Barry Cohen

Barry Cohen AM (3 April 1935 – 18 December 2017) was an Australian politician. He was a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and served in federal parliament from 1969 to 1990, representing the Division of Robertson in New South Wales. He held ministerial office in the Hawke government from 1983 to 1987.

Early life Cohen was born on 3 April 1935 in Griffith, New South Wales. His parents had settled in Griffith during the Great Depression, where his South African-born father worked as a dentist. His paternal grandparents were Polish Jews from the villages of Pajęczno and Działoszyn, who immigrated to Australia via England and South Africa; other members of the family who remained in Poland were killed in the Holocaust.

Cohen spent his early years in Griffith, where he later recalled his family was one of only three Jewish families in the town. At the age of 10 he was sent to Sydney to board at Sydney Grammar School, He remained involved with sport as a golf, squash and tennis commentator, including on broadcasts of the Davis Cup.

Parliament Early years Cohen joined the Australian Labor Party in 1964. He was elected to the House of Representatives at the 1969 federal election, winning Robertson from the incumbent Liberal MP William Bridges-Maxwell. He was appointed chair of the House of Representatives Select Committee on Road Safety in 1973, remaining chair until 1976 following its conversion to a standing committee in 1974. Cohen publicly opposed the South African government's apartheid policy and was a leader of protests against the 1971 South Africa rugby union tour of Australia.

Frontbencher Cohen was elected to Bill Hayden's shadow ministry in 1977 and named opposition spokesman for the environment, sport and recreation, tourism and home affairs.

Cohen retired from parliament at the 1990 election. In 2004 he attracted attention through an opinion piece in the Australian Jewish News in which declared that antisemitism was "rampant" in the ALP.

In 2015, Cohen and three other former MPs brought a case before the High Court of Australia, purporting that reductions to their retirement allowances and limitations on the number of "domestic return trips per year" under the Members of Parliament (Life Gold Pass) Act 2002 were unconstitutional under S51(xxxi) of the Constitution of Australia. They lost the case in 2016, with the court finding that Parliament was entitled to vary the terms of allowances.

Publications In retirement Cohen wrote a number of books on political anecdotes, and an autobiography:

Life with Gough (1996) From Whitlam to Winston (1997) The Almost Complete Gough (2001) The Life of the Party – Political Anecdotes (1987) How to Become Prime Minister (1990)

Personal Cohen married Rae McNeill in October 1959 and they had three sons.

Although Cohen voted for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the 1970s, he spoke out against gay marriage, arguing that "gay marriage and conventional marriage is [not] the same thing".

In 2014, Cohen publicly announced he had been diagnosed with early-stage dementia in an interview with 7.30, in which he called for the government to sponsor further research into the condition. He died of Alzheimer's disease on 18 December 2017, aged 82.

Honours Cohen was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 2007, for service to the Australian Parliament and to the community through a range of cultural and environmental roles and contributions to public discussion and debate.

A species of fossil marsupial, Yalkaparidon coheni, was named after him.