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18 Facts About Alan Ramsey

1.

Alan Graham Ramsey was an Australian journalist and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald from 1986 to 2008.

2.

Alan Ramsey was inducted into the Australian Media Hall of Fame in 2017.

3.

Alan Ramsey's father worked assorted jobs including a factory job and a few sales jobs.

4.

Alan Ramsey's mother took him and his siblings to live at Chittaway Point, New South Wales, when his father was enlisted in the war.

5.

Alan Ramsey completed his Intermediate Certificate studies from Gosford High School before joining The Daily Telegraph.

6.

Alan Ramsey started his career in journalism in 1953 as a copy boy and later as a cadet journalist working for Frank Packer, who then owned the Sydney Daily Telegraph.

7.

Alan Ramsey was a correspondent for AAP in Port Moresby and London, before being appointed in 1965 as a correspondent to travel with the first contingent of Australian combat troops to Vietnam.

8.

Alan Ramsey said he felt compelled to speak out because Gorton's speech contradicted "one particular crucial part" of what Gorton had said in his office in an interview.

9.

Gorton graciously accepted the apology, while inviting the Labor Party Opposition to withdraw its motion that Alan Ramsey be immediately arrested by the serjeant-at-arms of the House.

10.

Alan Ramsey later recalled that House speaker William Aston had helped him draft the apology.

11.

Alan Ramsey wrote for a number of other publications before becoming a speech-writer and press secretary for Australian Labor Party opposition leader Bill Hayden from 1978 until 1983.

12.

Alan Ramsey took over the weekend national politics column for The Sydney Morning Herald from Peter Bowers and wrote the column from 1987 until his retirement in December 2008.

13.

Alan Ramsey retired as the oldest longest serving Australian political reporter covering Federal politics.

14.

Alan Ramsey was a member of the board of the Whitlam Institute, but resigned, along with another director, subsequent to the forced resignation of founding director Peter Botsman in November 2002, after Botsman had been targeted by fellow director Mark Latham, following a falling out between the two.

15.

Alan Ramsey was inducted into the Australian Media Hall of Fame in 2017.

16.

Alan Ramsey was married twice: first to Jeanette Murphy and then to journalist Laura Tingle.

17.

Alan Ramsey had three children from his first marriage and a daughter from his second marriage.

18.

Alan Ramsey died on 24 November 2020, aged 82, after suffering from dementia and having spent the last months of his life in a nursing home on the south coast of New South Wales.