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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-09-24 Daily Xml
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CYS, MR K.M.

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:34): Keith Martin Cys was a Florey resident who, unfortunately, passed away on 2 September of this year. On behalf of many who knew and respected Keith and his commitment to working people, I attended his funeral and am indebted to his grandson, Mark Slatter, for his wonderfully moving eulogy that day, much of which I would now like to share with the house.

As a new resident to Modbury in 1975, it was not long before I met Keith and, much as Mark remembered as a child, I learnt that Keith was 'a living legend in the trade union movement, not only in his native South Australia but across the nation', and 'a giant of the union movement who refused to shrink'. He even earnt a chapter in the 2007 book, Movers and Shakers, on activists who made a difference in South Australia.

To go back to the beginning, Keith was born on 26 June 1926 at Unley, South Australia, to Arthur Jacobus Cys, a Dutchman who migrated to Australia in 1912, and Edith Anne (nee Aitchison), whose ancestors were of Scottish origin. The young Keith came to consciousness as the Roaring Twenties collapsed, along with the stock market, into the Great Depression: ironic when you think what times the world faces at the time of his passing.

He began his schooling at Thebarton Primary in 1931, moving on to Hindmarsh, Cowandilla and Sturt Street schools, where he completed year 7, but the economic necessities of the times forced him out into the workforce after only one year at Thebarton Technical High School. Despite his limited formal education, he went on to achieve much, and hold his own with politicians, business leaders and union heads. His employment began doing odd jobs in a tailor's shop for 10 shillings a week. He then found work as a junior 'improver' with butchering firm Turners Limited, but once again events in the world at large were shaping his destiny.

The grey years of the Depression developed into the storm clouds of World War II and in 1941 Keith's father, Arthur, quit his job at the Shell Company and joined the 7th Division AIF to sail to the Middle East. He saw active service in Syria and later returned to the Pacific to help turn back the Japanese in New Guinea. Anxious to join his father in the war effort, Keith had to wait until his 18th birthday in 1944, signing up a fortnight later with the RAAF as a technical trainee. After ground crew training in Victoria, he completed courses as an armourer and then an air gunner and became a waist gunner on a Liberator Bomber, but the mushroom clouds over Nagasaki and Hiroshima ended the war before his squadron flew out for active service. Keith said:

At the time, like so many other young Aussies, I thought that life had cheated me, but the older I became, the more I realised just how lucky I had been.

He saw service in Borneo with the No. 24 Squadron after the war and was discharged in June 1946, returning to Adelaide in the butchering trade, but chest problems meant he could no longer work in freezers. He got a job as a truck delivery driver for Harris Scarfe, taught himself to drive double-articulated trucks and joined K.W. Thomas—soon to become Thomas National Transport (TNT).

Around this time, Keith had met an Adelaide girl, Gloria Coule, whom he charmed and married on 24 April 1948. In July 1949, they had their first daughter, Annette Denise, and in August 1951 their second, Pamela Lorraine. They purchased a block at Plympton Park and Keith built the house with his own hands, with Gloria assisting. In 1964, he joined Mayne Nickless as a driver, and took up the offer of becoming a yard delegate for the union, a move that was to shape his life in the years to come. He stood for the branch committee of management in 1965 and, three years later, was elected as an organiser for the South Australian Branch of the Transport Workers Union, responsible for Adelaide's southern area and later the Port area.

He was appointed a senior organiser in 1970 and in 1972 South Australian branch representative on the Federal Council of the TWU. By 1975, the South Australian branch made him the senior organiser assisting the branch secretary on industrial matters, and on 8 January 1980 he was elected South Australian branch secretary upon the retirement of union legend Jack Nyland, a position he was to hold until his retirement on 5 July 1991.

In 1983 and 1984, he was vice-president of the Federal Council of the TWU and in 1989-90 he served as federal president. He was also a member of the executive committee of the SA United Trades and Labour Council from 1982 to 1991, and president in 1989. Renowned for his honesty and integrity, Keith was a tough but straight talking union chief, and his 23 years of service were recognised in 1992 when he was made a member of the Order of Australia (General Division) for service to the trade union movement and to the community. This was his proudest achievement in his working life and made even sweeter by the fact that his honour was of a higher degree than the one awarded to his father several years earlier.

Keith continued to serve the community in retirement on the South Australian Road Safety Advisory Council, the Commercial Transport Advisory Committee, the South Australian Waste Management Commission, the South Australian Taxi Board and the Modbury Hospital Board. Last year, Keith slipped into the fog of dementia and his family only caught brief glimpses of his former intellect, although I am told he smiled with delight upon hearing of the defeat of John Howard, but warned he felt both parties had shifted to the right.

Keith always acknowledged that he could not have committed so much time to the union movement without the support of his first wife, Gloria. She kept up his spirits during the long hours of negotiations which took their toll, while, at the same time, bringing up his daughters. After the sudden death of Gloria in 1985, Keith was lucky enough to find love once again. Meeting through a mutual love of music, Keith married Noeline on 18 October 1986, and they were together until Keith's death. Keith is remembered as a loving and fun-filled grandfather. He survived to see the birth of his great-grandchildren, Zach, Jake and Madison.

Time expired.

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