Alan John Hunt (9 October 1927 – 19 July 2013) was an Australian politician, having been a member of the Victorian Legislative Council from 1961 until 1992.
Hunt started his education in South Australia and later attended Melbourne Grammar School. He then went to the University of Melbourne where he was a non-resident law student at Trinity College."Class Lists", The Fleur-de-Lys, Dec. 1947, p. 19. He was president of the Melbourne University Liberals from 1948 to 1950 and secretary of the then National Union of Australian University Students. After obtaining a law degree he practised as a solicitor until entering the Legislative Council in 1961, representing the Liberal Party.
Hunt was first appointed as a minister in 1971, under the premiership of Henry Bolte. He served in a variety of portfolios under the Bolte, Hamer and Thompson governments, most notability as Minister for Local Government, Planning and Minister for Education. He was briefly Attorney-General of Victoria in 1976.
From 1979 to 1982 the Hamer government initiated and implemented a reorganisation of the Victorian Education Department.Aims and Objectives of Education in Victoria Ministerial Statement by The Hon A.J. Hunt MLC Minister of Education in the Legislative Council and The Hon Norman Lacy MP Assistant Minister of Education in the Legislative Assembly on 12 December 1979Alan Hunt and Norman Lacy, Strategies and Structures for Education in Victoria, Victorian Government Printer, 1981Alan J. Hunt, "A Government Thrusts Towards Change" in M Frazer, J Dunstan, P Creed Eds., Perspectives on Organisational Change, Longmans, 1985, pp. 13–32 Hunt as Minister of Education (1979 – 1982) and Norman Lacy as Assistant Minister of Education (1979 – 1980) were jointly responsible for the reform policy development process and the early stages of its implementation.Murray Landt – Past President Victorian Primary Principals Association – "The years 1980 and 1981 were very significant years in the history of state education in Victoria. For the first time in eighty years there was a complete restructure of the Education Department. " Together, they sought to reform the administration of the department, which they saw as centralised and inefficient. Hunt appointed Lacy Chairman of the Ministerial Consultative Committee that steered the project in its early phase and the Implementation Steering Committee later. He pulled together a group of people from academia and business to assist him as well as PA Management Consultants. The Government legislated – at the end of 1981 – to scrap the teaching divisions (Primary, Secondary and Technical) and to remove the statutory bodies (The Committee of Classifiers and the Teachers' Tribunal.Education (Amendment) Bill Explanatory Second Reading Speech by The Hon. Norman Lacy MP Minister of Educational Services in the Legislative Assembly on 10 September 1981
Alan Hunt also served as leader of the government in the Legislative Council from 1978 until the Liberals lost government in 1982. In 1986 he challenged Jeff Kennett for the leadership of the Victorian Liberal Party but was unsuccessful.https://www.YouTube.com/QrBc8JClNow Seven National News, HSV-7 Melbourne, 21 October 1986
He retired from politics in 1992 and was the father of former Federal Liberal parliamentarian Greg Hunt.
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