Norman Henry Lacy (born 25 October 1941[1]) is an Australian former politician, who was a Minister in the Hamer and Thompson Cabinets of the Victorian Government from May 1979 to April 1982.

Soon after the death of his father in May 1960, Lacy was accepted by Dr Stuart Babbage, Principal of Ridley College (University of Melbourne),[4] to live in at the college in Parkville, Victoria, while he studied for his Leaving Certificate, the minimum requirement for the commencement of theological studies, through the George Taylor and Staff correspondence school, in The Causeway off Little Collins Street in Melbourne.

[1] Lacy returned the banter in numerous parliamentary debates in which he took on Holding and his party over the growing level of unemployment that was emerging in the Australian economy under the federal Whitlam government.

[3] As a result, he made a number of friends amongst the Labor opposition, including fellow Anglican and Education spokesman Robert Fordham, as well as Barry Jones, who for many years had led the abolitionist campaign on this issue.

In that he was assisted by his close friend Peter Block,[6] who undertook a similar role in the Victorian Legislative Council where he was a member for Boronia Province, which included Lacy's lower house seat.

[1] His honors dissertation was entitled "A Social Network Approach to the Origination and Quality of Male Neighbor Relationships on Middle Class Housing Estates."

[1] He admired the career sacrificing position Dixon had adopted on the hanging of Ronald Ryan, his thorough knowledge of economics, his parliamentary debating skills and the value of his many enlightened and reformist policies - particularly the Life Be In It campaign.

He thought it incompetent that the Party hadn't arranged for Dixon to be pre-selected for a safe seat and as a result he was defeated along with Bill Borthwick, Glynn Jenkins, Lacy and many others in the 1982 change of government.

He believed that the long term consequence of this was that the Party had not prepared for a future in the highly successful Hamer mold and thereafter lacked any capacity for enlightened leadership and progressive policy development.

He tried, largely without success, to convince Thompson to have his ideas for educational reform, incorporated into the 1979 election policy, but otherwise he remained a great admirer of his mentor.

[7] Lacy was prominent in defending Hamer's integrity and reputation in the Parliament against the attacks of the two renegade right wing Liberal MLAs, Charles Francis (Caulfield) and Doug Jennings (Westernport) and in September 1977 he successfully moved in the party room for their expulsion.

He attacked the two members for their disloyalty to the Premier and their party colleagues by abstaining in a vote on an opposition no-confidence motion over Housing Commission of Victoria land deals.

[5] In 1977 he attended the 8-week Advanced Management Program at the Australian Administrative Staff College Mount Eliza on a scholarship he was awarded by the Parliament of Victoria.

[7] He had to defend the acoustics, the design of the spire, the rejection of the proposed changes to the Concert Hall interiors, the BASS ticketing system of the project, as well as its delays and cost over runs, in debates that were often led by Opposition Leader John Cain.

[30] At the end of 1981, the Government legislated to scrap the teaching divisions of the Education Department (Primary, Secondary and Technical) and to abolish the statutory bodies - the Committee of Classifiers and the Teachers' Tribunal.

He pursued this mandate assiduously and against robust public opposition from rural based fundamentalist Christian groups as well as leading members of the Catholic Church and the National Civic Council.

[38][39] In 1981, Lacy addressed the Senate Standing Committee on Education and the Arts arguing for the strategic and national importance of a Commonwealth commitment to recurrent funding for the fledgling Foundation.

[42] The Foundation has continued to flourish into the 21st century under the dual leadership of Edgar as executive director and its long term chairman and patron Janet Holmes à Court.

He became enthusiastic about this program for many reasons not the least of which was that the design developed at his request by the Public Works Department was able to accommodate a regulation sized basketball court.

More than 200 secondary schools benefited from the program that also provided the structural resources needed throughout the state to accommodate his compulsory physical education policy.

In it he announced the most significant development in remedial education in Victoria with a strategic plan for addressing a reported decline in literacy and numeracy skills amongst secondary students.

[45][46][24] Lacy's greatest political disappointment came from the Cain Labor Government's actions after their 1982 election, directed at de-emphasising and largely dismantling the program.

Almost every week during the spring session of Parliament in that year he delivered a ministerial statement in the Legislative Assembly on one of these policies in an attempt to counter the emerging mood for change in the electorate.

Right wing Christian groups (including the rural based Concerned Parents Association who ran a candidate against him) and the DLP (with the direction of their preferences against him - the first Liberal to be so treated) targeted him over his Health and Human Relations Education program.

Being removed from his young family and then losing his seat in Parliament in April 1982 presented Lacy with the darkest period of his life since the death of his mother in 1956.

[48] Living alone in The Avenue, Parkville in the neighbourhood of Ridley College where 20 years earlier he had commenced his theological studies, he wrestled with his loneliness and the loss of his family and career.

His masters dissertation was on "the perceptions of information technology professionals, their understanding of managerial decision-making and the role of the decision support system designer".

[1] Soon afterwards, at the invitation of Professor Bill Walker, Lacy was appointed a Member of the Directing Staff (1985–91), and subsequently Director, International Programs (1988–91), at the Australian Management College, Mount Eliza.

The Swish Group was one of the early Internet Service Providers in Australia, focusing on website, touch screen kiosk and CD-ROM design, e-commerce solutions and hosting.

During his tenure on the Board, he worked on SEA's policy development and lobbying campaigns that have focused on: Norman Lacy retired from his full time career and public life in 2009 and lives in Wye River, Victoria.