Born in 1896, in Melbourne, Ted Corboy moved to Western Australia at a young age. He worked as a junior accounts clerk in the Water Supply Department. Rejected at his first attempt to enlist in August 1914, he joined the Australian Imperial Force in June 1915, embarking from Fremantle on HMAT Anchises in September 1915. He served as a private and on occasions as an acting corporal in the 28th Battalion at Gallipoli from October 1915 until the evacuation in December 1915. In 1916, he served with the 70th Battalion in France where he was wounded twice—at Pozières and at Flers. Returning to duty, Corboy was invalided back to England and then to Australia due to an injury resulting from a gas attack. Discharged in December 1917, he joined the Lands Department as a clerk.
Corby was elected to the House of Representatives for the Labor Party in the seat of Swan in a by-election in 1918. Aged 22 years 2 months, he became the youngest member elected to the federal Parliament, a record that stood until the election of the Member for Longman, Wyatt Roy, in 2010. During his short term in the federal Parliament, Corboy was a strong advocate for the interests of returned servicemen. In June 1919, he was censured by the central executive of the Victorian branch of the ALP for supporting a ‘resolution for the deportation of all interned aliens as being inconsistent with the principles of liberty and justice and foreign to the spirit of the Labor party’.
Defeated at the 1919 federal election on preference votes, Corboy entered Western Australian politics in 1921 as the state member for Yilgarn and Yilgarn-Coolgardie. He remained a member of the Western Australian Parliament until 1933 when he lost ALP preselection.
Corboy enlisted again in the Second World War and served in the Intelligence Section, 3rd Australian Corps. He returned to work in the public service after his discharge in 1945. Reporting Corboy’s death in 1950, the Perth Daily News described him as ‘one of the most colourful figures in Australian politics’.
Sources:
- The Parliamentary Handbook, Parliament of Australia
- Biographical Register of Members of the Parliament of Western Australia, Vol 1 1870-1930, D Black and G Bolton
- The AIF database
- ‘Labor’s Candidate for Swan’ Westralian Worker (Perth, WA: 1900 - 1951) 20 Sep 1918: 4. Web. 30 Mar 2015
- ‘Personal’ The Argus (Melbourne, Vic: 1848–1957) 1 Nov 1918: 6. Web. 30 Mar 2015
- ‘Labour Party and Germans’ The Argus (Melbourne, Vic: 1848 –1957) 9 Jun 1919: 6. Web. 30 Mar 2015
- ‘Ted Corboy Dies’ The Daily News (Perth, WA: 1882–1950) 7 Aug 1950: 4 Edition: Final. Web. 30 Mar 2015
- Nathan Church, Hannah Gobbett, Martin Lumb and Rob Lundie, Commonwealth Members of Parliament who have served in war: Colonial wars and the First World War, Parliamentary Library Research Paper, September 2014
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