29 Facts About Edwin Corboy

Edwin Wilkie "Ted" Corboy was an Australian politician and public servant.

Edwin Corboy was a member of the Australian Labor Party and served in the House of Representatives from 1918 to 1919, representing the Western Australian seat of Swan.

Edwin Corboy was defeated after a single term, but subsequently served in the Western Australian Legislative Assembly from 1921 to 1933.

Edwin Corboy was born on 24 August 1896 at the Hospital for Women, Melbourne.

Edwin Corboy was the son of Isobel Amelia and Michael Corboy.

Edwin Corboy's father worked variously as a maltster, railway worker and ironworker.

Edwin Corboy moved to Western Australia at a young age and attended Perth Boys' School until the age of 15.

Edwin Corboy joined the state public service in January 1912 as a junior accounts clerk with the Department of Water Supply.

Edwin Corboy enlisted for military service in June 1915, after having previously been rejected.

Edwin Corboy served at Gallipoli and later in France, where he was wounded twice, first at Pozieres and later at Flers, before being invalided to England because of injury to his eyes, the result of a gas attack.

At the age of 21, Edwin Corboy unsuccessfully contested the 1917 Subiaco by-election for a seat in the Legislative Assembly of Western Australia.

Edwin Corboy was elected to the Australian House of Representatives in the 1918 by-election for the Division of Swan.

Edwin Corboy won the by-election in somewhat unusual circumstances, winning the safe Nationalist seat for the Labor Party.

Edwin Corboy received the highest number of primary votes and won the "first past the post" contest.

Edwin Corboy, who was 22 when he was elected, became the youngest person ever elected to the House of Representatives and held that record until Wyatt Roy, aged 20, won the Division of Longman in the 2010 federal election.

Edwin Corboy made his maiden House of Representatives speech in November 1918, during a parliamentary debate on the Defence Bill.

In 1919, Edwin Corboy was censured by the central executive of the Victorian branch of the Labour party for supporting the deportation of all aliens interned during World War I from Australia.

The executive, in condemning Edwin Corboy, claimed his stance was "inconsistent with principles of liberty and justice".

Edwin Corboy, who was active in representing the interests of repatriated and demobilised veterans, had expressed concern that jobs in Western Australia's timber industry were being filled with Austrians released from internment and returning to their old jobs, while returned soldiers were not able to obtain work.

Edwin Corboy was a state delegate to the federal executive of the Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League, a predecessor of the Returned Services League, and in 1919 attended the RSSIL's fourth annual conference in Adelaide.

In June 1919, Edwin Corboy made a speech to dock workers, following a period of industrial unrest, including riots, at the Fremantle wharf.

Edwin Corboy called for a federal election and stated that he would "a thousand times rather have been wounded in a wharf riot in Fremantle than fighting for the capitalistic rulers of the world in France".

In 1921, Edwin Corboy supported Edith Cowan in voicing disagreement with a policy allowing only male guests to the Speaker's gallery.

Edwin Corboy was a member of the parliamentary select committee appointed to inquire into the cashing out of soldiers' war gratuity bonds.

In 1927 Edwin Corboy expressed his support for the abolition of capital punishment in Western Australia, stating that the death penalty was not a deterrent to serious crime.

In 1930, Edwin Corboy became the member for Yilgarn-Coolgardie, a new seat incorporating his former seat.

In 1939 Edwin Corboy was again called to military service, serving until 1945, when he returned to Australia and worked as a public servant in Perth.

Edwin Corboy married Hannah Tobin in 1919, with whom he had one son.

Edwin Corboy was widowed in 1942 and remarried in 1949 to Dora Daly.