Jack Beale

Jack Gordon Beale AO (17 July 1917 – 7 June 2006) was an Australian politician who championed the need for Australia to conserve and develop its water resources.

In his obituary in The Sydney Morning Herald, he was described as "a visionary, one of the first to realize what would become vital issues in Australia: the potential of water resources and the limited capacity of the environment to sustain abuse.

He attended state schools in rural Scone and the industrial city of Newcastle, and earned an honors diploma in mechanical engineering from Sydney Technical College.

[4] Jack Beale's father Rupert was elected a Member of the Legislative Assembly in the New South Wales state parliament in 1941.

He declined the position and asked for the portfolio of Minister for Conservation, which ranked thirteenth, but which was responsible for the state's water, soil and forests and which interested him more.

[7] While his primary motivation was to support farmers, he also directed water releases from state dams to preserve the ecology of the Macquarie Marshes Nature Reserve.

Starting in 1987, in his 70s, he proposed first to the Unsworth and then the Greiner governments that he develop privately owned and operated hydroelectric power stations at 13 state dams.

After fighting bureaucratic opposition and the entrenched interest of the monopoly Electricity Commission, he eventually won a public tender to establish power stations at three dams, Burrendong, Copeton and Glenbawn (near Scone where he had lived as a child).

From 1974 to 1977 he was an adviser to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and undertook advisory missions to Thailand, Venezuela, the Philippines and Sri Lanka.