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Biography
Norman Graham Freudenberg AM (12 May 1934 – 26 July 2019) was an Australian author and political speechwriter who worked with the Australian Labor Party for over forty years, beginning when he was appointed Arthur Calwell's press secretary in June 1961.
Freudenberg was raised in Brisbane. His father was a soldier who fought at Gallipoli and, being a patriot, he named his son after a former colonial Governor of Queensland, Field Marshal Sir Henry Norman. Freudenberg was educated at the Anglican Church Grammar School in Brisbane,. He then studied journalism in Melbourne and worked for some years with "The Melbourne Sun". Freudenberg was Jewish.
Freudenberg wrote over a thousand speeches for several leaders of the Australian Labor Party at both the New South Wales state and federal level. These have included Arthur Calwell, Gough Whitlam, Neville Wran, Bob Hawke, Barrie Unsworth, Bob Carr and Simon Crean. He was "centrally involved" in policy speeches for 14 federal elections and 9 New South Wales state elections.
In 1990 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in recognition of "services to journalism, to parliament, and to politics".
From 1995–1998 he served on the Council of the National Library of Australia.
In June 2005 he was inducted as a life member of the NSW ALP. Before his death, he lived in retirement on Bribie Island, Queensland. On 26 July 2019, it was announced that Freudenberg had died after a long illness. In a tribute to Freudenberg after his death, one of his journalist colleagues, Eric Walsh, described him as "Australia's greatest political speechwriter."
Books by Freudenberg
- A Certain Grandeur – Gough Whitlam in Politics (1977)
- Cause for Power – the Centenary History of the NSW Labor Party (1991) ISBN0-949138-60-6
- A Figure of Speech (2005) ISBN1-74031-105-1 (autobiography)
- Churchill and Australia (2008) ISBN978-1-4050-3870-6