Ross Free

Free was born in Bathurst, New South Wales, and completed a Bachelor of Science (Honours) and Graduate Diploma of Education at the University of Sydney, following which he worked as a school teacher.

[2] Free won Labor preselection for the outer Sydney federal seat of Macquarie ahead of the 1980 election, and defeated the incumbent Liberal member Reg Gillard.

When a redistribution ahead of the 1984 election erased most of his majority in Macquarie, he transferred to the newly created seat of Lindsay, based around Penrith.

Free went into the election sitting on a seemingly daunting margin of 10.2 percent, but lost Lindsay to Liberal candidate Jackie Kelly on a swing of almost 12 percent—one of 13 Labor MPs from New South Wales to lose his seat.

Kelly was subsequently found to have run while still a serving RAAF officer, and both contested the resulting by-election (as did 10 other candidates), but Free lost by a greater margin.