Vincent Patrick Durick was an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n politician. He was an Australian Labor Party

Australian Labor Party

The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...

 member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly

New South Wales Legislative Assembly

The Legislative Assembly, or lower house, is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of New South Wales, an Australian state. The other chamber is the Legislative Council. Both the Assembly and Council sit at Parliament House in the state capital, Sydney...

 from 1964 to 1984, representing the electorate of Lakemba

Electoral district of Lakemba

Lakemba is an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of New South Wales in Sydney's Inner West. It has been held by the Australian Labor Party since its creation in 1927...

.

Durick was born in Broken Hill

Broken Hill, New South Wales

-Geology:Broken Hill's massive orebody, which formed about 1,800 million years ago, has proved to be among the world's largest silver-lead-zinc mineral deposits. The orebody is shaped like a boomerang plunging into the earth at its ends and outcropping in the centre. The protruding tip of the...

, and attended the Railway Town convent school and Marist Brothers College. He moved to Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

 at the age of 17 to attend the Sydney Teachers College

Sydney Teachers College

The Sydney Teachers College was a tertiary education institution that trained school teachers in Sydney, Australia. It existed from 1906 until 1981, when it became a part of the Sydney Institute of Education which in turn joined the Faculty of Education at the University of Sydney in...

, before returning to Broken Hill to teach at Broken Hill Central School. He served in the Second Australian Imperial Force

Second Australian Imperial Force

The Second Australian Imperial Force was the name given to the volunteer personnel of the Australian Army in World War II. Under the Defence Act , neither the part-time Militia nor the full-time Permanent Military Force could serve outside Australia or its territories unless they volunteered to...

 from 1941 to 1944 before being discharged on medical grounds, and returned to teaching at North Broken Hill. In 1946, he relocated from rural Euston

Euston, New South Wales

Euston is a small town on the banks of the Murray River, southern New South Wales, Australia in Balranald Shire. The twin town of Robinvale is on the other side of the river in the state of Victoria. At the 2006 census, Euston had a population of 462 people. Until the irrigation development at...

 to teach at Lakemba Public School in suburban Sydney. He transferred to the state high school system in 1949, teaching variously at Bowral, Homebush Boys High School, Fairfield, and James Cook High school before entering politics.

Durick entered parliament at a 1964 by-election following the death of the incumbent local member, Stan Wyatt

Stan Wyatt

Stanislaw Wyatt was an Australian politician and a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly from 1950 until his death in 1964. He was a member of the Australian Labor Party ....

. Lakemba was a safe seat for the Labor Party, and Durick was re-elected seven times. Durick served as caucus returning officer for the crucial 1973 leadership ballot that saw Neville Wran

Neville Wran

Neville Kenneth Wran, AC, CNZM, QC was the Premier of New South Wales from 1976 until 1986. He was National President of the Australian Labor Party from 1980 to 1986 and Chairman of both the Lionel Murphy Foundation and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation from 1986...

 win the Labor leadership from Pat Hills; though a Hills supporter, Durick resolved a tied vote by ruling that Wran had won by virtue of leading on the first count. He did not hold party, parliamentary or ministerial office; however, he narrowly missed out on becoming Speaker

Speaker of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly

The Speaker of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly is the presiding officer of the Legislative Assembly, New South Wales's lower chamber of Parliament. The current Speaker is Shelley Hancock, who was elected on 3 May 2011...

 on one occasion when his rival's name was drawn from a hat. Durick retired at the 1984 state election

New South Wales state election, 1984

Elections were held in the state of New South Wales, Australia, on Saturday 24 March 1984. The Labor government led by Neville Wran won a fourth term in office, although with a reduced margin and a 7% swing against it....

, and was succeeded by Wes Davoren

Wes Davoren

Westby James "Wes" Davoren was an Australian politician. He was a Labor member for Lakemba in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly from 1984 to 1995....

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Durick died in February 1996 at Lidcombe

Lidcombe, New South Wales

Lidcombe is a suburb in western Sydney, in the state of New South Wales Australia. Lidcombe is located 14 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of Auburn Council....

.