Australian Dictionary of Biography

Hon. Kevin Newman AO, 1975

Australian Information Service. Donated by Redland Times to Redland Museum, P01095

Kevin Eugene Newman (1933–1999), army officer and politician, was born on 10 October 1933 at South Kensington, Sydney, younger child of Sydney-born parents Eugene Henry Newman, tile layer, and Veronica, née Somes. At Scots College, Bellevue Hill (1943–51), he was prominent in debating, rugby, and the cadet corps. He then enrolled at the Royal Military College (RMC), Duntroon (1952–55), where he was known to his fellow cadets as ‘Pip,’ a reference to the protagonist of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations.

On graduating, Newman served (1956–59) as an infantry platoon commander with the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (RAR), during the Malayan Emergency, before being promoted to captain and transferring to the School of Infantry at Seymour, Victoria. On 1 July 1961 he married a Victorian-born legal officer, Jocelyn Margaret Mullett, at St John’s Anglican Church, Blackburn. The couple moved to Canberra, and Newman served as an instructor at the RMC, then transferred to Army Headquarters, Canberra, as a staff officer in January 1964. Promoted to major in December 1965, he graduated from the Australian Army Command and Staff College, Queenscliff, Victoria, in January 1966, and served as operations officer of the 2nd Battalion, RAR, in South Vietnam (1967–68). He was posted to Britain as an exchange officer at the School of Infantry, Warminster, Wiltshire (1969–71), before being promoted to lieutenant colonel, and appointed commanding officer of the 5th Battalion, RAR, Holsworthy, New South Wales (1972–73), where a former colleague recalled that he had been a progressive leader who ‘pushed the envelope to keep moving the battalion forward and build up unit spirit’ (Fischer 1999, 18).

Newman was serving as commander of the 6th Military District in Tasmania (1973–75) when he resigned his commission and transferred to the Regular Army Reserve. In May he was endorsed as the Liberal Party of Australia’s candidate for the Federal seat of Bass. Later, he revealed that the Whitlam government’s ‘performance stirred me up enough to get involved’ (Newman and Newman 1999, 78). Despite having no experience of parliamentary politics, or even membership of a party, he was elected on 28 June, following the resignation of the sitting member and minister for defence, the Australian Labor Party’s Lance Barnard. Newman’s primary vote of 57.6 per cent represented a two-party preferred swing of 14.3 per cent to the Liberal Party—a result widely interpreted as the beginning of the end for the embattled Whitlam government. Though discontent with the Labor government was the overwhelming factor influencing the result, Newman was an impressive candidate, described by the political journalist Paul Kelly as ‘an effective public speaker, able to meet and mix easily, with the stamp of success about him’ (Kelly 1994, 232). He went on to be re-elected with comfortable margins at four subsequent general elections between December 1975 and March 1983.

Following the coalition’s election victory in December 1975 and despite, by his own admission, being ‘wet behind the ears’ (Newman and Newman 1999, 78), Newman was appointed to the outer ministry where he remained for the entirety of the Fraser government. After a brief stint as minister for repatriation (1975–76), while minister for environment, housing and community development (1976–77), he pleased conservationists but infuriated the Queensland premier, (Sir) Joh Bjelke-Petersen, by announcing an export ban on mineral sands from Fraser Island (K’gari) in November 1976, effectively ending sand mining there. Then, as minister for national development (1977–79)—an experience he recalled as ‘something of a nightmare’ (Newman and Newman 1999, 80)—he was unhappily overwhelmed by the oil crisis brought on by the Iranian Revolution. In June 1979, following the Opposition’s persistent questioning about oil exploration on the Great Barrier Reef, he was accused of wilfully misleading parliament. Though he avoided censure thanks to the support of the prime minister, by the end of the year he had been removed from the portfolio. After subsequent appointments as minister for productivity, and minister assisting the prime minister in Federal affairs (1979–80), he found satisfaction as minister for administrative services (1980–83), where his determination to confront organised crime contributed to the establishment of the National Crime Authority in 1984. He had also served as minister assisting the minister for defence (1980–82). After the Coalition lost office in March 1983, he was omitted from Andrew Peacock’s shadow ministry. In June 1984, having contracted the degenerative condition lupus, he announced that he would not contest the next election.

After he retired from parliament in December 1984, Newman continued to serve the community in various roles, including as chairman of the board of the Launceston Public Hospitals District (1986–89), president of the National Trust of Australia (Tasmania) (1988–91), chairman of the Australian Council of National Trusts (1992–95), director of the Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame and Outback Heritage Centre, Longreach, Queensland (1985–99), and founding chairman of the governing council of Old Parliament House, Canberra (1997–99). He was appointed AO in 1994. Jocelyn, in the meantime, became a Liberal senator representing Tasmania (1986–2002), and a cabinet minister in the Howard government (1996–2001).

Newman died of chronic lung disease in Canberra on 17 July 1999. Prime Minister John Howard delivered the eulogy at a state funeral at the RMC, describing Newman as a great servant of Australia, Tasmania, and the Liberal Party. Retired major-general Peter Phillips, who knew Newman as a cadet at Duntroon, regarded him as ‘immensely generous, open and warm-hearted … —ever the enthusiast and with a likable innocence that stayed with him to the end’ (Darby 1999, 29). He was survived by Jocelyn, and their children Campbell, who was premier of Queensland (2012–15), and Kate.