People Australia

David Monash Bennett (1924–1984) school principal, Labor Party official 

Birth: 25 June 1924 at 'Iona', Toorak, Melbourne, son of Gershon Bennett, dentist, and Bertha, née Monash. Marriage: (1) 1956 in Melbourne to Sonja Bargmann. They had two sons. (2) 1973 in Melbourne to Mary Lenore Wells. Death: 1 May 1984 in Glen Iris, Victoria. 

• Grandson of General Sir John Monash.
• Leading member of Victorian Fabian Society, primarily involved with educational reform.
• Principal of experimental school, ERA, at Donvale, outer-suburban Melbourne, where he employed Albert Langer, Maoist student radical, as a teacher.
• Full-time member of Whitlam-initiated Schools Commission.
• Joined Australian Labor Party as ‘essentially a man of the centre’. One of those who paved the way for federal intervention in Victorian ALP and removal of hard-line executive in 1970. President of Victorian ALP Reconstruction Committee 1970.
• Of an ‘independent, slightly eccentric nature’.
• Cause of death prostate cancer.

Sources
Recorder, 152, August 1988.