[1] He and his older brother Peter Morris – also a federal MP – were the sons of Jimmy Morris, a Greek immigrant from the island of Symi who anglicised his name from Agapitos Montiadis and ran a coffeehouse in Newcastle, New South Wales.
[1] He was factionally unaligned within the ALP and came into conflict with the Hawke government on several occasions, including on changes to the assets test for pensions and the Bell Group's 1986 takeover bid for BHP.
[3][4] In 1990, he publicly criticised the government's decision to renege on an election promise to relocate the Australian Maritime Safety Authority from Canberra to Newcastle.
[5] In 2006, Morris publicly opposed the ALP's decision to disendorse incumbent Newcastle state MP Bryce Gaudry, with his letters to federal Labor leader Kim Beazley on the matter published in The Sydney Morning Herald.
[6] Prior to the 2007 New South Wales state election, he announced he would support Gaudry's bid for re-election as an independent.