People Australia

Jim Keeffe, 1966

National Archives of Australia, A1200:L57228

James Bernard (Jim) Keeffe (1919-1988) forestry labourer, trade union official and parliamentarian

Birth: 20 August 1919 at Atherton, Queensland, son of James Keeffe (1882-1948), a shop assistant, miner and farmer born at Williamsdale, New South Wales, of Irish heritage, and Augusta Holzapfel (1889-1958), born at Cooktown, Queensland, of German heritage. Marriages: (1) 25 January 1941 at St Patrick’s Catholic Church, Gympie, Queensland, to Elizabeth Merle Garrett (1917-1965), born at Belllingen, NSW. They had a daughter and a son. (2) a widower, on 6 August 1966 at St Margaret Mary’s Catholic Church, Hyde Park, Townsville, to Sheila Denise Nichols (1944-?), a secretary, born at Dirranbandi, Queensland. They had two daughters and a son before divorcing in 1981. Death: 15 May 1988 at Townsville hospital. Religion: Catholic. 

• Educated at Mothar Mountain State School, Jim continued to secondary level by correspondence and private study while employed as farm labourer and public servant in the Queensland Forestry Department in 1936-1939.
• On 18 April 1939 he enlisted in the Citizen Military Forces. He was called up for full-time duty in December 1941 and transferred to the Australian Imperial Force in July 1942. Invalided from Papua New Guinea after having been shot in the right arm, he was discharged on 27 October 1945, having reached the rank of sergeant.
• He was employed as an insurance and real estate agent after the war, then became a proprietor of a small business. Having sold his business, he took a Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme course in cooping.
• He was court advocate and part-time State secretary for the Federated Coopers Union then was a clerk with the Plumbers and Gasfitters Employees’ union Queensland branch, from 1951 to 1956.
• Keeffe had joined the Australian Labor Party in 1937. He was organiser for the ALP Queensland branch in 1956-1960, then secretary of that branch from 1960 to 1965.
• He was federal president of the ALP from 1962 to 1970; secretary and public relations officer to Board of Labor Enterprises Pty Ltd and Board of Directors of radio station 4KQ; local officer, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Advancement League and Returned Services League; member of the State Council Legion of Ex-servicemen and Women; president, Ex-services Human Rights Association, Queensland branch member, Institute of International Affairs; member of the Council of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1967-1970.
• Elected to the Australian Senate in December 1964, he took his seat as a senator for Queensland in July 1965. He was a member of the select committee on off-shore petroleum in 1967-1971 and of the Senate standing committee on social environment, Senate Labor representative on the Council of the Institute of Aboriginal Studies and a member of the Parliamentary Labor Party committee on Aboriginal affairs, and the rural and resources committee.
• Keeffe retired from the Senate and from politics in February 1983.
• Cause of death: myocardial infarct. 

Sources
Joan Rydon (ed), A biographical register of the Commonwealth Parliament 1901-1972 (ANU Press, 1975); ALP Year Book, 1973; Graeme Powell, James Bernard Keeffe, in Biographical Dictionary of the Australian Senate: https://biography.senate.gov.au/keeffe-james-bernard/