Roger Charles Degen (born 1 May 1939) is a former

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

n politician. He was the

Labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

member for Balmain in 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 1968 to 1984. Degen was born in Balmain to boatbuilder John Degen and Alice Quigley. He was educated at St Joseph's Christian Brothers High School in

Rozelle Rozelle is a suburb in the inner west of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is located 4 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the Inner West Council. Location Rozelle si ...

before being apprenticed to the Railways Department building carriages and wagons. A carpenter, he became an executive member of the New South Wales

Building Workers' Industrial Union The Building Workers' Industrial Union of Australia was an Australian trade union covering workers in the construction industry. Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners of Australia It was originally established as the Australian District ...

; he joined the Labor Party in 1962. He became assistant secretary of the party's Rozelle branch, and was on the electorate councils for the federal seat of Dalley and the state seat of Balmain. He married Celes Watkin in 1964, with whom he had one son. When the member for Balmain, John McMahon, retired at the 1968 state election, Degen was selected to replace him as Labor candidate. He won the seat easily. In 1980, he faced a motion of expulsion from parliament after an adverse finding against him by the Woodward Royal Commission into drug trafficking. The motion was defeated on party lines and he continued to hold the seat without difficulty until his retirement in 1984.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Degen, Roger 1939 births Living people Members of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly Australian carpenters Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of New South Wales