Kenneth Oswald Hoad (13 November 1897 – 7 June 1944) 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 House ...

from 1925 to 1932, representing the electorate of

Cootamundra Cootamundra, nicknamed Coota, is a town in the South West Slopes region of New South Wales, Australia and within the Riverina. It is within the Cootamundra-Gundagai Regional Council. At the 2016 Census, Cootamundra had a population of 6,782. ...

. Hoad was born in

Junee Junee () is a medium-sized town in the Riverina region of New South Wales, Australia. The town's prosperity and mixed services economy is based on a combination of agriculture, rail transport, light industry and government services, and in par ...

, the son of James Hoad, a member of the Legislative Council. He was educated at Junee Public School, and joined the Railway Department in 1913. He was a porter at Junee from 1913 to 1917 and at

Narrabri Narrabri ( ) is a locality and seat of Narrabri Shire local government area in the North West Slopes, New South Wales, Australia on the Namoi River, northwest of Sydney. It sits on the junction of the Kamilaroi Highway and the Newell Highwa ...

from 1917 to 1920, and then an operator at Junee from 1920 until his election to parliament in 1925. He was an alderman of the Junee Shire Council from 1919 until 1922, and from 1925 to 1928. He was also the branch secretary of the Railway and Tramway Professional Officers Association until 1925. Hoad first attempted to enter state politics at the 1922 election, but was unsuccessful in winning one of the three seats in the

electorate. In 1925, however, incumbent Labor MLA and future Premier

James McGirr James "Jim" McGirr, JP (6 February 1890 – 27 October 1957) was the Labor Premier of New South Wales from 6 February 1947 to 3 April 1952. A Catholic, McGirr was the seventh son of John Patrick McGirr, farmer and Irish immigrant, and Mary M ...

lost party endorsement, and Hoad, heavily supported by the railway unions, was elected to his seat. Cootamundra reverted to being a single-member electorate in 1928, and Hoad, as the Labor candidate, held off a challenge from the Country Party by 86 votes. He was re-elected with a much larger margin in 1930, but was defeated in 1932 by Country Party candidate Bill Ross. He again contested Cootamundra in 1935 and 1938, but was narrowly defeated by Ross on both occasions. Later in life, Hoad owned property in Junee and a grazing property at Ulandera. He died at Junee in 1944, and was buried in Junee Cemetery.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoad, Ken 1897 births 1944 deaths Members of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly People from Junee Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of New South Wales 20th-century Australian politicians