the-case-for-corurgan-ellis

Biography:

Ulrich Ruegg Ellis (1904-1981)

Ellis was a journalist, author, political organiser and activist. Soon after completing his journalist cadetship Ellis moved to Canberra in 1927. He was one of the first permanent press correspondents to live in the `bush capital’. Next year he became private secretary to (Sir) Earle Page, leader of the Australian Country Party. A competent and energetic assistant, Ellis organised Page’s daily working life and focused his employer’s ideas about the role of the Country Party.

In 1936 Ellis joined the Commonwealth Department of Commerce as a commercial intelligence officer. Four years later he moved to the Department of Munitions in Melbourne, where he became assistant-controller (administration) in charge of a staff of some six hundred officers. Between 1944 and 1946 he served as deputy-director of public relations in the Department of Post-war Reconstruction, Canberra. Never entirely comfortable with the constraints of the public service, in 1945 he had publicly criticised the practice of the minister for the interior in allocating housing. For contravening public service regulations he was fined £2. After a year in the Department of Information he resigned from the public service in 1947 and established a rural lobby group, the Office of Rural Research (and Development), which worked closely with the Country Party.