Bruce Baird

Bruce George Baird, AM (born 28 February 1942), is a former Australian politician whose career included having a stint as Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party in New South Wales.

Early life

Baird was born in Sydney, and was educated at the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne, holding a master's degree in business administration from the latter. He was Assistant Trade Commissioner at the Australian Embassy in Bonn, Germany, 1972–76 and Trade Commissioner at Australian Consulate-General in New York 1977–80. He was Government Affairs Manager for Esso Australia 1980–84.^[1]

Political career

Baird was a member for the electorate of Northcott in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly 1984–95. He was Minister for Transport 1988–95, Minister for Sydney's Olympic Bid 1990–93 and Minister for Tourism and Roads 1993–95. He was also deputy leader of the Liberal Party from 1992 to 1994.^[1]

Baird was a Liberal member of the Australian House of Representatives from October 1998 to November 2007, representing the electorate of Cook, New South Wales. He also held the positions of chairman of the National Rail Corporation, and was a board member of ABN Amro Hoare Govett, Tourism Training Australia and Tourism Education Services.^[2] Baird along with fellow Liberal MPs Petro Georgiou, Russell Broadbent and Judith Moylan opposed mandatory detention of asylum seekers.^[3]

In April 2007, he announced that he would retire at the next election.^[4] A fierce battle over his successor ensued; Michael Towke was initially preselected as the Liberal candidate, but was subsequently disendorsed and replaced with Scott Morrison, who went on to win the seat.

Despite being a former deputy leader of the Liberal Party in New South Wales, Baird never served as a Federal Government minister during his time in Federal Parliament. Baird had been overlooked for promotion by Prime Minister John Howard because he was a supporter of Deputy Liberal leader and Howard's heir apparent Peter Costello.^[5]

After politics

Baird was appointed Chairman of the Tourism and Transport Forum, a peak industry lobby group, in 2008. In the same year, he was also appointed as chair of the Refugee Resettlement Advisory Council, which advises the Australian government on resettling refugees in Australia.^[6] In 2010 on Australia Day, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for service to the Parliament of Australia, and to the community of New South Wales through a range of business, tourism and welfare organisations.^[7]

Baird's children are Steve Baird, Marketing Head for Velocity Frequent Flyer, Julia Baird, columnist with the Sydney Morning Herald, and Mike Baird, the Premier of New South Wales.^[8] (In fact Bruce himself made an unsuccessful attempt to become Premier when he was a candidate to succeed Nick Greiner in 1992 but lost out to John Fahey.)^[9]

Following the financial collapse of a number of providers of education to international students, in 2009 Baird agreed to head up a review into international education in Australia.^[10] Baird delivered the report in a joint press conference in March 2010. Included in his recommendations were tighter regulation including stronger entry requirements, improved risk assessment, and where breaches occur, tougher penalties.^[11]

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