Jim Curran

Who was Jim Curran?

James Lawrence Curran was an Australian politician. He was an Australian Labor Party member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly from 1980 to 1981, representing the electorate of Castlereagh.

Curran was born in Gilgandra, and raised on a farm sixteen kilometres from the town. He later attended boarding school at St Stanislaus College in Bathurst, and won a scholarship to attend Armidale Teachers College. He taught variously in Moree, Bourke, Sydney, and the United Kingdom. He later gave up teaching and returned to Gilgandra, where he bought a farm, specialising in sheep, beef and wheat. He became heavily involved in the local farming community, serving as secretary and president of the United Farmers and Woolgrowers Association in Gilgandra, and being an active member of several farming and breeding groups. He was also a farming commentator for the local ABC station for a period. In 1972, he returned to teaching, taking up a position as library adviser to the Western Area for the Department of Education.

In 1977, Curran became the private secretary to the local MLA, then Treasurer and former Premier Jack Renshaw. Renshaw had been in state parliament for four decades and a senior political figure for three of those, and had long managed to hold the conservative-leaning country seat. Renshaw resigned from parliament in January 1980, and endorsed Curran as his successor at the resulting by-election. Curran retained the seat for Labor after a fiercely contested campaign, but a redistribution before the 1981 state election severely weakened his hold on the seat when he ran for a full term. The redistribution had moved a large amount of traditionally Country Party-voting territory into Castlereagh, and abolished the adjacent seat of Burrendong, held Country Party MLA Roger Wotton. Wotton instead contested Castlereagh, and on the new boundaries, succeeded in ousting Curran from the seat.