Nicholas Joseph Kearns (16 January 1920 – 24 July 1980) was an Australian politician. He was a Labor Party member of the

New South Wales Legislative Assembly The New South Wales Legislative Assembly is the lower of the two houses of the Parliament of New South Wales, an Australian state. The upper house is the New South Wales Legislative Council. Both the Assembly and Council sit at Parliament Ho ...

from 1962 to 1980, representing the electorate of

Bankstown Bankstown is a suburb south west of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is 16 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district and is located in the local government area of the City of Canterbury-Bankstown, hav ...

. Kearns was born in

Glebe Glebe (; also known as church furlong, rectory manor or parson's close(s))McGurk 1970, p. 17 is an area of land within an ecclesiastical parish used to support a parish priest. The land may be owned by the church, or its profits may be reserved ...

, and was educated at Belmore Technical School. He joined the Railways Department as an apprentice fitter at Eveleigh Workshops in 1936, working as a fitter and turner both there and later at Chullora Workshops. He rose to become sub-foreman at Chullora from 1961 to 1962; he was also the

Amalgamated Engineering Union The Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) was a major United Kingdom, British trade union. It merged with the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union to form the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union in 1992. History ...

shop steward for the workshops. Kearns also had a long involvement with the Labor Party prior to entering politics. He had joined the party at 21, and had variously held the positions of branch president and secretary and president of Labor's Bankstown state electoral council. Kearns entered state politics at the 1962 election, winning the safe Labor seat of Bankstown upon the retirement of

Spence Powell Arthur Thomas (Spence) Powell (8 August 1903 – 9 July 1970) was an Australian politician and a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly from 1950 until 1962. He was a member of the Labor Party (ALP). Powell was born in Pyrmont, Ne ...

. He was a strong advocate on issues of social welfare, and was a popular member in what was at the time a rapidly growing working-class area with a high proportion of migrants. He served for a period as Shadow Minister for Youth and Community Services prior to Labor's victory at the 1976 election, but narrowly missed out on a ministerial position afterwards. He had announced his intention to retire at the 1981 election when he died suddenly while on a holiday in the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory ...

in July 1980.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kearns, Nick 1920 births 1980 deaths Members of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of New South Wales 20th-century Australian politicians