BLIND CANDIDATE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24400, 11 September 1940, Page 12

BLIND CANDIDATE

SYDNEY BY-ELECTION MR STEVENS’S SUCCESSOR (From Our Own Correspondent! SYDNEY. Aug. 29. Australia will soon have its first blind member of Parliament. He is Mr David Hunter, the selected' U.A.P. candidate for the by-election on September 14 in the Croydon electorate. heKLby the former Premier, Mr B. S. B. Stevens, until he resigned from the State Legislative Assembly to contest, a Federal seat. Croydon is a safeclJ.A.P. seat, and Mr Hunter’s return is prac-. tically assured. Mr Hunter, now 34, has been blind' since he was six. He attended the Deaf, Dumb and Blind Institution, where, as a boy. he equipped himself for the unequal struoggle ahead. He Is at present in business as ah insurance broker. He is a keen student of politics and economics. He is secretary of the Croydon U.A.P. branch, and’ is-«nr official of several sporting and social organisations. He is a keen dancer, and his favourite sport is golf, at which he has a ®lub handicap of 24 The Braille system—the written language of the blind l —has lifted the curtain from the world of darkness in which he has lived, and has opened up for him a wide field of investigations. Great figures of literature are represented among the books that line his shelves. “ There are magazines in Braille that; cover a wide social, economic and political field,” he said. “In addition, with the use of a special electric. Braille typewriter. I am continually .transcribing into Braille matter of general interest. Blindness, too. develops over the years a retentive memory. Things, that a sighted person will read, register in his mind and then forget are carefully pigeon-holed in the mind of - a blind man for a far greater period. In addition to that. I have lived •my 1 life in a world of politics and study.” “The prospect of Parliamentary de- -? bate and the hurly-burly of campaign- ■■ ing does not worry me in the least,” he added, “ Blindness should" never be : regarded as an insuperable handicap.” <