligation to support the Australian commitment to the war in Korea. Three months previously he had unsuccessfully contested the New South Wales Legislative Assembly seat of Monaro as a Liberal Party candidate.

In Korea, Keys commanded No. 1 Platoon in ‘A’ Company, 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (3RAR). He saw combat at Pukchang in the Democratic People's Republic of (North) Korea during a long fighting retreat by the United Nations forces. Promoted to captain, he commanded ‘D’ Company as UN forces began to resume the offensive, during which his ‘clear, calm and aggressive actions’ in leading the capture of a strategically important hill led to his being awarded the Military Cross. In March 1951 his war service was interrupted by his return to Australia to contest the House of Representatives seat of Eden-Monaro, losing narrowly to his Australian Labor Party (ALP) opponent. On returning to Korea, he was appointed to command ‘A’ company, and shortly after became adjutant for 3RAR. He returned to Australia in December 1951 following advice that Dulcie was seriously ill, and took over the family farm near Bombala.

Keys resumed his role on the State council of the RSL in 1952. Farming, however, was still his livelihood, and in 1956 he was awarded a Nuffield Foundation fellowship to study agricultural methods in England. In 1961 he lost narrowly when he challenged (Sir) William Yeo for the State presidency of the RSL, but Yeo urged him to apply for the position of RSL national secretary. He was offered the role, and with his family moved to Canberra. In this position he stressed the RSL’s core concern of improving veterans’ benefits, but also set about modernising the organisation. One of his most bitter battles came during 1965 against opponents of a name change that involved dropping the word ‘imperial.’ In 1969 he was awarded a Churchill fellowship to undertake a comparative study of post-service problems in Australia and other countries. Although a committed anti-communist, he disagreed with Yeo and others who wanted to expel members publicly opposed to Australian involvement in the Vietnam War, considering it vital that the league tolerate a diversity of views. His vigorous but moderate approach won accolades from many members, especially after appearances on the Australian Broadcasting Commission television programs Under Attack (1968) and Monday Conference (1972), where he calmly responded to fierce questioning from journalists and vociferous student demonstrators. He was appointed OBE in 1970.

In September 1978 Keys was elected RSL national president. He continued his modernising agenda, becoming a forceful advocate for human rights, refugees, Asian immigration, and also multiculturalism, which he saw as ‘the way for Australia to adjust itself to living as a small, largely European, society in a vast Asian environment’ (NLA Acc.00.153). In 1980 he was knighted. He successfully pushed for the widening of membership eligibility, notably by opening up the league in 1982 to those who had not served overseas. From 1983 he developed a largely productive working relationship with the ALP government of Bob Hawke, having long held that the RSL should build ties to the ALP. Acknowledged as an astute political negotiator, he secured crucial victories such as the exclusion of the War Service Homes scheme from budget cuts in 1984. Despite such successes, his stance on multiculturalism and relationship with Labor angered conservative elements of the RSL, especially the Victorian State president, Bruce Ruxton, and the president of the Australian Capital Territory branch, Alf Garland. Keys grew increasingly frustrated at their efforts to block reforms of an organisation that he was convinced ‘must change dramatically, to cope with a totally different set of circumstances to which we have been accustomed’ (Blair 2004, 60). Some members of the Federal coalition sided with his critics, the Liberal senator Jocelyn Newman once referring to him as a ‘Labor stooge’ (Keys 1999). Those close to Keys more tolerantly joked that he was a ‘Liberal man with a Labor heart’ (Zappia, pers. comm.).

Tensions came to a head at the March 1987 national congress, where Ruxton and others sought to commit the RSL to supporting immigration mainly from countries with largely European populations. Keys used all of his persuasive powers to garner the necessary votes to defeat the motion. In June 1988 he was appointed AC, and the following month received a standing ovation when he gave Ruxton and his supporters a ‘piece of his mind’ (Keys 1999) during an address to the Victorian branch. Soon after, a long letter from Ruxton that condemned Keys for using ‘errors, inaccuracies, defamations and emotive statements’ (NLA Acc.00.153) began circulating around the league and the press. Ruxton also called Keys a ‘wimp’ for not taking a stronger stand against the dismissal of the director of the Australian War Memorial, Jim Flemming, who had fallen out with the minister for veterans’ affairs. Exhausted, and believing leaders should not stay in office too long, Keys resigned the presidency in September 1988, only to be dismayed by the immediate election of Garland as his successor. Soon after, he threatened Garland with defamation action over criticism of his having signed the condolence book at the Japanese embassy in Canberra following the death of Emperor Hirohito, Japan’s wartime sovereign, leading to apologies appearing in a number of newspapers. Keys, however, was magnanimous towards his critics, and a few years later invited Ruxton to lunch with himself and Dulcie.

During his retirement, many causes and interests occupied the energetic Keys. The Hawke government appointed him in 1989 as chair of the National Advisory Committee on Skills Recognition. He was vocal in supporting a constitutional monarchy during the republic debates of the 1990s, and gave numerous speeches on the benefits of multiculturalism and human rights. As an active member of the Korea Veterans’ Association of Australia, in 1995 he became inaugural president of the International Federation of the Korean War Veterans’ Associations (IFKWVA). He was a board member of several corporations, including FAI Insurance, Allied Mining and Processing, and the Ultralight Group, and served on the councils of the Australian War Memorial and the Australian Defence Force Academy.

A dark-haired, nuggety man, immaculately groomed and with a large forehead and ready smile, Keys maintained a wide range of international friends and collaborators, including many in Asia. In 1993 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. After treatment doctors advised that the cancer had entered his lymphatic system, with a prognosis of three to fifteen years to live, but he had other ideas. In January 1994 he and Dulcie travelled to Beijing so that he could undergo an intensive course of Chinese herbal medicine and meditation, about which he wrote a best-selling book, Flowers in Winter (1995).

Late in 1999, however, Keys was diagnosed with mesothelioma, undergoing radical surgery and chemotherapy while again undertaking a course of Chinese remedies. As his condition deteriorated, he was still writing to colleagues in April 2000 on his determination to recover and plan for the forthcoming general assembly of IFKWVA. Keys died on 3 May 2000 of respiratory failure and mesothelioma at his property Glenlee, outside Queanbeyan, a few weeks after attending the dedication of the new National Korean War Memorial in Canberra, construction of which he had actively supported. He was cremated at Norwood Park crematorium at Gungahlin, Australian Capital Territory, and was survived by Dulcie and their three daughters, Elizabeth, Amanda, and Tammy.